Hmm, though that’s reported through a very ‘lolwindpower’ filter. Perhaps a more balanced summary is http://www.euractiv.com/energy/german-energy-giant-blamed-power-failure/article-161312, which describes the situation as:

1) E.ON Netz has a request to de-energize a major power line at a certain time to let an unusually large ship pass underneath. The grid operator does a simplistic calculation to show that it’s okay if all contingency transmission is available. Neighbouring transmission authorities are alerted, as is normal procedure.

2) The ship is delayed, and so is the downtime. E.ON Netz considers that the new proposed time will be better for them, so without any further analysis or consultation with neighbouring transmission authorities, goes ahead with the delayed downtime.

3) The other transmission authorities see large frequency instabilities, and try to get E.ON Netz to restore the de-energized line. They can’t do this, so they call upon a contingency transmission station to switch the load. The TX station (rather aptly named Borken) is under maintenance, so the bridging/switching fails.

4) In Germany, most wind power facilities are ‘must run’, so on a windy night their output ramps up. This seems more of a failure of grid protection and control (P&C) to signal the wind facilities to curtail them off in an abnormal grid situation. The ENTSO-E report further castigates E.ON Netz for failing to require suitable P&C on wind facilities in their area.

The main report is as interesting as any network failure postmortem could ever be: https://www.entsoe.eu/fileadmin/user_upload/_library/publications/ce/otherreports/Final-Report-20070130.pdf