Spain’s government has revealed the cause of the massive power cut that plunged the country into chaos in April. The outrage caused mayhem to public transport, leaving passengers stranded on trains and forcing airlines to cancel flights, as well as causing huge traffic jams on roads as traffic lights failed.
Millions of people were affected as the country came to a standstill and the government rushed to pinpoint the problem. There were suspicions that the country’s energy infrastructure had come under cyberattack by a hostile state, although this theory was quickly dismissed by Madrid.
However, Spain’s energy minister said on Tuesday that the issue was a major miscalculation by the Spanish power grid operator REE and that there was no evidence of a cyberattack.
Sara Aagesen said REE did not have enough thermal power stations operating at peak hours on April 28 to cope with a sudden surge of demand that caused a catastrophic chain reaction, which eventually led to the shut down.
“The system did not have sufficient dynamic voltage control capacity,” she said.
The government report found that some of the power plants required by law to regulate the grid’s voltage failed to do so.
Electricity grids in Europe are kept at 50 Hertz frequency in order to maintain stability – and even a slight deviation can lead to damage.
Aagesen said: “Power plants “should have controlled voltage and, moreover, many of them were economically remunerated to do so.
“They did not absorb all the reactive power that was expected in a context of high voltages.”
The minister announced she will submit a Royal Decree-Law to the Council of Ministers next week, putting forward proposals to ensure that a blackout like the one on April 28th “does not happen again.”
Measures include strengthening government oversight of the power industry to ensure compliance with regulations.
She also said Madrid would redouble efforts to integrate Spain’s energy infrastructure with the European continent, a “historical demand” that has accumulated “years of non-compliance”.
Opposition parties had tried to blame the government’s pivot towards green energy as the cause of the blackout.
Alberto Núñez Feijóo, leader of the main opposition People’s Party (PP), said that the prime minister, Pedro Sanchez, was “so intent on being the greenest in the world that you have led Spaniards into the dark”.