RES failure causes blackout in Cyprus

Saturday's 15-minute power outage across Cyprus was linked to problems caused by the increased use of renewable energy sources, particularly photovoltaic panels, according to Sotos Savva, president of the Association of Scientific Power Generation of the Electricity Authority of Cyprus (SEPAIK). 

"One issue is what happened on Saturday morning, but it also happened at the end of January, namely the sharp reduction in the supply of energy from renewable energy sources (RES) due to a major failure in the forecast of RES production," he said in a statement to state radio CyBC.

He added that "the second issue is the need to cut production from RES due to the fact that we have a very small power grid for RES, which needs to use a percentage that is around 200-215 megawatts from conventional power plants. That is, with 100% renewable generation, the system cannot operate in...