Tesla's German gigafactory outside Berlin has been reconnected to the electricity grid following a week-long outage due to an arson attack.
E.dis, a division of German energy network firm E.ON, said in a statement late Monday (Mar. 11) that they have restored the power disruption caused by the sabotage on a nearby power pylon claimed by far-left Vulkangruppe, which has been protesting Tesla's presence in Germany.
The energy provider added that speedy weekend assembly work enabled it to carry out a multi-hour high-voltage test and get a green light from engineers. At 20:45 local time Monday night (19:45 UTC), the Tesla facility was reconnected to the grid.
On the other hand, Tesla said earlier that day that they would gradually restart systems in the factory once power was restored.
"It is not yet possible to say how long it will take until production can be fully resumed," the company told Reuters in an emailed comment.
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(Photo: Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
Tesla's German gigafactory—located in Gruenheide—employs around 12,500 staff and produces around 1,000 cars a day. The factory's head initially said that the disruption would cause hundreds of millions of euros in damages.
The company initially expected that the outage would last until March 15, while the works council chief of its Brandenburg plant said on March 8 that it would restart this week without giving a specific date.
Brandenburg state's economic minister Joerg Steinbach said that E.dis employees had been working round-the-clock to ensure electricity could flow into the factory as soon as possible.
Meanwhile, Tesla boss Elon Musk was quoted by German broadcaster DW saying that the saboteurs were the "dumbest eco-terrorists in the world."
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