Authorities in both Spain and Portugal are also looking for the root of the disturbance after a nearly 24-hour power outage that caused millions of people’s lives.
The outage, which affected vital infrastructure in some places starting Monday evening for nearly 18 hours, was discussed by some of Spain’s leading officials on Wednesday.
By Tuesday, strength was almost completely restored in southern France and Spain, where Basque households were affected, as well as in Portugal and southern Spain.
The issue is still being looked into.
Spain’s best security and defense representatives met on Wednesday to talk about the shutdown, and officials claimed they were taking into account a number of options. The Spanish government has requested an investigation into what transpired from regional authorities and Western regulators.
Eduardo Prieto, director of solutions for Spain’s national electricity firm, Red Eléctrica, stated on Tuesday that there were no “definitive inferences” about the causes of the interruption, despite he and other authorities ruled out a attack.
A commission of technical experts from the European Commission would look into the reason, according to Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.
A few details about the start of the shutdown have emerged.
According to Kristian Ruby, secretary-general of Eurelectric, a business system that represents the European energy market, a high-voltage relation between France and Spain was interrupted around noon on Monday. Only over 30 days later, the power interruption occurred.
Although Ruby claimed that the delay would have been destructive, it wouldn’t have normally caused a” program collapse” like the one that took place on Monday. Other issues, such as a sudden power plant outage or a sudden increase in demand, would usually need to occur, he said. Then you could include a situation like this.
Hospitals, institutions, and journey were hampered.
There were numerous issues with mobile networks and the internet during the failure in Spain and Portugal.
Facilities in Spain were forced to use producers. Portuguese institutions and banks shut down. The nationwide rail company of Spain reported that carriages had stopped running at all channels. Valencia and Madrid among the places where subways were stopped. Additionally, shoppers poured into stores to purchase food and other necessities as staff recorded cash-only purchases using pen and paper.
The weather was worse than usual at the time of the failure.
Temperatures were between 60 and 70 degrees Fahrenheit at the time of the interruption, according to Spain’s weather agency, AEMET. By the end of the day, peaks had risen to between 82 and 87 levels.
In a normal April, the average temperature in Spain is 64 degrees in the central and northern parts and 70 degrees in the west.
Bruno Silva, a representative for the Portuguese energy provider REN, was questioned about whether the interruption was related to the warmth. He said,” No, I hope not.”
Spain’s emphasis on solar power has received a lot of interest.
Spain’s quick transition to renewable energy has prompted questions about whether it was more prone to interruptions as a result of the event.
Spain’s electricity was generated by solar power for more than half of it last time, putting it at the vanguard of Europe’s transition to renewable energy sources like wind turbines and solar farms. The swift change has also caused the Spanish electricity network and Portugal, which it supplies power to, to be more susceptible to disruptions, according to analysts.
Old-line energy sources, such as nuclear plants and fuel windmills, are better at limiting the oscillations that can occur with continuous sources, such as wind and solar power. According to experts, if regular power sources had a larger appearance and Spain had invested more money in network equipment and storage facilities, such as batteries, to give back power, it might have been simpler to manage instability in its power grid.
However, Spanish authorities have stated that they don’t feel there is a link between the power outage and the source. Red Eléctrica head Beatriz Corredor stated on Wednesday that it was “unsightful” to associate the incident with solar energy.
Everyday life in Europe has been halted by other disasters.
An failure for nearly a full time in 2003 caused an interruption for more than 50 million people in Italy after a collection between Switzerland and Italy was overloaded. Since World War II, it was thought to be the worst time of outages in the nation.
10 million people in Germany were quickly without power in 2006 as a result of the overburdening of the nation’s electricity grid in the northwest region.
And last year, a large portion of the Balkans was without power for many hours as a result of a heat wave that reached 40 degrees Fahrenheit, or over 100 degree Celsius.
