**5. Conclusion**

In this chapter, outages and blackouts that occurred in the general electrical grid in 2019–2020 have been discussed in detail as follows; from the point of the annual energy produced by Al- Zawiya PPCC in 2019 and during the period of blackouts 02–07 Aug −2019. Also, Comparative of the annual energy produced by Western Mountain Power Plant in 2019 & 2020. In addition, an assessment of the performance of the six gas units of Western Mountain Power Plant during the peak load demand on Aug-2020. From the presented data, the main causes of outages and blackouts are as follows; the inability of the two power plants to operate at their full capacity during the peak load to cover the load demand, the exit of foreign experts for security reasons caused the delay in the maintenance and overhaul of

### *Assessment of Power Plants in the Western Region of Libya during a Period of Insecurity DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.97208*

the units, the deliberate sabotage of the control room of the Western power plant by armed militias, the division of the power system grid into several parts as well as the loss of the main transmission line 400 KV that linked the Western region to the East is leaving the network very weak, the NCC and TRCC computer systems only control 20% of the data that covers the main points in the network, all faults in the transmission network led to the loss of some generation units. The SCADA only covers some lost data and the rest is manually entered to give a fair picture of the network. Finally, the civil war and political division make the maintenance work very difficult to repair the broken equipment near the conflict zone.

The proposed solutions to overcome the outages and blackout are protecting power plants, transmission lines, and the equipment of the electric company from theft and deliberate destruction. Moreover, reconnecting the main transmission line 400 kV that linking East region with the West, re-activate the automatic operation of the National Control Center for remote generation stations, update Scada system, maintenance of protection relays for the main transmission lines and activation of the deactivated automatic connection and disconnection system. Furthermore, maintenance of all broken generation units and overhaul of the operating units on time, reconnecting the main transmission line 400 KV linking between Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt to increase the stability of the network. Finally, in war zones and conflict areas, where the transmission lines power system equipment is under the threat of deliberate destructions and stealing, using renewable energies, smart grid and smart metering to supply the customers with power and to compensate the voltage drop for increasing network stability are the best solutions.
