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Sun 5 Nov, 2006 08:24 am
How has this affected our EU a2k members? - edgarblythe
Power cuts strike Western Europe
Energy demand has been rising in Europe as winter nears
Power cuts have struck several countries in Western Europe, leaving millions of people without electricity.
Power companies said the outage started in Germany with a surge in demand prompted by cold weather, and then spread to other parts of Europe.
Some five million people in France lost power, mainly in the east of the country and including parts of Paris.
"We weren't very far from a European blackout," a senior director with French power company RTE said.
Pierre Bornard told the French news agency AFP that two German high-voltage transmission lines failed, causing problems across western Europe.
This triggered a "house of cards" style system breakdown, he said.
Automatic security systems cut supplies to some customers to avoid a complete blackout.
Italy, Belgium and Spain were also affected by the power cuts.
Most electricity supplies were restored within two hours of the outage, and so far no injuries or accidents have been reported.
Fire brigades in France said they had to answer several calls from people stuck in lifts.
High speed rail links were also disrupted.
You are well informed, Edgar. I didn't know that there were power outages here (not following the news)...
Checking in to see if everyone's got their power back. CBC's had some coverage of this - and there are 140+ articles on google.ca on it right now.
http://euronews.net/create_html.php?page=detail_info&article=389100&lng=1
Cruise ship passage linked to European blackout
A routine safety operation in Germany is thought to have triggered a massive power blackout that affected millions of people across Western Europe on Saturday night. The outage affected numerous countries, lasting a few minutes in some places, but up to 90 minutes in others.
The private German power utility E-ON says reports of cuts began after it shut down a high voltage line in the northwest of the country. A company spokesman said the line over the river Ems was shut down so a Norwegian cruise ship was able to pass through safely.
What happened next is highly technical, but essentially Western Europe's inter-connected networks became overloaded. A kind of domino effect kicked in, where national grids were automatically deprived of power to avoid a complete blackout. There have been calls for an urgent explanation from the German government, and the Italian Prime Minister said the cuts show there is a need for a common European energy authority and policy. Industry commentators say bitter disputes over mergers have hampered efforts by the European Union to formulate a collective policy.
I heard about the power outage this morning on the radio. We were not affected at all...
I just heard about this on NPR. Was wondering if the guy that flipped the switch for the cruise ship still had a job, but it sounds like it triggered overload outages rather than being the wrong switch.
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