GfKV newsletter #04 – Society for Crisis Preparedness

Grid split of 8 January 2021: the trigger was in Croatia

We reported on the serious incident in the European interconnected grid on 8 January 2021 in GfKV newsletter #03. It has since emerged that the triggering event did not occur in Romania, as reported, but in Croatia. An overload at the Ernestinovo substation led to a cascade (German) of 13 further line overloads and thus to the intended disconnection of these connections, which split the European interconnected system into two parts.

Even though the European transmission system operators did an excellent job of quickly restoring normal operation, a number of questions remain open.

For example, how it could have come to this at all. Above all, why this overload could occur despite very high safety standards and permanent simulations of upcoming grid states, and why the (n-1) rule (German), according to which any single piece of equipment may fail at any time, did not take effect here. Further investigations are under way.

At various infrastructure operators, such as Vienna Airport (German) and in some hospitals, the incident led to knock-on faults triggered by the emergency power supply. At Vienna Airport there was also a serious incident in which hundreds of hardware components were destroyed, causing damage of several hundred thousand euros. The exact reason is not yet known. However, there are indications that the protective devices did not work as intended. Unfortunately, this is something one must always reckon with, as numerous other examples (German) show. The IT disruptions and hardware damage to be expected as a result of a blackout in particular are significantly underestimated.

Blackout workbook for mayors and municipalities

Since 8 February 2021, the Styrian Blackout-Arbeitsmappe für Bürgermeister*innen und Gemeinden (Blackout workbook for mayors and municipalities, German) has been available to the public free of charge as a PDF version (German).

Read the full post (German) Archive of all newsletters (German)

For years I have been publishing extensive analyses of what happens in the event of a blackout on my website. Since 2019 also in cooperation with GAIA: my newsletters are also published here.

Checklist for a blackout (German) My website (German)