On July 28, at 1:55 p.m. the entire Crimean peninsula lost power for 90 minutes.
All four lines of the so-called energy bridge that connects Crimea to Russia’s Krasnodar region suddenly shut off, resulting in the entire peninsula losing electricity, creating a roughly 1,000-megawatt power shortage.
“There’s no electricity at all in Simferopol. The traffic lights and everything else have stopped working. Even the trolleybuses stopped moving.”
According to Russia’s Energy Ministry, the electric transmission lines to Crimea were disabled automatically when temperatures on the mainland reached 39 degrees Celsius (102 degrees Fahrenheit), triggering emergency shutoff measures.
Crimea’s electricity supply started returning after an hour. By roughly 3 p.m., two of the four lines on the peninsula’s energy bridge had been restored. At around 4pm, all four lines of the energy bridge are working again and the power supply has been restored completely.
The July 28 outage marks the first major electricity disruptions in Crimea since Russia’s energy bridge went online in May 2016. Before this, Crimea relied on Ukraine for its power supply, frequently suffering outages, interruptions as well as Ukrainian activists’ attacks on several electric transmission towers feeding Crimea.
The blackout did not affect the airport in Simferopol or “critical public facilities.” However some spa resorts in Crimea suspended operations during the blackout after losing power from 2 p.m. until 4 p.m.
