Power production has reached its limit

On the day that the electricity supply in Majorca and Minorca went down, the Balearic government admitted that power production in the region is “at its limit” and the summer season has only just begun. Demand is at a premium already which made the consequences of yesterday's power failure even more concerning for power company GESA and the authorities. All of Majorca and part of Minorca lost power and during the press briefing about the failure yesterday evening, the President of GESA, Bartomeu Reus, was informed that one of the four generators at the Es Murterar power station in Alcudia had gone down, just hours after GESA had managed to re-establish power supplies. According to GESA, yesterday morning power failure left 405'000 clients without power in Majorca and Minorca. However, Reus said that the failure was caused by a mechanical fault and was nor related to a lack of sufficient power. The power went down at 11.24 hrs and was not fully back on line until 16.14 hrs. The root cause of the failure was a short circuit at a substation in Llubi which is responsible for receiving and distributing all the power produced by the Es Murterar power station. In order to repair the fault, the Alcudia station, which supplies Minorca via the under water cable, which was only repaired on Wednesday, has to be shut down. According to GESA, power supplies were back on in Minorca 23 minutes later, as was the power to “important clients” such as hospitals and security services. While engineers attended the Llubi fault, emergency systems were brought into operation across the island. Reus described the day as a “sad” one and said that such a widespread power failure would not happen on the mainland because Es Murterar produces nearly all the electricity for the region and that there is only one power cable into the Bay of Palma.