BAGHDAD, Iraq — - BAGHDAD, Iraq — Tripped up by problems ranging from sabotage to its reliance on by-the-book engineering, the United States has failed to meet its long-stated goal of reviving Iraq's electricity output. for the start of the searing summer.

The American-led occupation missed its goal by as much as 30 percent, starving air-conditioners, lights, factories and oil pumps. That has damaged the occupation's efforts to foster stability and good will among a populace already traumatized by the failure to guarantee their security. The goal, one of the American-led civilian administration's highest priorities, was set soon after occupation forces overran the country in the spring of 2003. It seemed within reach, but with little progress so far, the occupation is now talking about the occupation is now talking about succeeding well into this summer. The United Nations estimated that before the war, Iraq could produce 4,500 megawatts of electricity at any given time. With the fighting and looting, the production capacity plunged wildly, before beginning to rebound. Capacity has been stuck in a range around 4,000 megawatts for months. Not only is that less than during the Saddam Hussein era, but it is also far below the American promise of 6,000 megawatts. Even if that level is attained, demand is leapfrogging higher. That could portend a difficult season, just when the interim government takes up its duties and tries to claim popular support. The reasons for the shortfall are both obvious and subtle. They include insurgents' attacks on plants and power lines, the harassment and killing of engineers, pullouts by companies doing repair work, and problems finding spare parts for outdated Iraqi equipment. Some Iraqis also complain that Western engineers have been unable to grasp the complexities of a creaky electrical grid that is a patchwork of ancient Russian, German, Yugoslavian, Chinese and American equipment. The Iraqis say that the engineers, often Americans, reflexively reach for fancy new gear costing tens of millions of dollars that can take months or years to order, ship and install. Iraqis are skilled at balancing the vast swirl of electrical supply and demand on their grid with phone calls and intuition, while Americans rely on computerized sensors and automatic control circuitry. The Iraqi way of doing business is equally strange to American engineers. Beneath a yellowed, sagging drop ceiling in the control room of one electricity plant in Baghdad, a swarm of technicians in grimy blue jumpsuits laughed at a man sleeping on cardboard as an alarm for high oil temperature in an ancient turbine began to sound. Another man sat finishing a cigarette, his feet in a puddle of dirty oil, before throwing the glowing butt into the middle of the puddle and then crushing it out. A nearby banner called for revenge for the death of Imam Hussein, a martyr of the year 680. Meanwhile, two huge turbines groaned away, and workers struggled to fix another. The shortage has left ordinary Iraqis seething, particularly in Baghdad. The city was generously supplied with electricity at the expense of the rest of the country under Saddam Hussein, but now receives a more proportional share of the smaller pie, and is subject to frequent cutoffs. "They said early March, and then they said early May, and finally they said early June the electricity would be perfect," said Feras al-Rubae, a money changer who sat sullenly in his shop in the middle-class shopping district of Outer Karada during a power failure. "But now it is early June, and where is the promise?" As for how important electricity is for resuming a normal life and getting his business back on its feet, Mr. Rubae said: "I would put it first. No. 1." As reconstruction money flows in, that importance to the political and economic life of Iraq has hardly been overlooked. L. Paul Bremer III, the top American administrator in Iraq, has long emphasized the importance of restoring electricity, engineers and construction managers said. In an interview last Monday, Mr. Bremer said it was for that reason that $5.5 billion of last fall's $18.4 billion emergency spending bill was apportioned to restoring electrical power. "It's quite important, mostly because, first of all, it affects our capacity to deal with other problems like being able to pump oil," Mr. Bremer said. Electricity is needed to produce the oil, exports of which are the lifeblood of the economy. Besides that, Mr. Bremer said, "it's important because it affects the lives of ordinary Iraqis." The money from the emergency bill comes on top of hundreds of millions of dollars that were dedicated to the power grid last year. The United States Agency for International Development budgeted $1.3 billion for work on the grid, and $500 million of that was budgeted earlier last year. The United States Army Corps of Engineers, which began some of its work as early as the spring of 2003, has budgeted $1.36 billion for electrical work. Estimates of the ultimate cost of restoring the Iraqi grid have varied wildly. In an assessment last year, the United Nations and the World Bank estimated that Iraq would need about $12 billion to repair its electrical system through 2007. The Iraqi electricity ministry has quoted numbers as high as $35 billion for the overall cost, without giving specific dates. The money is being spent rapidly, but the goal is unmet. Mr. Bremer said he now expected capacity to reach 6,000 megawatts during the summer. (By contrast, a single American plant often produces 1,000 megawatts, and production in Texas can soar to 60,000 megawatts during an exceptionally hot day.) Tom Crangle, the Coalition Provisional Authority's acting senior adviser for electricity, said, "We see the air-conditioners in the back of pickup trucks, and we see a lot more economic activity. So we're chasing an upwardly rising target." The lower-than-expected output was the result of "a combination of factors," said Mr. Crangle, who was a senior manager at the Tennessee Valley Authority, the largest public power company in the United States. Rebuilding older generators, ordinarily time-consuming, has been drawn out further after engineers discovered that Saddam Hussein's government had left them in a decrepit state, Mr. Crangle said. Importing new generators into a country in chaos meant new challenges. Sabotage has been directed at transmission lines, power plants and some oil and gas pipelines that provide fuel for the plants. According to an internal Iraqi government report obtained by The New York Times last week, more than 100 of the main electrical lines and nearly 1,200 of the towers supporting them have been damaged or destroyed since the invasion. Mr. Crangle said that about 90 percent of that damage has been repaired, and that the destruction from new attacks is being fixed nearly as fast as it occurs. A Web site of the Coalition Provisional Authority used to give daily scores of electricity production beginning Aug. 1, 2003. But it abruptly stopped giving updates on May 18, when the peak production was listed at 4,039 megawatts. Officials of the Coalition Provisional Authority say they halted the updates so that saboteurs could not see the impact of their strikes. In an interview this month, Abdul Wahab, chief engineer at the General Establishment for Electricity Generation within the Iraqi Ministry of Electricity, said that current production was running at just under 4,000 megawatts, but that because of damaged transmission lines, not all of that could be delivered and used. A spokesman for the provisional authority, Dallas Lawrence, said Iraq was producing 4,273 megawatts on June 7, compared with 3,222 megawatts exactly one year before. "No matter how you dice this," Mr. Lawrence wrote in an e-mail message, "either by peak megawatts or by megawatt-hours, we are providing 24 to 25 percent more power today than one year ago." But those numbers failed to impress many Iraqis. "The Americans, all of them, move very slowly," said Raad al-Haris, the deputy minister of electricity. "We thought before that the Americans will do some excellent job and they can cover the demand," he said, spitting out the words in slightly imperfect English. "But until now," he said, his voice rising, "we have only peanut." Mr. Haris, the deputy minister, said that demand was running at just over 5,000 megawatts and that he expected it to rise to 7,000 this summer. Mr. Wahab, the chief engineer, said demand could soar even more, to 8,000 megawatts. "In July and August there will be a huge demand," said Raqi Rahem, director of the Baghdad South power plant. Although some Iraqis congratulate the Americans and their allies for technical successes, like replacing hundreds of the damaged transmission towers and shipping new parts that were unobtainable under Mr. Hussein, many others suggest that engineers from economically developed countries do not have the jury-rigging skills of Iraqi colleagues. Iraqis engineers are masters at taking from one damaged piece of equipment to make another piece work. Instead of employing the careful American method of erecting wooden poles to support lines while towers were rebuilt, Mr. Crangle noted with undisguised admiration, Iraqis had found a way to do it safely with mobile cranes. Carrying out a project by the book, with brand-new equipment, "might take you six months," said Saad Shakir Tawfiq, an engineer at the Iraqi Ministry of Industry who is involved with several power plants. "You need power because it's the people's lives," Dr. Tawfiq said. "I don't care about the book; you need power. Just do it, the basics, with what you've got."

