Helios crisis exercise: an obituary by H. Saurugg

From 13 to 15 May 2019 the crisis (staff) exercise “Helios” (German) took place in Austria under the leadership of the Austrian Ministry of the Interior.

This exercise was the largest cross-ministry crisis exercise in Austria to date. Emergency services and operators of critical infrastructure (German) were also involved. The exercise scenario was an electricity shortage under § 15 of the Energy Control Act (EnLG) (German).

Until now, such a scenario had only existed on paper. Now, for the first time, the processes were practised across all areas – processes that affect not only the electricity industry but society as a whole. The exercise scenario did not come out of nowhere. On the one hand, this scenario was already a major topic in the Swiss Security Network Exercise 2014 (German). It was even judged to be more serious than a temporary blackout, since 70 % electricity supply means 0 % output in many other areas of life and supply (German). On the other hand, we are foreseeably heading towards such a scenario. As was reported at the beginning of May at the conference “Blackout – Netzprobleme – Auswirkungen und Lösungen” (Blackout – grid problems – effects and solutions, German) in Mannheim, in the worst case Germany could already need to import around 0.5 GW in winter 2019/20. So far, however, Germany has still been able to export enough to support its neighbouring countries. See also the article Everyone wants to import, but nobody says where the electricity is actually supposed to come from… (German) This exercise therefore had a very real background, even if that was not communicated so clearly.

In the safety communication as a whole, a lot went less than optimally:

READ THE FULL ARTICLE (German)

Thank you to Herbert Saurugg for his extensive analysis of events on his website and for the opportunity to help spread information for the event of a blackout.

BLACKOUT CHECKLIST (German)