Alex Trelinski
A REPORT into the April 28 power blackout that hit most of Spain has blamed the national grid operator, Red Electrica, and the country’s electricity generating firms.
Power plants that are required by law to regulate the grid’s voltage failed to do so in the moments before the blackout, says the government investigation.
That lack of capacity caused the chain reaction that led to the outage, according to the Minister for Ecological Transition, Sara Aagesen.
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“The system did not have sufficient dynamic voltage control capacity,” said Aagesen on Tuesday.
“Power plants should have controlled voltage and they got paid to do so,” she added.
“They did not absorb all the reactive power that was expected in a context of high voltages,”
Aagesen confirmed that there was no evidence of a cyberattack.
The government pointed out that there not enough backup systems in place for the grid to make it resistant to oscillations which were detected on the morning of April 28.
Aagesen said the lack of ability to control voltage demand became apparent from 9.30am when generating company control centres started phoning Red Electrica to warn about voltage fluctuations.
“The system was within the limit but showed instability,” she observed.
The investigation also detected ‘incorrect disconnections’ for security reasons.
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