Cause of Spain and Portugal blackouts which left millions in the dark revealed
Six weeks after Spain and Portugal suffered a massive power outage, authorities in Madrid said the blackout was caused by technical and planning errors.
Spanish ecological transition minister Sara Aagesen, who manages the nation’s energy policy, said at a press conference that small grid failures, concentrated in the south of Spain, led to a chain reaction before the blackout.
Larger grid failures followed the small ones, she said, but the government has completely ruled out a cyber attack as the reason behind the outage.
The minister said several technical causes contributed to the event, including ‘poor planning’ by operators of the grid who did not find a replacement for one power plant that was supposed to help balance power fluctuations.
The April 28 outage started shortly after 12.30 pm in Spain and lasted through nightfall, disrupting businesses, transport systems, mobile networks, internet connectivity and other critical infrastructures.
In just five seconds, Spain lost 15 gigawatts of electricity – or about 60% of its supply. Portugal, whose grid is connected to Spain’s, also went down.
Power was fully restored by the early hours of the following day, but questions quickly arose about what caused the shocking outage.
Analysts from Spain’s national security agencies found there were no indications of cyber-sabotage by foreign actors.
The only solid information made public after the system went down came from Spain’s grid operator, Red Electrica, which found the source of the outage to two incidents in southern Spain where substations had failed.
In the weeks following the blackout, citizens and experts were left wondering what triggered the event in a region not known for power outages and igniting a fierce debate about whether Spain’s high levels of renewable power had something to do with the grid failing.
Spain is at the forefront of Europe’s transition to renewable energy, having generated nearly 57% of its electricity in 2024 from renewable energy sources such as wind, hydropower and solar.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez pushed back against such speculation and defended renewable energy, promising his government would not ‘deviate a single millimetre from its energy transition plans.
Why did many think renewable energy was behind the power outage?
Spain is one of the world’s leaders in renewable energy, with many wind and solar plants.
Some online previously claimed that Spain’s switch from coal to other renewable sources could have made the systems more vulnerable to an outage.
But today’s announcement put those rumours to rest for good.
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