Spain has dawned this Tuesday with 99.95% of the peninsular energy demand (25,794 megawatts) already recovered at 07.00 in the morning in the peninsular territory after the electric blackout that left ‘dark’ from 12:33 this Monday to the entire Iberian Peninsula.
According to Red Electricity and the Ministry of Ecological Transition, 100% of the substations of the electricity transport network are already in service. In any case, replacement work continues from the Electrical Control Center to try to recover full normality after the mass electric blackout, after the sudden loss of 15 gigawats of electricity generation in just five seconds for reasons that are still investigated.
Ren, the company in charge of transporting electricity and natural gas in Portugal, detected on Monday “a great oscillation” of the tension in the Spanish network before 11:33 local time (12:33 in Spain), at which time the blackout occurred.
In statements to the press, the administrator of REN, João Faria Conceição, commented that they saw “a great voltage fluctuation in the Spanish electricity grid”, just when the Portuguese system was in the importation phase of energy.
The person in charge of the Portuguese company said, despite the fact that it is still premature to talk about the causes. João Conceição, a member of the REN Board of Directors, warned that too precipitated conclusions should be drawn. “There could be a thousand and one reasons. It is premature to declare the cause of the defect,” he said, according to the Finnish medium which has reported what Portugal and Spain were communicating.
Meanwhile, the president of the Government of Spain, Pedro Sánchez, reported throughout Monday of the situation on television. According to him, there is still no definitive information about the cause of the blackout, but added a key detail: in the period of just five seconds, the electricity supply lost 15 gigawatts, equivalent to almost 60%, one facts that Sánchez described as unusual in our history. In this sudden fall there was “collapse” the system, due to the disconnection of existing interconnections with France and the “serious imbalance” between generation and demand.
Before giving that data, all kinds of theories circulated. From a “meteorological phenomenon” raised by Portugal and quickly discarded from Spain, to a technical breakdown of unknown origin, through a cyber attack that no authority has confirmed. Nor at the community level. “There is nothing that allows us to affirm that there is any kind of boycott or cyber attack,” said the vice president of the European Commission, Teresa Ribera, several hours after the electrical fall that has touched about a dozen European countries
