Unfavorable weather with heavy snow and wind has caused blackouts in the distribution of electricity in several places in the east of Slovakia since Friday (November 21). On Saturday morning, Východoslovenská distribučná (VSD) registered an interruption of electricity distribution to approximately 7,800 collection points. TASR was informed about this by VSD spokesperson Andrea Forbergerová.
“Currently the most affected villages and their parts – Smolník, Markušovce, Veľký Folkmar, Kojšov, Nálepkovo, Okrúhle, Sulín, Jaklovce, Dobrá, Matejovce nad Hornádom, Úhorná, Vyšná Sitnica, Margecany, Čabalovce, Remeniny, Nižný Tvarožec, Brusnica, Henclová, Ruská Poruba, Hrišovce, Jasenovce and Palota,” said the spokeswoman.
Level 1 and 2 meteorologists’ warnings continue to apply for the east of Slovakia. VSD work teams, including emergency reinforcements, are still in the field with all available equipment, according to VSD. “In coordination with dispatch, they locate and remove faults so that residents are again supplied with electricity as soon as possible. However, in places they have to contend with a number of fallen trees on power lines and other electrical equipment, which increases the time required for fault removal,” stated Forbergerová.
According to the company, the cause of the outages is mainly heavy wet snow on trees and vegetation, which break under its weight and which the wind also throws onto power lines. “Wires, consoles, support insulators are damaged. The trees also pulled down the support points (poles) themselves, caused a short circuit on the electrical equipment, HV fuses were also remelted,” spokeswoman zoomed in.
The VSD recorded malfunctions on both high and low voltage electrical equipment until Saturday 9:00 a.m. It currently registers almost 100 failures in total at both levels, while the very high voltage devices have so far been without failure.
