Power Cut: Why did Spain and Portugal Lose Electricity?
Spain and Portugal’s loss of power on 28 April caused chaos.
Trains stopped, traffic lights went out and the Madrid Open was suspended.
Spain’s electricity network Red Eléctrica de España (REE) called it “el cero” – the zero – and said: “Red Eléctrica and industry companies are working in a coordinated manner to restore power supply throughout the country as quickly as possible.
“The peninsular electricity system suffered a power outage this morning in mainland Spain and Portugal.
“We have activated the procedures planned for restoring power; in this phase of the work, the goal is to power the generating sets so they can start up and spread power to the grid and other sets.”
As of 7am local time on the 29th of April, it said 99.95% of demand had been restored.
Why did this happen?
There is still no clear answer to why the countries lost power and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez warned people to be careful of misinformation.
Juanma Moreno, President of the Regional Government of Andalusia, said a cyberattack could be the cause, but this was quickly dismissed by officials close to the government.
Portugal’s electricity network Redes Energéticas Nacionais (REN) said the blackout was the result of a significant voltage fluctuation in the Spanish grid while Portugal was importing energy from Spain.
This fluctuation caused the control and protection systems of Portuguese power plants to shut down as expected, it said.
Rapid changes in temperature or wind speed could cause fluctuations like this, but it is rare for problems to reach this scale.
Could intermittent renewables be to blame?
Renewable energy sources like wind and solar are intermittent as the weather generating electricity can change.
The power failure began at 12:33pm local time according to Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.
In the hour before the outage, 60.24% of available electricity was coming from solar and 10.6% from wind according to ElectricityMaps.
Some of the country’s energy was being exported or stored – 8.65% was going to hydro storage, 7.5% to Portugal, 2.57% to France, 2.09% to Morocco and 0.36% to Mallorca.
Some areas of France experienced power cuts at the same time.
When looking at non-intermittent power sources, 10.11% was hydro, 9.69% nuclear, 6.76% natural gas and 1.61% from biomass – a total of 28.17%.
If a lot of of Spain’s solar or wind power were to cease at once, it would certainly cause problems but these resources are spread across the country and therefore very unlikely to experience the same weather changes at the same time.
In the hours after the outage, solar power covered around 60% of available electricity and around 12% was imported from France.
How are the countries recovering?
As Spain’s power recovers, natural gas is making up more of the mix than usual, covering just over 50% of available electricity at 6am local time on 29 April.
The outage caused problems across industries, shutting down the nationwide rail system, leaving car and truck plants at a standstill and affecting thousands of businesses without adequate back-up power supplies.
Major manufacturing industries and supply chains in Spain include motor vehicles, food production and chemicals.
Andrew Gordon, Managing Director UK&I at Eaton, said that the outage “is a reminder that energy resilience must be a strategic priority for businesses.
“Not only is it about prevention, but also how quickly and safely businesses can restore power when disruption strikes.
“Right now, organisations across Spain and Portugal will be working to get back up and running again to ensure financial and reputational damage is kept to a minimum.
“Even for those unaffected, this should be a wake-up call to make sure they are investing in the right technologies that can safeguard them from such costly and disruptive situations.”
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