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Night cityscape of the French capital Paris
Photo: Julien de Rosa/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
There was a widespread power failure in Paris on Thursday evening.
125,000 households in the third, fourth and fifth arrondissement (as the districts are called in Paris) of the French capital were temporarily without electricity, as the network operator RTE announced.
The reason for the failure was a breakdown in a transformer.
In the social networks, residents shared pictures of entire streets that were in the dark.
As France gears up for potential power cuts during a harsh winter, Central Paris Mayor Ariel Weil joked he didn't expect the power to go out so quickly.
Persistent AKW problems
The power failure occurred on the eve of an exercise by the French authorities, in which the time and regionally limited shutdown of the power supply in a region is to be simulated on Friday.
Because numerous French nuclear power plants are currently being maintained, supply bottlenecks are expected in January.
The government has therefore started preparations for local power cuts at peak loads.
This is to prevent an uncontrolled blackout.
On Friday, processes for a shutdown are to be simulated without actually taking place on that day.
If the measure becomes necessary, it should be announced one day in advance.
France has been suffering from an acute power shortage for months.
The cause is ongoing technical problems at numerous French nuclear power plants.
Corrosion damage was found on more than a dozen kilns.
For months, a particularly large amount of electricity has therefore been exported to France from neighboring European countries such as Germany.
France's power grid operator RTE had recently warned that the amount of nuclear power available from mid-December to mid-February would be well below previous plans.
beb/dpa