Power outage was caused by strong winds

There is more clarity over the reasons behind Tuesday’s massive loss at Vasiliko power plant, with officials saying some 100 megawatt from the north saved the day in the first crucial hour.

A sudden loss of power at Vasiliko caused a brief and partial blackout in Cyprus on Tuesday morning, with initial reports from the Cyprus Electricity Authority (EAC) saying the problem was probably caused by lightning.

But it later turned out, according to EAC spokesperson Yiorgos Ashikalis, the problem was isolated on a power line running from Vasiliko to Alambra, where strong winds caused the line to disengage from the power line insulator.

This caused the load to drop suddenly from 580MW to 340MW, which was well below the required base load.

“We immediately gave out orders for other emergency response units to start operations and connect to the grid,” the official said.

Ashikalis also noted that this was a “very rare incident” adding that power had gone down to 50% with all four units at Vasiliko falling off the grid due to the blackout.

“We had a single power supply from the grid in the north, around 100 megawatt, which helped us restore power more quickly back to normal levels,” Ashikalis said.

Officials are said to be investigating the exact cause of the malfunction on the power line insulator. Knews could not establish whether a maintenance issue was also being investigated.