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local Tuesday 13 sepTember 2022

High temperatures affecting electricity wires causing interruptions

ORANJESTAD – Jonathan van der pact on Elmar. They always have
Linden, Maintenance Specialist at their equipment and personnel
NV Elmar explains that it’s true that ready for these times. At home, for
recently electricity company Elmar example, people have a breaker
is confronting interruptions in El- box and there is a breaker that for
mar’s grid. Van der Linden explains example goes to the kitchen. In
that there are various factors for the kitchen you can have 10 stop
this, and heat is playing a big role. contacts, and if one of these short
circuits, all others lose power. This
Recently, the local community of is also the case for Elmar, but on a
Aruba is dealing with various prob- much bigger scale.
lems with electricity in different
areas of our island. According to Elmar’s personnel begin by isolat-
Elmar, the high temperature is af- ing the problem in order to rees-
fecting Elmar’s grid recently, and tablish electricity supply. The hu-
not so much in the area of capac- midity also has a big effect, par-
ity, but more regarding wires under ticularly at night. It was also noted
the ground, which short circuit af- that these days, around 9pm the
fecting the area. There is also rain ‘peak’ is very high because ev-
which is affecting Elmar’s installa- eryone goes home, turns on their
tions, not only cables, but high volt- air conditioning; as well as having
age installations – humidity rises in more electric vehicles these days,
the area and this has an effect on so the demand is high.
the installations.
In the last week, Elmar experienced
Elmar continuously informs regard- never-before seen peak, accord-
ing maintenance on its equipment, ing to Van der Linden, where ca-
this is something to try to mitigate pacity was at 256 megawatt of
the problem. There are times transformer, meaning that there is
where bad weather has a big im- enough capacity space. Howev- er, here and there it is possible for things to go wrong.

In August 2022, Aruba received 100,770 stay-over visitors

August 2022 surpassed the numbers of August 2019

ORANJESTAD – Aruba Tourism Au- as the rate of recovery in the dif- more stable growth than 2021. grew with 9,701 visitors to Aruba,
thority (ATA) informed that for the ferent regions are: United States, Comparing August 2022 with Au- which is 9.6% of all stay-over visitors.
month of August, our destination with 78,307 visitors, which represent gust 2021, a growth of 26% can A total of 7,641 visitors, representing
received a total of 100,770 stay- a rate of recovery of 110% com- be noted in the amount of stay- 7.6% of stay-over visitors were from
over visitors. If the month of August pared to August 2019. The Neth- over visitors, from 80,230 visitors to Latin America; and 2.5% of the to-
2022 is compared to August 2019 erlands, with 3,236 visitors, which 100,770 visitors. tal stay-over visitors for August 2022
– which was the last normal tourism represent a rate of recovery of 98% – which is 2,566 visitors – visited our
year – it can be noted that Aruba compared to August 2019. And Markets island from other parts of the world.
recoverd 105% of the amount of Colombia, with 2,384 visitors which North America remains as the
August 2019. represents a rate of recovery of strongest market for Aruba, and in 2022
87% compared to August 2019. August 2022, a total of 80,862 North The first 8 months of 2022, Aruba
The three markets which stood American visitors arrived in Aruba. received a total of 738,101 stay-
out the most for amount of tourists 2022 compared to 2021 This is 80.2% of the total stay-over over visitors, representing a recov-
who visited in August 2022, as well 2022 is showing a stronger and visitors. In August 2022, Europe ery rate of 95% compared to the
same months of 2019. It needs to
me noted that in the first 8 months
of 2022, the market of the United
States surpassed the amount of
visitors for the same period in 2019,
with 2,874 visitors.

Tourism Credits/ Central Bank of
Aruba
According to the Central Bank, the
so-called Tourism Credits (previ-
ously called Tourism Receipts) for
the year of 2021 contributed Afl.
3,169.9 million to the local econo-
my, which is 65.5% more compared
to the same period in 2020. This is
naturally due to the global pan-
demic of Covid-19, during which
Aruba also closed its borders tem-
porarily. Tourism Credits recovered
with 80% when comparing 2021 to
2019.