All of the north’s electricity went out on Friday morning after an explosion at a substation caused the grid to completely collapse.
The explosion occurred at around 5am at a substation near the village of Nikitas, around a mile southwest of Morphou, with Kib-Tek, the north’s electricity authority, saying that it had occurred inside the substation’s central circuit breakers and caused “serious damage” to the substation’s transformer.
As such, it said, both of the north’s power stations, the Teknecik power station near Kyrenia and the Kalecik power station in the village of Galatia, near Trikomo, were automatically taken out of service for safety reasons.
Early on Friday morning, Kib-Tek workers’ trade union El-Sen leader Ahmet Tugcu explained that the explosion had caused the entire grid to shut itself down for safety reasons.
He said that because of this, it would have been impossible for the north to acquire electricity from the electricity authority (EAC), as is typical when blackouts occur, because there would be no system for that electricity to be fed into.
The lack of electricity caused other knock-on effects for the north’s infrastructure, with hospitals and police stations reliant on diesel generators for power, traffic lights out of action, the north’s social security office’s online platform going offline, and the water supply being interrupted as there was nothing to power the pumps.
On this matter, Turkish Cypriot Kyrenia mayor Murat Senkul announced on Friday morning that his municipality’s water tanks were only receiving around five per cent of the amount they would typically receive.
“Just as we are all affected by the nationwide power outages, the Turkish water supplied to the country through the Panagra reservoir and the local water supplied from wells have also been affected,” he said.
He estimated that it would take a day or two for the north’s water supply to return to normal, and as such called on people to “use water only for urgent needs”.
“Although I am saying this specifically for Kyrenia, I believe that this information is important for all regions, as the network operates in the same way throughout the country,” he said.
Later in the morning, Kib-Tek attempted to put the system back online, but a fault then occurred at Teknecik, and within 10 minutes of the power being turned back on, the system was out of action once more.
Kib-Tek general manager Dalman Aydin then said shortly after midday that power would be completely restored within two hours.
However, as it became apparent that work to restore the north’s grid would take longer than that, frustrations began to grow.
Cyprus Turkish chamber of mechanical engineers chairman Ayer Yarkiner was one of the first to express his frustration at the situation, mocking a statement made by the north’s ‘prime minister’ Unal Ustel earlier in the year on the matter of electricity.
Ustel had in May given a speech about investments the north’s ruling coalition had made in Kib-Tek and had said that the ruling coalition was “writing history in the energy sector”.
“What a reputation. There is no electricity at all in the industrial zone. What a history is being, but the country is not producing anything. Not everyone can write history, only the people of today can do it. The history you are writing is hell,” he said.
He then made reference to the latest contract signed between Kib-Tek and Turkish energy firm Aksa, which owns Kalecik, in 2023, which sees Kib-Tek compelled to buy electricity from Aksa until at least 2038, saying that on this matter, the ruling coalition had been “shameless” and “beyond reproach”.
“And you bragged about writing history in the energy sector. You are still causing this country to be exploited and left without electricity, all for the sake of Aksa’s profit margins, instead of looking after our electricity supply … Consider your words and actions in this current situation and take a look in the mirror,” he said.
Tugcu also offered criticism, decrying a “lack of maintenance” of the north’s electrical infrastructure and an “incompetent management”.
In the afternoon, electricity gradually began to be restored, with Aydin telling the north’s Tak news agency that by 3pm, electricity was being provided to “a large part” of the Nicosia district and of the Kyrenia district, and that “work is continuing” in the Famagusta district and in the Morphou area.
He added that “work is continuing without halt” to restore power to the rest of the north.
In Nikitas, Kib-Tek workers arrived on the scene on Friday afternoon to commence an investigation, and to begin the cleanup operation from the explosion.
Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar then visited the substation in Nikitas on Friday evening alongside Aydin on Friday evening, with Aydin shortly after 11pm giving a press conference to announce that 18 hours after the explosion, power had been restored across the north.
He said power had been completely restored at 10pm and stressed that the north’s ‘prime minister’ Unal Ustel had “given instructions to do the necessary things” – a purposeful move after newspaper Yeniduzen had criticised Ustel for being out of the country on holiday.
He also said that every substation in the north undergoes annual maintenance, either in spring or autumn, and said the substation in Nikitas was “newly built”, and that therefore, claims that the explosion had been caused by neglect “do not reflect the truth”.
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