The United Nations estimated that before the war, Iraq could produce 4,500 megawatts of electricity at any given time. With the fighting and looting, the production capacity plunged wildly, before beginning to rebound.

Capacity has been stuck in a range around 4,000 megawatts for months. Not only is that less than during the Saddam Hussein era, but it is also far below the American promise of 6,000 megawatts.

Even if that level is attained, demand is leapfrogging higher. That could portend a difficult season, just when the interim government takes up its duties and tries to claim popular support.

The reasons for the shortfall are both obvious and subtle. They include insurgents' attacks on plants and power lines, the harassment and killing of engineers, pullouts by companies doing repair work, and problems finding spare parts for outdated Iraqi equipment.

Some Iraqis also complain that Western engineers have been unable to grasp the complexities of a creaky electrical grid that is a patchwork of ancient Russian, German, Yugoslavian, Chinese and American equipment. The Iraqis say that the engineers, often Americans, reflexively reach for fancy new gear costing tens of millions of dollars that can take months or years to order, ship and install.

Iraqis are skilled at balancing the vast swirl of electrical supply and demand on their grid with phone calls and intuition, while Americans rely on computerized sensors and automatic control circuitry.

The Iraqi way of doing business is equally strange to American engineers. Beneath a yellowed, sagging drop ceiling in the control room of one electricity plant in Baghdad, a swarm of technicians in grimy blue jumpsuits laughed at a man sleeping on cardboard as an alarm for high oil temperature in an ancient turbine began to sound.

Another man sat finishing a cigarette, his feet in a puddle of dirty oil, before throwing the glowing butt into the middle of the puddle and then crushing it out. A nearby banner called for revenge for the death of Imam Hussein, a martyr of the year 680. Meanwhile, two huge turbines groaned away, and workers struggled to fix another.

The shortage has left ordinary Iraqis seething, particularly in Baghdad. The city was generously supplied with electricity at the expense of the rest of the country under Saddam Hussein, but now receives a more proportional share of the smaller pie, and is subject to frequent cutoffs.

"They said early March, and then they said early May, and finally they said early June the electricity would be perfect," said Feras al-Rubae, a money changer who sat sullenly in his shop in the middle-class shopping district of Outer Karada during a power failure. "But now it is early June, and where is the promise?"

