Three specific incidents linked to last Monday’s mass power outage
Spain is continuing to insist that it cannot be sure what caused the power outage last week that left Portugal, Spain and parts of France without electricity for hours – and therefore cannot discount anything at this point, not even a cyber-attack.
In interview today with Spanish outlet TVE, Sara Aagesen, Minister for the Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge, as well as deputy president of the Spanish government, said that analysis this far is focusing on “more than 750 million pieces of data”, and goes beyond the five seconds, already publicised, in which ‘energy zero’ (ie total blackout) was reached.
Before those five seconds – in fact 14 seconds earlier – there was an oscillation within the Spanish grid from which the system recovered. Then came the second oscillation, and ‘seconds later a third’, at which point the entire system collapsed, and the blackout affecting three/ four* countries began.
Spain’s technical committee analysing all the data “continues to work to identify the cause” of the outage that left seven people dead in Spain (one in Portugal), “and implement all necessary measures to ensure it doesn’t happen again”, Aagesen guarantees. But it may not have been the fault solely of an excess of unstable renewable energy, as has been ventured previously. Indeed, the minister has dubbed this explanation “irresponsible and simplistic”. In an interview published yesterday (before the news of three separate oscillations), she said: “It is difficult to determine the cause because, in the five seconds that the (first two) oscillations ocurred, there are many variables in each milisecond that now have to be analysed. Also, different operators have to be analysed”.
With Spain thus grappling with its investigations, the European Network of Transmission System Managers has set up its own probe today, with the brief to “investigate the root causes (of the blackout), draw up an exhaustive analysis and put forward recommendations in a final report”.
Authorities in Portugal meantime are working on upgrading two further power stations (on the dams of Baixo Sabor and Alqueva) to ‘black start’ autonomy – the theory being that if the country had four power stations, instead of the current two, capable of ‘black start’ Portugal would not be left ‘high and dry’ for so many hours, as it was last week. ND
*Morocco was also affected by the power outage, but mainly when it came to the internet
Sources: SIC/ Rádio Rensascença
