Algeria restored electricity to 16 provinces by 4 a.m. Wednesday following a blackout caused by a technical fault at a power facility in Biskra during an intense heatwave that drove consumption to a record 21,870 MW on Monday. The outage prompted Prime Minister Seifi Ghrieb to visit the national grid control centre south of Algiers at midnight to oversee recovery efforts.
The heatwave, with temperatures reaching 49°C in the Sahara and above 45°C along the Mediterranean coast, has also fuelled wildfires. Civil protection units have extinguished 913 of 932 fires since July 8, while military firefighting aircraft were deployed to Sétif, Béjaïa, and Saïda, where one person died and another was severely burned on Tuesday.
The record demand surpassed the previous peak of 20,628 MW set in July 2025. Algeria aims to produce 15,000 MW from renewable energy by 2035.