A power outage in large parts of the Czech Republic, including
Prague, trapped people in public transport and lifts and idled factories
on Friday after a fallen high-voltage cable disrupted the network.
The incident is likely to add to concerns about the resilience of Europe’s power infrastructure after Spain suffered the w
orst blackout in its history in April and a fire knocked out the pow
er supply to London’s Heathrow airport in March.
“There was a massive power outage in part of Prague and in the northern and eastern Czech Republic around
12 pm (1000 GMT) today,” the Industry and Trade Ministry said. “The cause was the fall of a power cable, not a cyberattack no
r a failure of renewable resources.”
The outage was nearly fully resolved by 1600 GMT.
It halted international and local trains and public transport in several cities, including Prague, where the underg
round was briefly shut down and trams were at a halt for hours. About 1,000
mobile phone network stations were affected and ran on back-up systems.
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National transmission system operator CEPS declared a nationwi
de state of emergency after the V411 transmission grid line and the
Unit 6 of the Ledvice power plant failed. It was not known what caused the power cable to fall.
This had knock-on effects, overburdening another line and substation,
and forcing part of the grid to operate as an island, cut off from other parts of the European grid.
The Czech Republic has dozens of substations – facilities that convert electricity into different voltages so it ca
n be transmitted throughout the country and distributed locally.
CEPS had earlier said the fallen line on the 45 kilometer (29 miles) high-voltage line in the northwest of the c
ountry had affected eight of these substations and caused blackouts in five of the Czech Republic’s 14 regions.
The fallen line, serving an area with lignite power plants, has been include
d in a modernisation plan and is due to be doubled in capacity by 2028.
The Ledvice 6 power plant, which was also affected, is a 660 megawatt, coal-fired plant built in 2017 and operated
by CEZ. CEZ did not comment on the plant.