PRAGUE – The Czech grid operator said power was slowly being restored on Friday afternoon after a major blackout brought widespread disruption across the country.

According to the national transmission system operator ČEPS, a large section of the country’s high-voltage grid lost power on Friday morning.

“Part of the transmission system is without power, and most of the substations of the transmission system were also affected by the event,” ČEPS wrote on X.

“The causes are being investigated and ČEPS power engineers are working intensively to restore electricity supplies.”

The outage is one of the most serious to hit the Czech electricity grid in recent memory. Local media reported disruption to the public transport system and cash machines.

By 1pm CEST, electricity was slowly being restored and public transport had resumed in Prague, with other regions to follow.

“All transmission system substations have been re-energised,” ČEPS said on X.

They said the blackout affected a total of eight transmission substations, and attributed the failure of one key line to “the fall of a phase conductor”.

The Czech Police said it had “no information indicating that this is a cyber or terrorist attack” on X.

“We are currently investigating the extent of the outage and the complications it has caused,” Czech Interior Minister Vít Rakušan posted on X.

“We follow the situation closely and are in contact with the CZ authorities and ENTSO-E,” said EU top energy official Dan Jørgensen on X.

This story has been updated. Nikolaus J. Kurmayer contributed reporting.

(vib/om)

A huge power outage across the Czech Republic left people trapped and without access to their cash as Prague and surrounding areas were affected for most of the afternoon.

Prague’s metro transport service was stopped for hours and many people were trapped in elevators in hotels and business across the area. Police and emergency teams worked to help those in need, despite police initially reporting that they had little information about the power outage.

ATMs were not working, meaning people had little access to cash. The country’s cyber security and police teams confirmed the black out was not thought to be linked to terrorism or cyber attack.

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A major power outage in parts of the Czech Republic on Friday trapped people in lifts and halted hundreds of trains, while authorities said a fallen high-voltage cable was the likely cause. The incident is likely to add to concerns about the resilience of Europe’s power grids and infrastructure after Spain suffered the worst blackout in its history in April and a fire knocked out the power supply to London’s Heathrow airport in March.

“As a result of a fallen power cable, there was an outage of the V411 transmission grid line and the Unit 6 of the Ledvice power plant,” national high-voltage grid operator CEPS said. This had knock-on effects, overburdening another line and substation, cutting off part of the country from the grid, it said.

The outage began just before noon local time (1000 GMT) and had yet to be fully resolved by 1350 GMT. It halted public transport in several cities, including Prague, where the underground was briefly shut down and trams stood idle for hours.

The Czech Republic has dozens of substations – facilities that convert electricity into different voltages so it can be transmitted throughout a country and distributed locally. CEPS had earlier said the fallen line on the 45 kilometre (29 miles) high-voltage line in the northwest of the country had affected eight of these substations and caused widespread blackouts in five of the Czech Republic’s 14 regions.

All affected substations had power back before 1300 GMT, CEPS said, but distribution companies were still working to restore supplies elsewhere. Prague city transport was nearly fully restored after three hours, but trains in many places remained at a halt. Prague’s power distribution company said it expected full restoration by 1400 GMT.

Speaking on Czech Television, Interior Minister Vit Rakusan said the authorities had no information to suggest there had been a cyber or terrorist attack. Across the country, the outage caused 215 incidents involving people trapped in elevators, fire brigade spokesperson Lucie Pipis told Reuters, adding everyone had been rescued.

The justice ministry said 10 prisons had lost power, but that security had not been compromised. Three large hospitals in Prague temporarily ran on back-up power. Orlen Unipetrol’s Czech refinery and chemical plant at Litvinov went into an emergency shutdown, the company said on X.

E.ON, which operates part of the grid in south and south-eastern Czech Republic, said its supply area was not affected. Following the outage in Spain in May, analysts said that Europe’s ageing power grid and lack of energy storage capacity will require trillions of dollars in investments to cope with rising green energy output and increasing electricity demand.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

A temporary power outage hit parts of Prague and other areas of the Czech Republic on Friday, bringing public transport and trains to a standstill.

– Prague’s entire metro network was inoperative starting at noon, according to the capital’s transport authority. The A and C lines were restored in about 15 minutes while the B line was back in about 30 minutes.

– Most trams on the right bank of the Vltava River in Prague were halted.

– The Václav Havel Airport, the capital’s international airport, was not hit by the power outage.

– Prime Minister Petr Fiala stated in a post on X: “We are investigating the causes and solving the problem,” adding that the outage affected other parts of the country. The regions of Ústí, Liberec and Hradec Králové reported problems.

– Czech hospitals were immediately switched to an emergency power supply, according to Health Minister Vlastimil Valek.

– It was not immediately clear what caused the issue. However, officials ruled out a cyber attack.