Spain and Portugal Power Outage

Spain and Portugal reported widespread power outages across both their countries on April 28. The power outages have mainly stemmed from Spanish electrical grids. The outages reached southern France as well for a short time. 

Transportation in Spain and Portugal was virtually halted until power returned to traffic lights, trains, and flights. 

Spain’s national Renfe railway transports on average 1.3 million passengers every day with over 1,000 trains. The railway has been shut down for the time being because there was no power. Spain’s transportation minister, Oscar Puente called for a 20% reduction of incoming flights. 

Public institutions were impacted as well. First responders lost contact with the majority of their areas. Resulting in many medical, fire related and criminal incidents going relatively unnoticed. Hospitals lost power in both Spain and Portugal until backup power could be activated. This posed a serious threat to anyone who was on life support. 

            “This was a huge issue because hospitals require power to provide emergency services, without energy they can’t save lives,” NHS sophomore Mauricio De La Garza said.

Many could not get updates on the repair process of the power grids due to the communication issues, as both governments  had a difficult time explaining the incident to the public. The cause was unknown until power was restored..t It was recognized that the outages were caused by an unknown transmission issue within the Spanish power grid. 

Taco Engelaar,the managing director at Neara,  a software provider to energy utility companies, commented on the probable reason. 

“Due to the variation of the temperature, the parameters of the conductor change slightly,”

Engelaar stated. 

Neara and Red Electrica, another Spanish energy company, as well as a Portuguese power company known as E-Redes, have been examining the causes of the outages to prevent such an incident in the foreseeable future.

            Red Electrica offered real time updates on the outages, including the amount of Spain and Portugal without power, the repair process and the amount of power being restored to certain areas. Portugal and Spain both confirmed that their nuclear plants were not affected by the outages and neither were any government institutions. 

            “The power outages majorly affect the daily lives of those living in these countries =. While some parts of Portugal are remote and don’t rely as heavily on power it is still disruptive to the vast majority of both populations,”  NHS sophomore Oliver Martins said.

There was some speculation that the outages were a possible cyber attack but these rumors have since been dismissed. 

“There is no evidence that it was a cyber-attack,” European Council President António Costa said in a public statement. 

Costa still stated that the overall cause of the outages were unknown at the time. Spain and Portugal have since received power back in almost all the areas affected. Spanish and Portuguese power grids are now making the right adjustments so another incident similar to this will not re-occur.