Amsterdam could face more power outages in coming days, Liander says

Liander is still trying to figure out what caused two massive power outages in Amsterdam earlier this week. The grid operator can, therefore, not rule out that the city won’t face more blackouts in the coming days.

“It is, of course, extremely annoying for the people to be without power for a while and to have those power outages,” Heleen Makkinga of Liander told AT5. “Monday was quite a long one, lasting an hour and a half. [Tuesday] took ten minutes, so luckily, it was a bit shorter.”

On Monday, around 68,000 households and businesses in the Amsterdam West, Nieuw-West, and Centrum districts were left without power. The second outage on Tuesday evening impacted 57,000 connections.

Liander knows where the issue lies. “In both cases, this was at the Hemweg electricity station. An installation there failed,” Makkinga told the broadcaster. But the grid operator is still trying to figure out what went wrong.

“We are working with all our might to see what the cause is. As soon as we know more, we will certainly communicate it. We cannot yet say whether there is a connection between the two disruptions. And it could be that it will happen again.”

There were about 900 locations without power on Thursday morning due to small-scale outages scattered around Amsterdam. Roughly half of those without power were in De Pijp, in an area between Weteringcircuit and Sarphatipark, according to Liander’s websiste.