As for how important electricity is for resuming a normal life and getting his business back on its feet, Mr. Rubae said: "I would put it first. No. 1."

As reconstruction money flows in, that importance to the political and economic life of Iraq has hardly been overlooked.

L. Paul Bremer III, the top American administrator in Iraq, has long emphasized the importance of restoring electricity, engineers and construction managers said. In an interview last Monday, Mr. Bremer said it was for that reason that $5.5 billion of last fall's $18.4 billion emergency spending bill was apportioned to restoring electrical power.

"It's quite important, mostly because, first of all, it affects our capacity to deal with other problems like being able to pump oil," Mr. Bremer said. Electricity is needed to produce the oil, exports of which are the lifeblood of the economy.

Besides that, Mr. Bremer said, "it's important because it affects the lives of ordinary Iraqis."

The money from the emergency bill comes on top of hundreds of millions of dollars that were dedicated to the power grid last year. The United States Agency for International Development budgeted $1.3 billion for work on the grid, and $500 million of that was budgeted earlier last year.

The United States Army Corps of Engineers, which began some of its work as early as the spring of 2003, has budgeted $1.36 billion for electrical work.

Estimates of the ultimate cost of restoring the Iraqi grid have varied wildly. In an assessment last year, the United Nations and the World Bank estimated that Iraq would need about $12 billion to repair its electrical system through 2007. The Iraqi electricity ministry has quoted numbers as high as $35 billion for the overall cost, without giving specific dates.

The money is being spent rapidly, but the goal is unmet. Mr. Bremer said he now expected capacity to reach 6,000 megawatts during the summer. (By contrast, a single American plant often produces 1,000 megawatts, and production in Texas can soar to 60,000 megawatts during an exceptionally hot day.)

Tom Crangle, the Coalition Provisional Authority's acting senior adviser for electricity, said, "We see the air-conditioners in the back of pickup trucks, and we see a lot more economic activity. So we're chasing an upwardly rising target."

The lower-than-expected output was the result of "a combination of factors," said Mr. Crangle, who was a senior manager at the Tennessee Valley Authority, the largest public power company in the United States.

Rebuilding older generators, ordinarily time-consuming, has been drawn out further after engineers discovered that Saddam Hussein's government had left them in a decrepit state, Mr. Crangle said. Importing new generators into a country in chaos meant new challenges.

Sabotage has been directed at transmission lines, power plants and some oil and gas pipelines that provide fuel for the plants. According to an internal Iraqi government report obtained by The New York Times last week, more than 100 of the main electrical lines and nearly 1,200 of the towers supporting them have been damaged or destroyed since the invasion.

Mr. Crangle said that about 90 percent of that damage has been repaired, and that the destruction from new attacks is being fixed nearly as fast as it occurs.

A Web site of the Coalition Provisional Authority used to give daily scores of electricity production beginning Aug. 1, 2003. But it abruptly stopped giving updates on May 18, when the peak production was listed at 4,039 megawatts.

Officials of the Coalition Provisional Authority say they halted the updates so that saboteurs could not see the impact of their strikes.

In an interview this month, Abdul Wahab, chief engineer at the General Establishment for Electricity Generation within the Iraqi Ministry of Electricity, said that current production was running at just under 4,000 megawatts, but that because of damaged transmission lines, not all of that could be delivered and used.

A spokesman for the provisional authority, Dallas Lawrence, said Iraq was producing 4,273 megawatts on June 7, compared with 3,222 megawatts exactly one year before.

"No matter how you dice this," Mr. Lawrence wrote in an e-mail message, "either by peak megawatts or by megawatt-hours, we are providing 24 to 25 percent more power today than one year ago."

But those numbers failed to impress many Iraqis.

"The Americans, all of them, move very slowly," said Raad al-Haris, the deputy minister of electricity. "We thought before that the Americans will do some excellent job and they can cover the demand," he said, spitting out the words in slightly imperfect English. "But until now," he said, his voice rising, "we have only peanut."

Mr. Haris, the deputy minister, said that demand was running at just over 5,000 megawatts and that he expected it to rise to 7,000 this summer. Mr. Wahab, the chief engineer, said demand could soar even more, to 8,000 megawatts.

"In July and August there will be a huge demand," said Raqi Rahem, director of the Baghdad South power plant.

Although some Iraqis congratulate the Americans and their allies for technical successes, like replacing hundreds of the damaged transmission towers and shipping new parts that were unobtainable under Mr. Hussein, many others suggest that engineers from economically developed countries do not have the jury-rigging skills of Iraqi colleagues.

Iraqis engineers are masters at taking from one damaged piece of equipment to make another piece work. Instead of employing the careful American method of erecting wooden poles to support lines while towers were rebuilt, Mr. Crangle noted with undisguised admiration, Iraqis had found a way to do it safely with mobile cranes.

Carrying out a project by the book, with brand-new equipment, "might take you six months," said Saad Shakir Tawfiq, an engineer at the Iraqi Ministry of Industry who is involved with several power plants.

"You need power because it's the people's lives," Dr. Tawfiq said. "I don't care about the book; you need power. Just do it, the basics, with what you've got."