UPDATE 3-Czech Republic hit by major power outage

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.)