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Power restored after Italy blackout
Italy has got its power fully back today after a nationwide blackout plunged millions into darkness.
As engineers worked to keep the network up after Sunday's outage, politicians said Italy had received a wake-up call to kick-start economic reforms including measures to boost power generation and reduce dependence on foreign power supplies.
The head of Italy's grid system said power had been fully restored across the country but targeted power cuts were planned to avoid overloading the network.
"We are planning precautionary cuts to reduce demand so that it meets the availability (of power)," Andrea Bollino, chairman of the national grid company GRTN, said today.
Storms
Authorities attributed the outage to a breakdown of electricity lines, some in heavy storms, from France and Switzerland - neighbours supplying Italy some 17 percent of its power. But they disagreed on who was to blame.
Almost all of Italy's 57 million people were affected by Sunday's blackout, a scale similar to last month's collapse in the US Northeast and Canada.
Four deaths were unofficially attributed to the cuts which struck at 3.20am (1.20am UK time) on Sunday.
GRTN blamed the blackout on problems in the Swiss and French networks. Italian Industry Minister Antonio Marzano called for an investigation.
Tree blamed
Swiss power firm ATEL said a tree, uprooted by strong winds, had knocked out a line carrying power to Italy over the Alps. But it said that alone could not block power to all of Italy, and blamed Italy's power grid for not reacting swiftly enough.
It was the fourth major Western blackout in two months, after cuts in North America, parts of London and Scandinavia.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-197749/Power-restored-Italy-blackout.html
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