Local grid fault causes temporary power outage on Baltic Sea island Bornholm

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) -A Danish Baltic Sea island suffered a temporary power blackout on Monday as a local grid fault caused the transformer feeding electricity from Sweden to shut down, Energinet and E.ON said.

Danish transmission system operator Energinet said the blackout had not been caused by damage to the subsea cable feeding the electricity from the transformer station, and power had returned to all consumers on Bornholm.

“The fault which caused a power outage on Bornholm on Monday at (0549 GMT) was not directly related to the submarine cable between Bornholm and Sweden, but was due to a fault locally on Bornholm,” it said in a statement.

A spokesman at Germany’s E.ON, which operates the cable and the transformation station in southern Sweden, said supply from the station was back up. “We have powered up the cable again and now the Danes are handling the issue that is on Bornholm,” he said.

The island is located close to where the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipes that linked Russia and Germany ruptured two weeks ago in an act of suspected sabotage.

The power cable linking Bornholm and Sweden has been damaged several times in the past, most recently earlier this year. An investigation showed it had likely been damaged by a ship’s anchor.

(Reporting by Anna Ringstrom and Stine Jacobsen, editing by Terje Solsvik and Louise Heavens)