‘Multifactorial’ systems failure blamed for catastrophic power loss
The unprecedented blackout that brought the Iberian peninsula to a standstill at the end of April was caused by surging voltages triggering “a chain reaction of disconnections” that shut down the power network, an expert report commissioned by the Spanish government has found.
Speaking to reporters on Tuesday afternoon, the country’s environment minister, Sara Aagesen, ruled out a cyber-attack as the cause of the outage on 28 April, saying it had been down to a “multifactorial” system failure caused by the network’s inability to control grid voltage.
The minister said the system had lacked “sufficient capacity to control the dynamic voltage” because Spain’s national grid operator, Red Eléctrica, did not have enough thermal power stations online to control the surge. She also noted that some of the power-generating companies paid to manage and absorb voltage surges had failed to do so.
The catastrophic power loss, which left people in Spain and Portugal without trains, metros, traffic lights, ATMs, phone connections and internet access, led the government to commission the expert report.
