Spain, Portugal switch back on but blackout remains mystery

Madrid: Power was almost fully restored to Spain and Portugal on Tuesday although many questions remained about what caused one of Europe’s most severe blackouts that grounded flights, paralysed metro systems, disrupted mobile communications and shut down ATMs across the Iberian Peninsula.

By 7 am, more than 99 per cent of energy demand in Spain had been restored, the country’s electricity operator Red Electrica said. Portuguese grid operator REN said Tuesday morning all of the 89 power substations were back online since late last night and power had been restored to all 6.4 million customers.

By Tuesday morning, life was returning to normal: schools and offices reopened in Spain, traffic eased along the capital’s main arteries and public transport restarted after significant delays.

Spanish authorities did not provide new explanations for what caused the blackout, one of the most serious to ever take place in Europe.

In a televised address Monday night, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said the power grid for the Southern European nation of 49 million people lost 15 gigawatts — equivalent to 60 per cent of its national demand — in just five seconds.

“We have never had a complete collapse of the system,” Sanchez said. Authorities were still investigating what happened on Tuesday.

Cause remains a mystery

Such widespread electric failure has little precedent on the Iberian Peninsula or in Europe.

On Tuesday, Spain’s meteorological agency AEMET said that it had not detected any “unusual meteorological or atmospheric phenomena” on Monday, and no sudden temperature fluctuations were recorded at their weather stations. Portugal’s National Cybersecurity Center on Monday threw cold water on feverish speculation about foul play, saying there was no sign that the outage resulted from a cyber attack.