A third of the Island was plunged into darkness in a power blackout at Belco on Thursday night.

Up to 15,000 homes across Bermuda lost power for more than an hour, with some areas having to wait an hour and a half to regain electricity.

Susan McGrath-Smith, a spokeswoman for Belco, said: "A third of the Island went out at 10.11 p.m.

"A trip on one of our 14.3 megawatt (MW) East Power Station engines in turn caused a second 14.3 MW engine to trip and initiated last night's load shed. To protect the system, load is shed automatically if there is abnormal stress on the system."

She said the loss of power was widespread and not restricted to particular parishes.

"Approximately 15,000 customers were affected across the Island," said Mrs. McGrath-Smith.

"When two engines trip it's generalised across Bermuda because they go into load shed, and so this doesn't affect a particular parish."

She said that by 11.10 p.m., Operations Centre staff had restored power everywhere except Camp Hill in Warwick and Fractious Street in Hamilton Parish. Power then returned to all areas half an hour later.

"Power was fully restored to customers in a timely and ordered manner by 11.40 p.m., by staff in the Operations Centre, as well as crews sent out to substations to restore power manually," said Mrs. McGrath-Smith.