Fall of Electricity Pylon in Kherson Region Causes New Blackout in Crimea

The first reports about a new halt to the power supply from mainland Ukraine to Crimea appeared on Wednesday evening.

Head of Ukrainian energy company Ukrenergo's press service Zinoviy Butsyo announces that a fallen electricity pylon of the Kakhovska-Titan power transmission line, which was the only one supplying the power from mainland Ukraine to Russian-occupied Crimea, has been found by a repair team not far from the town of Kakhovka in Ukraine's Kherson region, according to TV Channel 112 Ukraine.

"The fallen pylon was found at about midnight during examination. It was impossible to conduct its detailed examination when it was dark. Therefore, the cause of the damage will be determined later. An application for repairing it has been submitted already. The repair team will decide whether the pylon needs to be repaired or replaced," Butsyo said, TV Channel 112 Ukraine reported.

Ukrenergo's personnel examined the Kakhovka substation in Kherson region and revealed no damage, yet they failed to reconnect the power transmission line.

The first reports about a new halt to the power supply from mainland Ukraine to Crimea appeared on Wednesday evening.

Ukrenergo confirmed an unscheduled outage was behind the failure of the only operating transmission line supplying the power to Crimea.

As was earlier reported, the power supply from Ukraine first stopped in the early hours of November 22, 2015, after four power transmission lines at the administrative border between mainland Ukraine and Crimea – Melitopol-Dzhankoi, Kakhovska-Ostrovska, Kakhovska-Titan and Kakhovska-Dzhankoi – had been damaged in explosions.

On December 8, Ukraine resumed the power supply to Crimea via the 220 kV Kakhovska-Titan power line with the maximum capacity being 160 megawatts, which, according to Crimea's local authorities, was enough after the first line of the so-called power bridge from Russia's Kuban was launched on December 2. That line supplies 200 megawatts to Crimea. On December 15, the second line of the power bridge was put into operation, having increased the capacity to 400 megawatts.