Blackouts were reported across Cyprus on Friday morning, with various areas across the island being reportedly left without electricity.

Swathes of Limassol and suburbs of Nicosia reported being left without power, while the electricity authority’s website was unable to load, showing a “503 error”, meaning its server had been overloaded.

Transmission system operator spokeswoman Chara Kousiappa told the Cyprus Mail that the issue had arisen due to a “lack of communication” between solar farms and the coordination centre, meaning that solar farms were cut out of the automatic supply system.

This, she said, led to a loss of 100 megawatts of production, causing some areas to be left temporarily without electricity.

She added that efforts are being made to reconnect the solar farms to the grid, and that power is now being restored to impacted areas.

Meanwhile, Turkish Cypriot electricity workers’ union El-Sen leader Ahmet Tugcu told the Cyprus Mail that the issue had spread islandwide due to the fact that Cyprus’ two electricity grids are interconnected.

He told the newspaper that a “frequency issue” had arisen.

“In the south, there were problems with the machinery, so they had to buy 30 megawatts from us, and since we do not have base load power plants, they tripped the 25-year-old machinery in our power plants and in Aksa,” he said, in reference to the north’s two power stations, the Teknecik plant, run by the Turkish Cypriot electricity authority, Kib-Tek, and the Kalecik plant, run by Turkish energy company Aksa.

A “base load power plant” is a large station which runs non-stop to supply the minimum amount of electricity an electrical grid needs at all times.

More to follow…