Despite Red Eléctrica ruling out a cybersecurity incident, Spain’s High Court said it will open an investigation to determine if a cyberattack was the cause.
Spanish grid operator Red Eléctrica de España (REE) ruled out a cybersecurity incident as the cause of Monday’s widespread blackout across Spain, Portugal, and parts of France, and pointed to a sudden drop in solar power generation as a possible cause.
The company’s chief of system operations, Eduardo Prieto, said at a news briefing on April 29 that the electricity system suffered a major loss of power generation in southwestern Spain, causing instability that led to its disconnection from the French grid.
He said the affected generation might have been solar, but that it was too early to say for sure.
“We have been able to conclude that there was no intrusion into Red Eléctrica’s control systems that could have caused the incident,” the company’s system operations chief, Eduardo Prieto, told a press conference on April 29, Spain’s La Vanguardia newspaper reported. “The fact that the disconnections occurred in the southwestern peninsular region may suggest that the loss of generation is solar.”
Solar photovoltaic (PV) accounted for 59 percent of Spain’s electricity at the time of the blackout, wind nearly 12 percent, nuclear almost 11 percent, and combined cycle gas plants 5 percent, Red Electrica data showed. In a span of just five minutes, between 12:30 and 12:35 p.m. local time (1030-1035 GMT) on Monday, solar PV generation plunged by more than 50 percent to 8 gigawatts (GW) from more than 18 GW, the data showed.
Electricity was restored to most of Spain and Portugal early on Tuesday.
Despite REE ruling out a cyberattack, Spain’s High Court said on Tuesday that it will open an investigation to determine if a cyberattack was the cause.
Judge Jorge Calama said that although the cause of the events is unknown, “cyberterrorism is among some of the possible” scenarios.
REE said in a statement that it had restored 99.95 percent of demand while Portugal’s equivalent, REN, said that by late on Monday the network was “perfectly stabilized.”
By Owen Evans
