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Grid infrastructureLibyaEIR-1623

Attack on South Zawiya substation causes outage south of Zawiya

2026Published 30 Sept 2026Responsible editor: Chief Editor

MajorOtherProvisional1300 MW
Estimated damageEstimated by the register's adjusterHow? Know the real figure?
Figure hidden: shown to subscribersLow confidence
supply cut for about •• daysShown in the record →Full estimate
From the recordRoot cause hiddenThe maker is named in 7 other entries (being named is not a finding of fault)

Companies named in the reporting of this entry (being named is not a finding of fault): General Electricity Company of Libya

What happened

The General Electricity Company of Libya said an attack on the South Zawiya substation caused a complete outage and loss of supply to wide areas south of the city of Zawiya. It said US company GE had halted all work at the Zawiya power station and withdrawn its technical teams after the latest attack, pending better security. More than 700 megawatts of the plant’s total 1,300 MW of generation capacity remained unavailable. The company did not state injuries, the exact time of the attack, or when supply would return.

Contributing factors

The company described the outage as caused by an attack on the substation. It said the attack followed explosive-laden drone strikes on fuel storage tanks at the nearby Zawiya oil complex. No technical failure mode was reported.

Lessons learned

  1. A substation serving a large generation site can take wide areas off supply in a single attack, so operators should know which loads depend on that node.
  2. Where security conditions force contractors to leave a power station, operators need a plan for the capacity that then stays unavailable.
  3. Strikes on a nearby oil asset and an outage at the electricity asset should be logged separately until a link is confirmed.

More lessons on outages, backup supply and restoration, theft, arson and site security, from every incident on the register.

Source

Reuters (reuters.com)

Published 2026-09-30. Written from public reporting. Descriptive, not investigative. See the data accuracy disclaimer.

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Chart to reuse with this story: Grid infrastructure incidents by year, free with a credit (PNG).

Grid infrastructure incidents in Libya: 2 entries, with a free alert for the next one.

Substation and transformer fires: the counts, the latest entries and a free alert for the next one.

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