The worst power outage since 2019
Half of the country was without electricity today due to power outages. It has now been fixed according to Rarik. mbl.is/Þorsteinn
Half of the country was without electricity today, more specifically in East and North Iceland, after the power went out at Norðurál in Grundartangi and caused disruptions in the transport systems of Landsnet and Rarik.
According to Rarik the power is now back on.
"I thought, when the substation at Grundartangi was built not so many years ago, that this should be prevented from happening," says Njáll Trausti Friðbertsson, an MP from the Independence Party, who is a member of the Parliament's Environment and Transport Committee.
The worst power outage since 2019
Friðbertsson points out that the government has certainly put in the work to strengthen the electricity transmission system in Iceland following the blackout caused by a storm in December 2019.
"It is very disappointing that we are experiencing such serious power outages," he says in an interview with mbl.is, but he expects the Environment and Transport Committee to request data on the power outages.
He wonders if it would have been possible to prevent the damage from this power outage if Holtavörðuheiði line 3, which would connect Holtavörðuheiði and Blanda, or Blanda line 3, which connects Blanda and Akureyri, had been connected.
"But of course you don't know what is happening or, if we had built the transportation system [...], whether it would have helped in this situation," he says. Friðbertsson believes it is important that the issue is discussed in the Environment and Transport Committee.
"We've been seeing this over the years, but this appears to be at least the most serious failure since the December 2019 outage, which was very bad and difficult."