Lights Out In Basel Land; Terrace Heaters Banned; Power Concerns Hit Home

News For 19 October 2021

1500 households woke up in Allschwil this morning and found they had no electricity.  The utility for the cachement affected by the outage, Primeo Energie, said power had been restored after 30 minutes.  A spokesperson for the company elaborated that a medium-power service cable had been damaged leading to the outage, and repairs were underway.

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Last year, restaurants and their landlords were given permission to install street side and terrace radiant heaters to accomodate customers who were banned from dining indoors due to Corona regulations.  This year however, in the wake of reduced threat of transmission and contagion, the heaters are banned once again.  Authorities cite the high consumption of energy as being inconsistent with Basel's focus on being at the forefront of sustainable energy consumption.  Exceptions are allowed for the radiant heaters that are powered by wood pellets or renewable energy sources.

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Seeing the recent experience of China's power outages, Swiss Federal Authorities have become concerned enough about electricity shortages to contemplate large scale infrastructure plans to address them.  Adding to the concerns are energy shortages in neighboring countries like Germany, who have become heavily reliant on sustainable power sources like solar, and are also a source of emergency energy supplies to Switzerland.  In response, Swiss authorities have decided to put natural-gas powered generators as top priority, while small-scale nuclear power plants are evaluated for implementation.