More than 200 people in Marinka, a village near Burgas, have signed a joint complaint to EVN over frequent power cuts. The complaint was filed on 3 November, a resident who is collecting the signatures told Bulgarian National Radio (BNR).
All the reports sent so far to the energy regulator KEVR, the energy ministry and Bulgaria's ombudsman are attached. The residents want the company to explain how it will fix the problem.
The organiser has lived in Marinka for four to five years and says the power has failed the whole time. "The last one to two years the cuts have been more frequent, and this summer the power went off almost every morning," he told BNR.
He says that when residents asked EVN, they were told the outages came from transformer stations overloaded by solar panels. He also says electrical appliances have burned out.
The petition will run for another two to three weeks. Residents will wait up to 30 days for a reply from the company. If they get none, their last resort is protests.
Krum Kosev of the communications department at Elektrorazpredelenie Yug, EVN's southern Bulgaria power distributor, confirmed that the complaint arrived in the past few days and that the village's power supply has been discussed before. "We have decided to replace the whole power supply scheme for the village," Kosev told BNR.
Most faults are caused by birds landing on the supply cable and by bad weather in autumn and winter, he said.
The company has a ready project for an underground cable from the Pobeda substation in Burgas to Marinka. It has been submitted to Burgas municipality, and building will start once it is approved.
Network analysers will also be installed in the village to track all power supply readings, including the lower voltage that residents sometimes notice.