Spain says April's Iberian blackout was caused by multiple technical factors, not a cyberattack

Six weeks aft Spain and Portugal suffered a monolithic powerfulness outage, authorities successful Madrid issued an authoritative study Tuesday, saying April’s cascading blackout that near tens of millions disconnected successful seconds was caused by method and readying error...

MADRID -- Six weeks aft Spain and Portugal suffered a monolithic powerfulness outage, authorities successful Madrid issued an authoritative study Tuesday, saying April’s cascading blackout that near tens of millions disconnected successful seconds was caused by method and readying errors that led to the grid's failure.

Spain's Ecological Transition Minister Sara Aagesen, who manages the nation's vigor policy, said successful a property league that tiny grid failures, concentrated successful the southbound of Spain, led to a concatenation absorption among larger ones, portion wholly ruling retired questions astir a cyberattack.

The curate said respective method causes that contributed to the event, including “the mediocre planning” by operators of the grid who didn't find a replacement for 1 powerfulness works that was expected to assistance equilibrium powerfulness fluctuations.

The April 28 outage started soon aft 12:30 p.m. successful Spain and lasted done nightfall, disrupting businesses, transit systems, cellular networks, Internet connectivity and different captious infrastructures. In conscionable 5 seconds, Spain mislaid 15 gigawatts of energy — oregon astir 60% of its supply. Portugal, whose grid is connected to Spain's, besides went down. Only the countries' land territories were spared.

Power was afloat restored by the aboriginal hours of the pursuing day.

The authorities study included analysts from Spain's nationalist information agencies, which concluded, according to the minister, determination were nary indications of cyber-sabotage by overseas actors.

The lone coagulated accusation made nationalist soon aft the strategy went down came from Spain's grid relation Red Eléctrica, which had narrowed down the root of the outage to 2 abstracted incidents successful confederate Spain wherever substations had failed.

In the weeks pursuing the blackout, citizens and experts were near wondering what triggered the lawsuit successful a portion not known for powerfulness outages and igniting a fierce statement astir whether Spain's precocious levels of renewable powerfulness had thing to bash with the grid failing.

Spain is astatine the forefront of Europe's modulation to renewable energy, having generated astir 57% of its energy successful 2024 from renewable vigor sources similar wind, hydropower and solar. The state is besides phasing retired its atomic plants.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez pushed backmost against specified speculation and defended renewables. He asked for patience and said that his authorities would not “deviate a azygous millimeter” from its vigor modulation plans, which see a extremity of generating 81% of its energy from renewable sources by 2030.

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