It wasn’t the heat, it was a joint: a defective connector between two cables caused the power outage in Baden-Baden. Internet, traffic lights and emergency calls were also disrupted.
Baden-Baden (dpa / lsw) – In Baden-Baden there was a large-scale power failure on Wednesday night. Thousands of people were affected, but the electricity came back to most of them in the course of Wednesday morning, said Helmut Oehler, head of the municipal utility, on Wednesday of the German Press Agency. The emergency call and traffic lights also failed until around 11:30 a.m. In addition, the internet was disrupted throughout the city until around 10:00 a.m. The Merkur mountain railway was also canceled and should be running again this Thursday.
The reason for the disturbance was a defective contact point between two cables in the ground. Due to this so-called ground fault, there was greater heat development, which caused the plastic sheathing of the cables to melt. The defect in the 20,000-volt cable two meters underground triggered several subsequent errors in the system, which then caused the power outage.
In the morning, the municipal utilities had announced that the defect was caused by the heat. Oehler now said: “That is wrong.” It often happens that a sleeve between two cables breaks. Why the subsequent errors occurred will be investigated soon. “We have never had such a major disruption in Baden-Baden,” said the Stadtwerke boss. The power outage began at 11:15 p.m.
