Tens of thousands of homes and businesses in the German capital were without electricity after two transmission pylons were found ablaze around 3:00am, a police spokeswoman told AFP.
Several schools and day-care centres as well as road traffic lights and city tram lines were impacted, and firefighters had to transfer some nursing home patients to a nearby hospital.
According to local media reports, S-Bahns, trams and traffic lights were also affected.
The fire broke out in the Johannisthal district in the city's southeast, a police spokeswoman said, with the outage affecting 43,000 homes and 3,000 businesses.
According to a spokesperson for Berlin's electricity grid operator, 50,000 customers were affected by the "exceptional" blackout.
By around midday, power had been restored to 15,000 customers.
Police are treating the fire as an "arson" case and "do not rule out a political motive behind the fire", the spokeswoman said.
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