Europe has experienced six major blackouts in the past 20 years

A selection of major power outages in Europe over the past 20 years (yesterday, extensive parts of Montenegro, Bosnia and Croatia’s Dalmatia region were hit by a power outage):

25 May 2005 (Russia) – Around four million residents of Moscow were hit by an outage affecting power and water supplies. According to officials at Russian energy company UES, the outage was caused primarily by ageing equipment, as well as breaches of safety rules, human error and indecision.

4 November 2006 (Germany, France, Austria, Belgium, Italy or Spain) – About ten million people in Western Europe were left without power. The widespread outage was caused by a lack of coordination among transmission system operators. It was triggered by an overloaded local grid in Germany, when the E.ON group disconnected part of a power line to allow the large Norwegian ship Norwegian Pearl to pass along the River Ems in northwestern Germany.

31 March 2015 (Turkey) – A massive power outage hit around 70 million people in Turkey. It affected major Turkish cities and almost half of the country’s provinces. Alongside Turkey’s largest city, Istanbul, and the capital, Ankara, the outage also affected Izmir, a city of four million in western Turkey. The outage was caused by two large power plants being shut down for maintenance at the same time.

9 August 2019 (United Kingdom) – A widespread power outage hit England and Wales, disrupting rail services and, among other things, knocking out traffic lights in London. The outage was caused by a lightning strike that knocked out two generators about 160 kilometres apart.

23 December 2019 (Malta) – The Mediterranean island nation of Malta was hit by a widespread power outage that affected most of the country. The outage lasted about four hours. The cause was apparently a failure in the power link to the Italian island of Sicily, from which Malta imports electricity.

21 June 2024 (Montenegro, Bosnia, Albania and Croatia) – Extensive parts of Montenegro, Bosnia, Albania and Croatia’s Dalmatia region were hit by a power outage. Local media reported that the so-called blackout caused traffic chaos. Supplies are meanwhile being restored. The region is currently grappling with a heatwave, with temperatures exceeding 40 degrees Celsius.