Following last night’s power outage, which struck the whole of Gibraltar at 3:22 am, the Gibraltar Electricity Authority has claimed that the issue was caused by an earth fault, ‘which caused the voltage and frequency to plummet, thus activating the falling frequency protection which load shedded all main feeders.’

The Authority has apologised for any inconvenience caused and has insisted that the problem has been traced to the Combined Energy Plant (Old Incinerator) substation switchgear, which failed without warning.

All feeders were restored by 4:22 am with the exception of the failed switchgear at the Combined Energy Plant (Old Incinerator), which has been isolated. The exact nature of why the switchgear failed is still been investigated but the failed equipment has been isolated and we do not expect a re-occurrence of this problem.