The recent Balkan blackout occurred amidst sweltering temperatures last Friday, triggering a cascading power outage across the western Balkan Peninsula, affecting Montenegro, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Dalmatia in Croatia. Energy expert Željko Marković explained why Serbia avoided such disruptions, noting that active power flows were directed towards Serbia from Bulgaria, Hungary and North Macedonia, while exports went towards Bosnia and Herzegovina.
This blackout echoed a similar incident on January 8, 2021, highlighting society’s reliance on electricity for modern functioning. Unlike the 2021 event, where a frequency drop threatened continental Europe’s power grid, prompting a coordinated shutdown to prevent widespread outages, this recent blackout stemmed from a chain reaction of transmission line failures in Croatia. Unofficially, Romania faced blame as eight transmission lines overloaded, splitting the synchronous area of continental Europe into two separate networks. Serbian dispatchers played a crucial role in reconnecting the unified European system during this crisis.
The blackout occurred amid tropical temperatures, severely impacting the western Balkans and prompting widespread discussion on social media. Various interpretations, including conspiracy theories and political commentaries, surfaced quickly. Nonetheless, power company representatives from affected countries promptly addressed the situation, focusing on restoring electricity supply and investigating the blackout’s cause.
The initial outage occurred at 12:05 p.m. on June 21, when a fire under the 400 kV transmission line between Podgorica and Ribarevina triggered a series of events. Sixteen minutes later, another 400 kV line connecting Albania and Greece also failed. The exact reasons behind these outages will be thoroughly investigated by the ENTSO-E commission, which oversees transmission system operators across Europe. Željko Marković noted that remote protection mechanisms may have inadvertently contributed to these failures, possibly reacting to network fluctuations induced by earlier disruptions.
Subsequent developments, driven by network overload, exacerbated the situation. Albania relied on power supply from Montenegro and Kosovo, leading to a rapid succession of outages in nearby transmission lines, including those to Italy and Sarajevo. Within minutes, the Ugljevik-Tuzla 400 kV line, crucial for supplying southern Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Albania, also succumbed to overload, intensifying the region-wide power disturbance.
Marković concluded by describing the domino effect that ensued, leaving the affected countries without electricity until the situation could be stabilized.
