A widespread power outage affected Bad Krozingen, Ebringen, and Pfaffenweiler on August 11. An excavator likely damaged a power cable during construction work on Hofstraße in Bad Krozingen. As a result, around 60 distribution substations failed, and approximately 3,600 households temporarily lost power. The town of Bad Krozingen subsequently set up a crisis management team. BreisgauLIVE identified the damaged component as a 20,000-volt medium-voltage cable.
Power Outage Following Damage to 20,000-Volt Line
Badenova recorded the onset of the disruption as early as 11:36 a.m. Police identified the time of the widespread outage as just before 11:45 a.m. The power failure extended beyond the immediate vicinity of the construction site; Ebringen and Pfaffenweiler initially lost power completely, while parts of Bad Krozingen were also affected.
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Technicians first isolated the damaged section from the rest of the grid. They then gradually reconnected the unaffected areas. Within about an hour, half of the approximately 60 affected distribution stations were back online. However, repairs took significantly longer in some areas.
Bad Krozingen fully reconnected only after more than five hours
Power returned to large parts of Bad Krozingen shortly after 1:00 p.m. Supply was also restored relatively quickly in Ebringen. Pfaffenweiler, meanwhile, reported to Badenova that its supply was fully restored at 2:06 p.m. In Bad Krozingen, the recorded power outage did not end until 4:45 p.m.
This meant the disruption there lasted more than five hours. Throughout this time, a municipal crisis team coordinated the response. However, neither the police nor the grid operator specified the total cost of the damage in their public statements. There is also no further public information available regarding responsibility for the cable damage.
At the same time, the city was grappling with drinking water contamination
The power outage in Bad Krozingen coincided with another disruption to critical infrastructure. A boil-water advisory was already in effect for parts of the town center due to the presence of coliform bacteria in the drinking water. The city had detected the contamination on August 7; snails found in a chamber of an elevated storage tank were later identified as the cause.
However, according to published information, the two incidents stemmed from different causes. There is no evidence of a link between the cable damage and the drinking water contamination. Nevertheless, the city had to deal with problems in two key utility sectors simultaneously. In the case of the power supply, damage to a single medium-voltage line was apparently enough to affect thousands of households and dozens of distribution stations.
Author: Blackout News
Sources: Polizeipräsidium Freiburg (12.08.26) – Breisgau Live (12.08.26) – News (12.08.26)