Key Points
A major power outage hit Montenegro, Bosnia, Albania and most of Croatia's coast on Friday, disrupting businesses, shutting down traffic lights and leaving people sweltering without air conditioning in the middle of a heatwave...
Montenegro's energy minister said the shutdown was caused by a sudden increase in power consumption brought on by high temperatures, and by the heat itself overloading systems..
"The failure occurred as a result of a heavy load on the network, a sudden increase in power consumption due to high temperature and the high temperatures themselves," Montenegro's energy minister, Sasa Mujovic, said in a TV broadcast...
Albanian Energy Minister Belinda Balluku said there had been a breakdown in an interconnector between Albania and Greece and he had heard there had been similar circumstances in Montenegro and parts of Croatia and Bosnia...
A full investigation would take time, but early analysis suggested that "big volumes of power in the transmission system at the moment and very high temperatures in record levels have created this technical problem, Balluku added in a video address.. Power in Albania was restored within half an hour, but the country remained at a high risk of further shutdowns as power usage and heat levels were still high, he said.. Shifts in the region's energy supplies have put strains on its transmission systems, industry officials say...
