The Spanish government said a massive power outage in April that affected all of Spain and Portugal, leaving tens of millions of people without power for just seconds, was due to technical flaws and poor planning that left the grid unable to cope with the surge in demand.
Ecological Transition Minister Sarah Aagesen, who is in charge of the country's energy policy, told reporters that the spike had caused minor disruptions in Spain's southern grids, which then escalated into more serious problems and led to power outages in two Iberian countries.
She ruled out the possibility that a cyber attack could have caused the failure.
The outage began shortly after midday on April 28 in Spain and lasted until dark, disrupting businesses, transport systems, mobile networks, internet connections and other critical infrastructure.
Spain lost 15 gigawatts of power, about 60% of its total supply. Portugal, whose grid is connected to Spain's, also suffered a disruption. The only exceptions were the island territories of both countries.
“All of this happened in 12 seconds, with most of the power loss occurring in just five seconds,” Ms. Aagesen said.
The minister added that the incident was caused by several technical factors, including “insufficient planning” by Spanish grid operator Red Electrica, which failed to find a replacement for one of the power plants that was supposed to help balance power fluctuations.
She also stressed that some power plants that utilities took offline as a precaution when the outages occurred could have remained online to help manage the system.
Power was fully restored by the next morning.
The government report was published on Tuesday – 49 days after the incident – and included an analysis from Spain's national security agencies, which the minister said concluded there was no evidence of cyber sabotage by foreign agents.
The government had previously narrowed the possible causes of the outage to three power plants that failed in southern Spain.
In the weeks following the power outage, citizens and experts have speculated about possible causes for the incident in a region that does not typically suffer from such outages.
The outage has sparked intense debate about whether Spain's high levels of renewable energy and insufficient electricity production could
Sourse: breakingnews.ie
