This Thursday evening, several districts of Paris were plunged into total darkness after a power cut which lasted about fifteen minutes.
Between 10:20 p.m. and 10:35 p.m. on Thursday, the electricity in many areas of the capital stopped working.
Power cuts have just taken place in the 4th and 5th arrondissements. @enedis was able to restore most sites but not yet everywhere. I didn’t think it would be so fast load shedding!
— Ariel Weil (@ArielWeilT) December 8, 2022
According Enedisthe 3rd, 4th, 5th and 14th arrondissements were affected by this massive outage.
Images posted on social media by stunned Parisians showed streets with lampposts, red lights and buildings completely extinguished, with car headlights sometimes the only source of light.
Power cut rue de la Huchette and on the quays in Saint-Michel in the 5th district… when are we notified? #cut #electricity #Paris pic.twitter.com/nQwSsxlzVv
— dalin alexandre (@DalinAlexandre) December 8, 2022
Current power cut in part of the Marais (and apparently in other areas of Paris as well). pic.twitter.com/3IQzSMiJyC
— Xavier cdm (@XavierCDM) December 8, 2022
For its part, the French transport network manager (RTE – IDF Normandie) mentioned a “damage” in a message published on its Twitter account.
Following damage that occurred around 10:15 p.m., households are currently deprived of#electricity in the south-east of Paris. All the teams of @RTE_idfn are mobilized to allow a return to normal as soon as possible. pic.twitter.com/XGCJsNx5jG
— RTE in IDF-Normandy (@RTE_idfn) December 8, 2022
It should be noted that this breakdown occurs when there has been much talk in France for a few days of possible temporary cuts, which would be decided, in advance, if the network were to become too tense due to the cold, while 18 of the 56 French nuclear reactors are still shut down for maintenance or repairs.
However, RTE made a point of ensuring that it did not enter into this context.