21 minutes of power interruption per end customer in 2024
Keystone-SDA
End customers experienced an average of 21 minutes of interruption of electricity supply in 2024. This resulted in 0.34 power outages per capita. The duration of electricity interruptions increased by three minutes compared to the previous year.
Switzerland continues to be one of the countries with the highest quality of electricity supply in Europe, as the Electricity Commission (Elcom), the independent state supervisory authority in the electricity sector, announced in its newsletter on Friday. The Alpine nation is on a par with Denmark, Germany and Luxembourg.
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Of the 21 minutes of power interruption per end consumer in 2024, 11 minutes were planned and 10 were unplanned. Of the average number of 0.34 power outages per capita, 0.16 were planned and 0.18 occured unexpectedly.
The planned interruptions to the power supply were for system maintenance. The causes of unplanned power outages ranged from natural disasters to operational factors such as short circuits, overloads or external influences such as civil engineering work and human error.
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Broken down by event, thunderstorms, storms or animals interrupted the average end customer’s electricity supply for two minutes in the reporting year. Short circuits and similar events cut off electricity for four minutes. Human error and external influences each accounted for one minute. And two minutes were due to other causes.
Elcom calculates the power supply quality annually based on the interruption reports of more than three minutes from the 91 largest grid operators. These supply 87% of the electricity in Switzerland.
Adapted from German by DeepL/ac
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