EU's Energy Blame Game

Leading the calls for an investigation is EU Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs who said EU countries should do more to harmonize their energy policies in a bid to avoid the collapse of national grids at times of extreme demand.

Europe's energy grids frequently come under pressure from excessive demand during periods of extreme cold or heat, forcing electricity companies to take special measures.

"These incidents show, once again, that events in one part of Europe impact other parts and again confirm the need for a proper European energy policy," he said in a statement on Monday. Bitter merger disputes across the EU have hampered efforts by the European Union to formulate a collective energy policy.

Cold snap caused surge in demand

A surge in electricity demand in Germany due to cold weather Saturday triggered blackouts in some parts of the country as well as in France, Italy, Spain and Belgium. A number of the outages lasted for around 30 minutes.

"Whilst these blackouts lasted for relatively short periods of time, they are unacceptable," Piebalgs said. "Energy security is better delivered through a common European approach rather than 27 different approaches."

He said he asked Europe's Transmission System Operators (ETSO) to pin-point the cause of the problem quickly and draw up measures to ensure that it does not happen again.

Piebalgs also said he wanted to set up a "mechanism" to ensure that these and other energy security standards to be drawn up by a working group are made binding for electricity network operators.

Meanwhile in Germany, the source of the blackout, utility company E.ON, admitted that the switching off of one of its main cables led to the collapse of the networks across Europe.

E.ON shut down power line for ship

"I am grateful that the situation was not worse than it turned out because E.ON caused it," Klaus-Dieter Maubach, a senior executive of the German utility company, told German public broadcaster ZDF. "The trigger of the breakdown in supply was that we had to take a line out of operation and that the knock-on effect from that loss spread to other lines which later cut out."

Maubach added that the power-down of a 380,000-volt E.ON line in north-west Germany so that a new ship could pass safely below it had been the first event in the crisis.

E.ON idled the power line so that the new vessel, the Norwegian Pearl, could be tugged from a German dockyard to the open sea. The power grid went haywire and 30 minutes later, lights went out in parts of Germany, France, Belgium, Spain and Italy and flickered in much of western Europe during the incident. Power was restored in most places within an hour.

Maubach denied that the German power network, which Germans have boasted to be immune to US-style mass blackouts, was faulty.

"The networks are in a very good condition and we're investing in them all the time," he said.

Investment lacking in ageing sector

German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel, however, disagreed.

"We have known for a while that there are bottlenecks on the power grids and that the utilities have not ensured that the grids are being expanded," he told reporters. "The suppliers have to come with investments. We have done everything to ease their way, but now they need to deliver on their promises."

Experts say the blackouts at the weekend could be the first of many due to the aging and neglected German grid.

"The network is falling apart because too little is being invested in it," Aribert Peters, managing director of Germany's BDE energy consumers' group, told German press agency dpa. "We have found that in the 1990s, around 2.5 percent of the network's total (asset) values were reinvested into the grids and now it is only around 1 percent."

The European power grid is separated into three zone designed to share pan-European power demands, explained Christoph Maurer, an academic engineer at Aachen University's power equipment institute.

"Normally the load and generating capacity is shared around the European grid," he said. "Once it fragmented into three 'islands', there was a shortage of generating capacity in the west. Under the rules, an automatic purge of the loads began. The customer experiences that as the power failing."

A wake-up call for Europe?

European energy analysts hoped that the blackouts served as a wake-up call for the EU where ageing power stations are in need of substantial investment and boosted capacity to send electricity across borders and to expand back-up supplies.

"What this has emphasized is that Europe is vulnerable, there is a big need for investment, and that is not going to go away," said Mark Spelman, head of energy at consultants Accenture in an interview with Reuters. "It's all about making sure there are sufficient back-up supplies and cross-territory interconnections for electricity and gas."

The blackouts were the third major energy incident this year with power cuts and supply alerts affecting parts of Europe during the summer as demand for air conditioning surged and overheating power stations suffered a dip in efficiency.

Europe also ran dangerously low on gas after supplies from Russia, its biggest provider, were hit by a price dispute with transit country Ukraine.