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Italy in dark over power outage reason

By Batuk Gathani

BRUSSELS sept. 30. The Italian Government has announced plans for a radical overhaul of its electricity sector following Sunday's major power breakdown.

The public and business community breathed a sigh of relief in the early hours of Tuesday when "almost 95 per cent" power supply. Italian grid operators blamed a "chain reaction" which began in Switzerland and France that left 57 million Italians in dark.

The operators in Italy, Switzerland and France are still struggling to pinpoint the cause of the power failure.

Analysts say the outage points to a wider energy problem in the 15 European Union nation states: that capital investment in the domestic energy sector has been both inadequate and even haphazard. The incidents of power failure have almost become commonplace in recent weeks. For example, in August, the British system broke down for a few hours. Last week, Denmark and Sweden faced a similar crisis with breakdown in the Nordic power grid system. Many Europeans suspected terrorism behind these crises.

The spate of disruptions has raised serious questions about power reliability across the continent while energy authorities often pride in providing "robust and reliable energy infrastructure".

This confidence is shaken as Europe endeavours to embark on a bold programme of energy market deregulation with growing emphasis on privatisations of energy supply. According to the European Commission officials "there is no cause for any slackness'' in the proposed privatisation programme as experts describe the power failures as "rare exception".

Italy's dependence on imported electricity has increased in the last three decades because of apparent failure to build new power stations.

A European Commission said it was "not surprised" by the Italian blackout and in recent weeks the European Commission has called for more investments in the energy sector. The politicians have now spent more time blaming one another without bothering to understand and cope with the basic fundamentals of latest energy crises. Though, Italian Ministers boast they have authorised construction of power plants with 12,000 megawatts capacity, analysts say only about a sixth of this capacity may be under construction.

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