Swiss deflect blame for Italian blackout

More than 57 million Italians were affected by the power cut Keystone

A Swiss power company has denied being the source of Sunday's massive power cut in Italy, which left most of the country without electricity for several hours.

At least four deaths have been attributed to the blackout, which affected almost all of Italy’s 57 million population.

The Italian authorities have blamed the blackout on a breakdown of electricity lines from France and Switzerland, which supply around 17 per cent of Italy’s power.

The Swiss electricity company, Aare-Tessin for Electricity (Atel), said powerful winds brought down a tree on a power line in Brunnen in canton Schwyz at around 3am on Sunday.

The fall knocked out the transmission line that carries electricity over the Alps to Italy.

However, Atel denied that the incident could have left the entire country without power.

The company pointed out that two lines from France into Italy had also broken down at around the same time.

Swiss denial

Atel said it had rectified the situation as quickly as possible and instead blamed Italy’s power grid for failing to respond quickly enough.

“The Italians had to react and according to our information they did not react properly,” said Atel spokesman Rolf Schmid.

The French denied that they contributed to Italy’s worst power loss in a decade, blaming the Swiss-Italian line for disrupting supplies.

RTE, a key Italian supplier, said that the disruption of electricity flows between France and Italy was very brief and restored quickly.

Investigations are continuing into the cause of the blackout.

Italian officials acknowledged that the domestic energy system was gravely insufficient.

Italy’s Enel energy said the country imports up to 17 percent of its energy, compared with a European average of about two percent.

Blackout

Italy’s blackout comes after similar outages in North America and parts of Europe.

In August, power cuts left 50 million people in parts of the United States and Canada without power.

And last week, four million people in eastern Denmark and southern Sweden were left without electricity for several hours. A similar blackout struck London and parts of southeast England on August 28.

The causes of those blackouts are still being investigated, but analysts say underinvestment in electricity grids and botched privatisations may be to blame.

Swiss voters last year rejected a government proposal to deregulate the electricity industry.

swissinfo with agencies

In brief

Most of Italy was affected by Sunday’s massive power cut.

Storms in France and a tree falling on a Swiss transmission line to Italy are being blamed for the blackout.

Atel, the Swiss company involved, has blamed Italy’s power grid for failing to respond quickly enough.