A power outage can occur due to a variety of reasons, ranging from weather conditions to faulty cables. Nevertheless, blackouts happen less frequently in Luxembourg than one might think. Compared to other European countries, Luxembourg actually ranks among the best when it comes to outage statistics, says Meyer.
59 outages occurred in 2022, with 68 in 2020. The number was much higher in 2021, 88, due to the record-breaking floods of that summer. “There is no trend indicating an increase in outages in recent years”, explains Meyer.
Reasons for power outages are usually classified into one of the following three categories:
Third parties
This designates cases where outside influences lead to disruptions, for instance, trees falling on power lines or workers accidentally damaging cables.
Atmospheric conditions
This relates to weather-related issues.
Material
This often has to do with underground cable connections and generally designates material damage, which is the leading cause of power outages in Luxembourg.
The capital experiences more power outages than any other town in the Grand Duchy, which is mostly due to its dense population and high frequency of construction work.
Luxembourg’s north recently had more outages than the south, which was related to medium-voltage power lines. According to Meyer, the difference between north and south is small, however, and varies from year to year.
The duration of a power outage depends on a variety of factors, such as the time that it takes to identify the source of the disruption. In some cases, malfunctioning power stations send a signal to the central grid, which makes it easy to locate the problem. In other cases, workers have to be deployed to find the issue manually.
During the outage in the north last Wednesday, some regions were back online after a mere two minutes while others had to wait for a couple of hours.
