Germany: Berlin Tesla factory power restored after sabotage

Power has been restored to the Tesla Gigafactory near Berlin on Monday night, grid operator E.DIS said.

Repair work to a damaged pylon was completed at 8:45 p.m. local time (1945 UTC) — much faster than the power company initially expected.

"Since then, the power supply has been restored," it said in a statement.

The news comes a week after far-left activists known as the Volcano Group sabotaged the car factory, cutting its electricity on March 5.

Environmentalists have been protesting against the expansion of the Tesla factory, which would require more than 100 hectares of forest to be cleared in Grünheide near a water protection zone.

At the time, Tesla chief Elon Musk called the saboteurs the "dumbest eco-terrorists in the world."

Production on track to restart

The sabotage caused the Tesla factory to grind to a halt, preventing the production of 1,000 cars per day and costing the company hundreds of millions of euros.

Before Monday's announcement, Tesla had expected the factory to remain down until the end of the week. It said it would resume its systems gradually 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. 

Joerg Steinbach, the economy minister of the state of Brandenburg, said E.DIS employees had been working a three-shift rotation to get the factory back up and running as soon as possible.

zc/wmr (dpa, Reuters)