Spain’s power grid operator and the country’s electricity companies traded blame on Wednesday over the April blackout that crippled the Iberian Peninsula, a day after a long-awaited government report highlighted their responsibility.
The continuing row is likely to extend debate over one of Europe’s largest-ever power outages, which raised doubts about Spain’s commitment to renewable energy and scheduled phase-out of nuclear power.
A grid “overvoltage” triggered a “chain reaction” across mainland Spain and Portugal that downed the system on April 28, according to the government report released on Tuesday.
Advertisement
Overvoltage is when there is too much electrical voltage in a network, overloading equipment and forcing protective systems to shut down parts of the grid.
The government said the system “lacked sufficient voltage control capacity” and that Spanish grid operator Red Eléctrica (REE) and unnamed energy companies disconnected their plants “inappropriately… to protect their installations”.
REE had lowered its capacity to regulate tension that day, while electricity companies did not contribute as much as expected to control voltage through their power stations, according to the report.
REE published its own report on Wednesday and said it “carried out the relevant calculations to schedule technical constraints, always ensuring that all groups comply with the obligations imposed by current regulations”.
If energy producers responsible for regulating the voltage “had met their tension control obligations… we would not have had a blackout”, REE’s operations director Concha Sánchez told a news conference.
Aelec, an industry association representing power companies including sector giants Iberdrola and Endesa, said controlling tension “falls on Red Eléctrica, as the system operator”.
“We have evidence that power stations of Aelec members met the regulatory requirements in terms of controlling tension… even operating above the regulatory obligations to contribute to the stability of the electric system,” it said in a statement.
REE “had enough resources to guarantee the control of voltage… which it nevertheless decided not to dispatch”, added Aelec, saying the operator “left the system in a situation of vulnerability”.
