Cause of massive power cut that plunged Spain and Portugal into chaos revealed

The monolithic powerfulness chopped that plunged immense swathes of Spain and Portugal into chaos earlier this twelvemonth was caused by a miscalculation, the Spanish authorities has said.

Airports, trains and net were among the services affected by the blackout successful precocious April, with postulation lights besides down - causing immense tailbacks.

Millions of radical were affected and parts of the 2 countries were brought to a standstill arsenic authorities raced to find the root of the problem.

There was treatment astir whether a cyberattack was to blame, but contiguous Spain's vigor curate said the contented was a miscalculation by the Spanish powerfulness grid relation REE.

Sara Aagesen said REE did not person capable thermal powerfulness stations switched connected during highest hours of April 28 erstwhile the surge caused a concatenation absorption starring to the powerfulness outage.

"The strategy did not person capable dynamic voltage power capacity," she said.

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The authorities report, which was owed to beryllium made nationalist connected Tuesday, recovered that immoderate of the powerfulness plants required by instrumentality to modulate the grid's voltage failed to bash so.

Electricity grids successful Europe are kept astatine 50 Hertz frequence successful bid to support stableness - and adjacent a flimsy deviation tin pb to damage.

Power plants "should person controlled voltage and, moreover, galore of them were economically remunerated to bash so. They did not sorb each the reactive powerfulness that was expected successful a discourse of precocious voltages," Ms Aagesen said.

The probe recovered nary grounds of a cyberattack, she added.