Widespread power outage hits Tartu and South Estonia
Large parts of Estonia's second-largest city were left without electricity, bringing traffic to a standstill and leaving a major hospital without power.
Outages were also reported elsewhere in South Estonia. The Tartu power cut lasted about 30 minutes, beginning shortly after 5 p.m.
"A fault occurred at a substation in Tartu. As a result, this large and critically important substation for the region was taken offline. Consequently, a power outage affected the city of Tartu and a wider surrounding area. The short circuit occurred at 5:07 p.m. By 5:11 p.m., we had already begun restoration activities, so we responded as quickly as we possibly could. Elering restored the entire power supply by 5:27 p.m., when our final reconnection was completed. At that point, the situation had been fully restored from our side," said Märt Allika, head of the control center at grid distributor Elering.
Residents reported that Tartu University Hospital also lost power but switched to backup generators. "Today's power outage affected the hospital's main power supply system, which has now been partly restored. The hospital's backup generators were activated, and the electrical network is currently being restored through switching operations. As far as is currently known, the outage did not affect information systems," a hospital spokesperson said.
Elering said at 6 p.m. Tuesday that the outage was caused by a fault during scheduled maintenance work.
"We are investigating the causes of the incident. Elering's substations have now been re-energized. We apologize to all affected customers for the inconvenience caused," an Elering representative noted.
Karit Kaasik, head of communications at the state Information System Authority (RIA), said the authority had no indication to suggest the outage had been caused by a cyberattack.
Local residents also reported outages elsewhere in South Estonia, including Vastse-Kuuste in Põlva County, Nõo in Tartu County and the town of Elva.
As of Wednesday morning, the outages map updated in real time by Elektrilevi showed far more power cuts in southwestern Estonia, at over 400, than in the Tartu regions (fewer than 100).
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Editor: Andrew Whyte, Mari Peegel, Kadri Põlendik
