It has been a shocking day for Europe. Spain, France and Portugal are going through a major power outage that has massively disrupted the lives of its citizens. Hospitals, factories, nuclear power plants, traffic lights, and public transportation systems have all been affected as the Iberian region reels from the electricity cut.
As of Monday afternoon, many areas of the Iberian Peninsula remained without electricity, with reports of outages extending from Madrid to Lisbon.
However, the cause of the outage was not identified yet. Authorities say it could take as long as ten hours to restore the power supply. Power has so far been restored in southwestern France and later in some parts of Spain.
Amid Spain power outage, Director of Spanish transmission system operator Red Eléctrica Eduardo Prieto stated that a “very strong oscillation in the electrical network” let to country’s power system to “disconnect from the European system, and the collapse of the Iberian electricity network at 12:38,” which resulted in the blackout.
Trains across Spain have been halted, and people in some parts of the Madrid underground are being evacuated. Airlines are closely monitoring the situation, and Madrid’s main airport has warned of significant delays due to an electrical equipment outage on the ground. Budget airline Ryanair stated it is “monitoring potential disruptions to flights operating to and from all airports in mainland Spain and Portugal.”
Reasons for the Power Outage
There have also been speculations that the shut down may have been caused by a cyber attack. Prieto however declined to comment on whether a hack might have played a role in the outage or to speculate on what might have caused the power surge. He said it will take six to ten hours for service to be entirely operational throughout Spain, However, the flow of power has been restored in some areas.
At the moment, there is nothing that allows us to say that there is any kind of sabotage or cyberattack,” stated Teresa Ribera, Executive Vice President of the European Commission, as per Politico.
Ribera further stated that they are exercising extreme caution in their investigation and will keep investigating what exactly caused this catastrophe, which is among the worst to have occurred in Europe in a long time.
In Portugal’s capital Lisbon, reports showcase the streets “choked with traffic” with police officers using whistles and hand signals in place of traffic lights
According to António Leitão Amaro, the Portuguese Presidency Minister, the imbalance seems to be caused by “a problem in Spain’s transportation network, the exact details of which have yet to be identified,” reported news agency Lusa.
Spanish power distributor Red Electrica has estimated that full restoration could take between six to 10 hours, with power already being restored in substations across the north, south, and west of Spain.
However REN, Portugal’s grid operator, stated that the outage affecting Portugal was due to a fault in the Spanish electricity grid, due to a “rare atmospheric phenomenon.” According to REN, extreme temperature variations in Spain led to “anomalous oscillations” in very high-voltage lines.
This is known as “induced atmospheric variation,” which caused system synchronization failures and successive disturbances across the interconnected European network.
Given the complexity of the issue, REN estimates that it could take up to a week for the network to fully normalise.