German network overload cuts power to homes across Europe
Power cuts plunged millions of homes across western Europe into darkness at the weekend after an overload on a German network on Saturday night triggered shutdowns that one French union leader said were the worst in 30 years.
Power was swiftly restored to most areas within a couple of hours, but the incident, coinciding with the first cold snap of winter, reignited debate overEurope's energy network.
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"We weren't very far from a total blackout," said Pierre Bornard, a board member of Réseau de Transport d'Eléctricité (RTE), the Frenchdistribution network.
Mr Bornard said Europe's cross-border power connections usually made its electricity supply more robust and able to smooth out national variations in production and demand, although countries also shared the impact of serious incidents.
The network overload in Germany might have stemmed from the closing of a high-voltage line over a river, a routine operation to let a boat pass, said Eon, the German energy group, which operates the north German grid.
The incident may heighten existing sensitivities over attempts to create a single European energy market, held back until now by a lack of interconnector capacity and a protectionist approach from some member states.
Romano Prodi, Italian prime minister, yesterday called for a single European power authority to co-ordinate supply, saying it was a contradiction that "we depend on each other, but we cannot help each other without a common authority".
In France, No?l Mamère, a Green party MP, said the weekend's outage showed that "energy must remain a public good and cannot be privatised".
The CGT de l'Energie, the main union for electricity producer EDF, called for a "halt to European deregulation driven solely by the logic of competition".
André Merlin, executive head of RTE, was quick to defend the system of interconnected networks.
He told a press conference that "if there is in an incident tomorrow in France, we'll be very happy for the Germans to come to our help".
But infrastructure remains a major practical obstacle to a pan-European market.
Network operators see more effective use of cross-border links as key tocreating an integrated market, but current transmission lines are fragile and building new ones frequently runs into environmental opposition.
电网超负荷 西欧大面积断电
西欧地区上周末发生大规模停电事件，导致数以百万计的家庭陷入黑暗之中。停电原因是德国的一个电网周六晚间超负荷运载。一位法国工会领导人称，此次停电是30年来最严重的一次。
多数地区在断电后两小时内迅速恢复了电力供应，但此次停电事件发生之际，恰逢冬季首次寒潮来袭，从而再次引发了关于欧洲能源网络的争论。
电网运营商认为，提高跨境传输线路的利用效率，是构建一体化市场的关键，但现有的传输线路较为脆弱，而铺设新线路又经常遭到环保人士的反对。
