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No lights, no fridge and no TV for hours. A power outage is annoying, but it has happened again and again in the last few weeks. On Tuesday morning, more than a thousand addresses in Roosendaal were still without power. Last week there were disruptions in Oisterwijk and Uden. The reason it happens so often now? “The extremely wet weather,” explains spokesman Tim van Ham from the network operator Enexis.
In Brabant, tens of thousands of kilometers of power cables lie underground. They can usually withstand a certain amount of moisture. “But there are always cables that are easily damaged. For example, due to minor excavation damage or a stone in the ground,” says Van Ham. “If moisture gets on the cable, a short circuit can occur.”
This explains some of the major disruptions in Brabant. According to the Enexis spokesman, it is difficult to say whether this was also the cause of the power outage in Roosendaal. “But we see a clear connection between the extremely wet winter and the number of disruptions.”
“Extreme weather is never good for our power grids.”
It has been a little drier in the last few days, but that hasn’t solved the problems, explains the Enexis spokesman. “The flooding has subsided, but the groundwater level is still extremely high. Deeper cables are still in the wet ground.”
In the Netherlands, almost all medium and low voltage cables run underground. This gives us one of the most reliable networks in the world. The weather has little influence. “But extreme weather is never good for our power grids,” says Van Ham. “Very hot, very cold, very wet or very dry can cause disruption. But fortunately these are often resolved within a few hours.”
The risk of power outages will increase in the coming years as we increasingly experience extreme weather events. According to Van Ham, it is difficult to find a solution that works everywhere. “In areas where flooding occurs regularly, we have taken measures to keep substations dry. But we can’t replace tens of thousands of kilometers of cable.”
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