The transmission system operator (TSO) is on Monday evening providing electricity to the Turkish Cypriot community, assistant operations director Harry Zavallis said, with faults experienced over the weekend continuing to cause problems in the north’s energy supply.

He confirmed to the Cyprus Mail that an agreement reached will see between 20 and 50 megawatts supplied to the Turkish Cypriot community, depending on what the Turkish Cypriots require and what is available, between 3.30pm and midnight.

“Within the context of the existing confidence-building measure, we will be providing electricity to the Turkish Cypriot community, provided that there is capacity and that there is no problem … just as they have done for us within the bounds of the same confidence-building measure in the past,” he said.

Earlier, Turkish Cypriot electricity workers’ trade union El-Sen leader Ahmet Tugcu had confirmed that as of 4.30pm, 40 megawatts of electricity was being provided to the Turkish Cypriot community by the TSO.

He had on Saturday said that “the world has switched to silicone insulators, but we are still papering over the cracks” after a fault in the north had briefly caused power cuts on both sides of the island.

Insulators block the flow of electric current and prevent it from going where it is not wanted, keeping power moving safely inside wires. Faulty insulators can cause power cuts by either creating a short circuit or a ground fault, which force protective relays to trip circuit breakers.

Tugcu told the Cyprus Mail that at present, the north uses glass insulators, which he said “are both expensive and require a lot of labour to replace”, while also being “made of heavy material”.

By contrast, he said, “silicone insulators are easy to clean, inexpensive and are quicker to replace”.

“Today’s malfunction is due to the seasonal maintenance of the power grid,” he added.

Last week, a day after a “lack of communication” between solar farms and the electricity distribution coordination centre had caused solar farms to be cut out of the automatic supply system as the readings they were sending to the coordination centre were incorrect.

This caused power cuts across the island, with the electricity authority initially buying 30 megawatts of electricity from the Turkish Cypriot authorities, before the issue then spread to the north.

Tugcu had told the Cyprus Mail on Friday that the issue which had arisen in the north had come about as the north does not have a “base load power plant”, which is a large station which runs non-stop to always supply the minimum amount of electricity an electrical grid needs.

Given that the increased demand was therefore placed on the two existing power stations, the Teknecik plant near Kyrenia, run by the Turkish Cypriot electricity authority, Kib-Tek, and the Kalecik plant near Trikomo, run by Turkish energy company Aksa, he said that it “tripped the 25-year-old machinery”.