The technical problem which caused power cuts in various areas across the island on Friday morning has “not yet been solved”, transmission system operator spokeswoman Chara Kousiappa said, though the island’s electricity supply has been restored in its entirety.
She told the Cyprus News Agency that the transmission system operator does not expect for there to be “any problem in meeting demand”, and that there is “available production capacity to meet demand”.
Regarding the fact that the technical problem which caused Friday morning’s outages has not yet been solved, she said that “other ways have been found to ensure a continuous supply of electricity”.
Likewise, later in the day, the electricity authority said that it is “taking measures to install backup telecommunication connections” between solar farms and the control centre, “with the aim of preventing similar incidents in the future”.
It also apologised “for the inconvenience caused”.
Earlier, swathes of Limassol and suburbs of Nicosia, as well as other areas across the island, were left without power. When people rushed to the electricity authority’s website to discover what had occurred, the website’s server then became overloaded, displaying a “503 error” to those who wished to access it.
The sudden power cuts left many stuck inside lifts, with the fire brigade saying that it received “dozens” of such calls, from every one of the island’s districts. With power having since been restored, many of those who had become trapped were able to exit the lifts without the fire brigade’s assistance.
Kousiappa had at the time explained to the Cyprus Mail that the issue had arisen due to a “lack of communication” between solar farms and the coordination centre, meaning that solar farms were cut out of the automatic supply system as the readings they were sending to the coordination centre were incorrect.
This, she said, led to a loss of 100 megawatts of production, causing some areas to be left temporarily without electricity.
Meanwhile, Turkish Cypriot electricity workers’ union El-Sen leader Ahmet Tugcu told the Cyprus Mail that the issue had spread islandwide due to the fact that Cyprus’ two electricity grids are interconnected.
He told the newspaper that a “frequency issue” had arisen and confirmed that one of the “other ways” used to ensure the power supply was that the electricity authority had purchased 30 megawatts of electricity from the Turkish Cypriots.
“In the south, there were problems with the machinery, so they had to buy 30 megawatts from us, and since we do not have base load power plants, they tripped the 25-year-old machinery in our power plants and in Aksa,” he said.
In this, he was referring to the north’s two power stations, the Teknecik plant near Kyrenia, run by the Turkish Cypriot electricity authority, Kib-Tek, and the Kalecik plant near Trikomo, run by Turkish energy company Aksa, though it is believed that the issues faced at the two plants did not directly cause any power outages in the north.
A “base load power plant” is a large station which runs non-stop to always supply the minimum amount of electricity an electrical grid needs.
