Outage hampers Poland's main power plant, felt across Europe
Source: Associated Press
Outage hampers Poland’s main power plant, felt across Europe
By MONIKA SCISLOWSKA
May 18, 2021
WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Energy experts worked Tuesday to restore full operations at Poland’s biggest power plant after a network failure switched off 10 of the coal-fueled Belchatow plant’s 11 units, a disruption felt across Europe’s power network.
Poland needed emergency energy imports from Germany, Sweden, the Czech Republic and Slovakia to fill in for the suddenly missing power supply. It was a second major outage since 2015 at Belchatow, which provides up to 20% of the energy in Poland.
The outage at the lignite-fired station was felt across Europe’s continent-wide network of power grids. Operators recorded a sudden drop in mains frequency from the standard 50 Hz to about 49.85 Hz just after 14:30 GMT Monday. Other power supply companies had to scramble to compensate for what was a major deviation to prevent consumers from feeling the change.
Officials said the outage occurred due to the failure of a power station where 10 of Belchatow’s units are connected. The 11th unit, the largest one, is connected to a different power station and was not affected.
-snip-
Read more: https://apnews.com/article/europe-poland-technology-business-968b9576c4dee644c2a61b2765f5d353