On Monday, Spain, Portugal and part of the southwestern French darkness wrapped it up at noon.
Households and offices remained without electric current from minute to minute, which caused considerable chaos in the lives of millions of people. The outage of electricity was hit by trains and traffic lights in large cities, such as Barcelona or Lisbon, and even hit the ongoing tennis tournament in Madrid. What is behind a massive outage of the network is not yet known, but there is also a cyber attack in the game.
Energy was restored in 99 percent of the country, the Spanish electric network operator announced this morning. In the late hours, the power supply returned to Portugal. However, both Spain and Portugal remain in emergency mode, which means that some trains will not operate or will be under limited regime, warns the Minister of Transport.
What happened?
The sudden collapse of the mains influenced the lives of millions of Spaniards and Portuguese, and something less even the French. It was also the second serious outage of electricity in Europe in less than six weeks. The Portuguese Redesicas Nacionalis (Ren) operator said that the failure began on Monday at 11:33 Western European summer time.
The governments of Spain and Portugal, along with network operators, began to work immediately on remedying and looking for the cause. Ren later announced that it began to restore tensions in the north, south and west of the Iberian Peninsula. However, the remedy had to be gradually in order not to overload the individual parts of the network.
What is behind it?
The cause of the massive failure is still investigated. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez spoke to the nation and said that almost 11 hours after the country stopped, government experts are still trying to find out what actually happened.
Portuguese Prime Minister Luis Montenegro said on Monday that he does not know where the problem arose, but he knows that “he did not arise in Portugal” and “everything suggests” that it started in Spain.
Ren argued that the outage of the network was caused by a “rare atmospheric phenomenon”, which caused significant temperature differences and subsequent Blackout. “For extreme temperature fluctuations in the interior of Spain, there have been anomalous oscillations on very high -voltage lines (400 kV) – a phenomenon known as ‘induced atmospheric vibration’.
It is known that high temperature births are at risk at the electricity network, although such a scope of outages is rare. This is one of the reasons why it is speculated whether there was a cyber attack behind everything, for example from Russia.
The President of the European Council António Costa, who was previously Portuguese Prime Minister, said that “there is no evidence of cyber attack”, but also added that the real cause is still not sure. The Vice -President of the European Commission Teresa Ribera also commented.
What caused it?
Spain is a leader in renewable energy, while Portugal draws electricity especially from neighbors. João Faria Conceição, head of the Portuguese Ren network operator, said Portugal was heavily affected because it imports electricity from Spain in the morning, as the neighboring country has a time lead and cheaper solar energy.
All -day Blackout caused confusion, especially in railway transport and airports. Households, offices and restaurants were covered by darkness, and some people even stuck in the yields. Rescuers were sent to 286 buildings and some hospitals also activated emergency plans. Trains were also stood on the spot, and in some areas the crowds of people were evacuated and the aircraft grew delays.
José Luis Martínez Almeida called on the inhabitants of Madrid to stay at home, use roads and contact the emergency services unless it is really necessary.
The panic of the inhabitants, however, was not helped by the crowds of people who were formed in front of the ATMs because they stopped working by card payments. Pumping stations were also closed. “No one understood anything. The shops were closed and buses were crowded,” said Sarah Jovovich, a resident of Madrid.
