PARIS (Dispatches) -- Several districts of southern Paris were plunged into darkness on Thursday night due to a power outage tied to a technical glitch on an electrical transformer of energy supplier Enedis.
The incident comes amid worries that power blackouts could cripple infrastructure in France as the first cold snap of the winter tests the resilience of the power network.
Many streets in Paris’s third, fourth, fifth arrondissements were hit by the power cuts around 10:15 p.m. (2115 GMT) and power was restored around 11:00 p.m., grid operator RTE’s division for the region encompassing Paris, Ile de France, said on Twitter.
“Around 125,000 households were affected at the height of the incident,” it said.
A spokeswoman for Enedis told Reuters the transformer fault caused a break in a high voltage line.
She said the fault was not tied to a load-shedding exercise Enedis and RTE will carry out on Friday to prepare for possible controlled outages amid tight supplies.
“Today we are carrying out a crisis exercise as we routinely do,” the spokeswoman added.
Government ministers have warned of possible power outages in case of a gap between supply and demand, which they said would last no longer than two hours and be flagged in advance.
State-run utility EDF, a parent company of Enedis, is racing to get nuclear reactors hit by corrosion problems back on line.
France is bracing for possible power outages in the coming days as falling temperatures push up demand while state-controlled nuclear group EDF struggles to bring more production on line.
France is one of the most nuclear-powered countries in the world, typically producing over 70% of its electricity with its fleet of 56 reactors and providing about 15% of Europe’s total power through exports.
However, EDF has had to take a record number of its ageing reactors offline for maintenance this year just as Europe is struggling to cope with cuts in Russian natural gas supplies used for generating electricity.
That has left France’s nuclear output at a 30-year low, forcing France to import electricity and prepare plans for possible blackouts as a cold snap fuels demand for heating.
While EDF normally has a number of its reactors offline for maintenance, it has had far more than usual this year due to what is known as stress corrosion on pipes in some reactors.
At the request of France’s nuclear safety watchdog, EDF is in the process

of inspecting and making repairs across its fleet since detecting cracks in the welding connecting pipes in one reactor at the end of last year.
Years of under-investment in the nuclear sector mean that there is precious little spare capacity to meet demand while reactors are offline for maintenance.
France also lacks specialized welders and other workers in sufficient numbers to be able to make repairs fast enough to get reactors back online.
In the very short term, there is little that can be done to get more reactors online faster, leaving the government to plan for voluntary cuts at peak demand periods and limited forced blackouts.
Macron urged people last Saturday not to “panic” in the face of the risk of power cuts, stressing that these could be avoided if they reduced their consumption by 10 percent.
French opposition has accused the government of inconsistency on the energy report and the media informs the French about “survival kits” to put in place in such a scenario.
The rising inflation has contributed to the disaster amidst the biting cold causing energy and food prices to soar.
It comes as European countries have been reeling under energy crisis in the wake of the war in Ukraine, which has taken a heavy toll on ordinary people by pushing up prices of food and fuel.
Western sanctions on Russia have caused the price of gas and electricity for residential houses in Europe to increase significantly. Before the war, now in its tenth month, Russia supplied 40 to 50 percent of natural gas needs of European countries.
According to experts, if the Ukraine war doesn’t end by the time next winter hits, Europe’s energy sector will face more serious risks than this year.