A large-scale power outage affected the city of Neuchâtel this Friday afternoon. This started around 1:28 p.m. between the Faubourg du Lac and avenue du Premier-Mars, as far as La Maladière. Thierry Matthey, director of multi-energy distribution at Viteos, indicates that this is a fault on the medium voltage network which initially affected 1,152 customers. This power outage, however, triggered “cascading outages, ultimately affecting 1,684 customers,” he adds. It is a defective cell in a station which is the cause of this failure. At the end of the afternoon, 130 customers were still without power, but the situation should be restored by early evening, according to Thierry Matthey.
The La Maladière shopping center was plunged into darkness for about half an hour. According to an auditor, emergency lights activated and payments were made in cash only. The situation was restored by mid-afternoon in the shopping center.
The buildings of the University of Neuchâtel, as well as certain homes in the Beaux-Arts district, were also affected by this power outage. According to several testimonies, the tightrope walker and the traffic lights no longer worked temporarily.
At the same time, a firefighter intervention took place at the Neuchâtel Casino. The Neuchâtel Police indicated that it was smoke. According to Thierry Matthey, the power outage actually caused a release of heat which caused the problem. The director of multi-energy distribution at Viteos praises the responsiveness of his team. “It was a major outage, but we practically managed to restore power to everyone in about 3 hours,” he concludes. /sbm
Swiss
