"Thousands unite to rally against global warming"
And I was wandering why it was so cold in Germany it is only November. You explained it
Cold snap plunges swathes of Europe into blackness
A surge in electricity demand in Germany due to cold weather triggered blackouts across western Europe.
published in issue 3803 page 10 at 2006-11-06
PARIS - A sudden weekend surge in demand for electricity in Germany due to freezing weather plunged much of Europe into blackness as France and other power exporting countries found their grids overtapped. The power outage nearly caused an unprecedented Europe-wide blackout, energy supply companies said. Authorities said it underscored an urgent need to create a coordinating agency for the entire continent. Swathes of France, Italy, Spain, Belgium and the Netherlands went dark for up to an hour late Saturday as cold Germans rushing to switch on heaters sucked up electricity from Europe’s interconnected networks.
Automated switching protocols meant the grid in France , a net exporter of electricity to Germany and other countries due to its fleet of nuclear power stations, was massively called on to meet the shortfall in Germany. “It all happened in several seconds,” said Pierre Bornard, a senior executive at RTE, a subsidiary of the French electricity giant EDF that handles electricity distribution.
In France, more than five million people, or nearly one-tenth of the country, were left without power, especially residents of Paris and its suburbs. “We weren’t very far from a European blackout,” Bornard said. Winter temperatures that fell to below freezing in parts of Germany, Europe’s most populous country, triggered the incident. The west German city of Cologne was the first place to go black as strained power networks failed to shift electricity supplies to German consumers. The failure of two German high-voltage transmission lines compounded the problem. The Cologne-Bonn airport was affected, but generators were started to prevent disruptions to air traffic. Various parts of Italy were affected, particularly the northwestern Piedmont area, which lost electricity for around 30 minutes. Several areas of Spain were also hit, including Madrid, and the eastern Catalonia and Valencia regions, according to Spain’s REE company. There were no immediate reports of any injuries as a result of the blackout.
Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi said yesterday that a common European authority was needed to oversee |
