2023-11-25 00:27:35
An outage on Tahiti’s electricity transmission network early Friday morning deprived the island of electricity at the start of “Black Friday”, but power was restored shortly following noon.
Many businesses were unable to open throughout the morning. Others welcomed customers with the light of their smartphone, without the possibility of payment by credit card and with a simple calculator, due to the lack of a cash register.
At the start of the hot season, the lack of air conditioning also slowed down commercial activity on the island, where ATMs no longer worked.
Queues of employees formed in front of administrative services whose doors were blocked.
The outage occurred at 7:30 a.m. local time (5:30 p.m. GMT) and also affected all traffic lights, as well as the network of Vini, the leading local telephone operator.
This type of breakdown on the TEP network, the company which transmits electricity, had already occurred four years earlier.
“There was a fault on the transport network, more particularly on the 90,000 volt Punaruu substation which is the heart of the network. With a big fault at this location, a blackout is guaranteed, as was the case case in 2019,” Yann Wolff, the operating director of EDT (Electrcité de Tahiti), told AFP.
Power was restored in certain municipalities “in degraded mode” during the morning, according to the high commission. At the end of the morning, 55% of homes were replenished, before returning to normal shortly following noon.
“Essential infrastructure such as health establishments or the Tahiti-Faa’a international airport, as well as educational establishments, have not experienced major disruptions,” the Polynesian High Commission said in a press release.
“We are thinking of opening in an hour, we are waiting for the computer network to be able to make sales by credit card,” Heimanu Dubois, saleswoman in a ready-to-wear store in the center of Papeete, told AFP in mid -daytime. “We are going to lose a big figure, half a day of Black Friday: with Christmas, it is usually our most important turnover,” she lamented.
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