Gas supply failure triggered Gibraltar blackout on Thursday

A sudden interruption to the gas supply at the North Mole Power Station plunged Gibraltar into a widespread blackout on Thursday, forcing the electricity minister to skip official royal celebrations to manage the crisis.

The power outage was triggered when the fuel supply failed while three major engines were running. According to the government of Gibraltar, two of the engines were operating on gas and the third was in dual-fuel mode. The abrupt loss of gas disrupted the engines and caused an immediate, total loss of power generation.

Emergency backup systems were automatically deployed but were quickly overwhelmed by the scale of the failure. The territory's Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) responded exactly as designed, but the sudden drop in electricity exceeded its maximum 14MW capacity. While the BESS is built to stabilise the grid if a single engine fails, the simultaneous loss of multiple engines proved too large for the system to absorb.

The urgency of the situation forced the minister with responsibility for the Gibraltar Electricity Authority to skip the King’s birthday parade. Instead, the minister went straight to the North Mole Power Station to personally oversee the recovery operation.