Spain\u2019s government said Tuesday that the massive April power outage across Spain and Portugal that left tens of millions of people disconnected in seconds was caused by technical and planning errors that left the grid unable to handle a surge in voltage. <\/p>\n
Ecological Transition Minister Sara Aagesen, who manages the nation\u2019s energy policy, told reporters that a voltage surge led to small grid failures, mainly in the south of Spain, which then cascaded to larger ones and brought the system down in the two Iberian Peninsula nations. <\/p>\n
She ruled out that the failure was due to a cyberattack. <\/p>\n
The outage began shortly after noon on April 28 in Spain and lasted through nightfall, disrupting businesses, transit systems, cellular networks, internet connectivity and other critical infrastructure. Spain lost 15 gigawatts of electricity \u2014 or about 60% of its supply. Portugal, whose grid is connected to Spain\u2019s, also went down. Only the countries\u2019 island territories were spared. <\/p>\n
\u201cAll of this happened in 12 seconds, with most of the power loss happening in just five seconds,\u201d Aagesen said. <\/p>\n
Several technical causes contributed to the event, including \u201cpoor planning\u201d by Spain\u2019s grid operator Red El\u00e9ctrica, which didn\u2019t find a replacement for one power plant that was supposed to help balance power fluctuations, the minister said. She also said that some power plants that utilities shut off preventively when the disruptions started could have stayed online to help manage the system. <\/p>\n
Power was fully restored by the early hours of the following day. <\/p>\n
The government\u2019s report will be released later on Tuesday \u2013 49 days after the event \u2013 and included analysis from Spain\u2019s national security agencies, which concluded, according to the minister, there were no indications of cyber-sabotage by foreign actors. <\/p>\n
The government had previously narrowed down the source of the outage to three power plants that tripped in southern Spain. <\/p>\n
In the weeks following the blackout, citizens and experts were left wondering what triggered the event in a region not known for power cuts. The outage ignited a fierce debate about whether Spain\u2019s high levels of renewable power and not enough energy generated from nuclear or gas-fired power plants had something to do with the grid failing, which the government has repeatedly denied. <\/p>\n
Spain is at the forefront of Europe\u2019s transition to renewable energy, having generated nearly 57% of its electricity in 2024 from renewable energy sources like wind, hydropower and solar. The country is also phasing out its nuclear plants. <\/p>\n
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro S\u00e1nchez pushed back against such speculation and defended the country\u2019s rapid ramping up of renewables. He asked for patience and said that his government would not \u201cdeviate a single millimeter\u201d from its energy transition plans, which include a goal of generating 81% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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Spain\u2019s government said Tuesday that the massive April power outage across Spain and Portugal that left tens of millions of people disconnected in seconds was caused by technical and planning errors that left the grid unable to handle a surge in voltage. Ecological Transition Minister Sara Aagesen, who manages the nation\u2019s energy policy, told reporters…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7761,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7760"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7760\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}