MADRID: Spain’s government on Wednesday (May 28) denied a press report that an “experiment” on the national power grid caused a huge blackout that crippled the Iberian Peninsula one month ago.
Authorities have been scrambling to find answers after the Apr 28 outage cut telecommunications, halted transport and plunged cities into darkness across Spain and Portugal.
Conservative British daily newspaper The Telegraph reported on Friday, citing unnamed sources in Brussels, that Spanish authorities “were conducting an experiment before the system crashed, probing how far they could push reliance on renewables in preparation for Spain’s rushed phase-out of nuclear reactors from 2027”.
“The government seems to have pushed the pace recklessly, before making the necessary investments in a sophisticated 21st-century smart grid capable of handling it,” it added.
Asked about the report in parliament, Ecological Transition Minister Sara Aagesen said: “It is false, totally false, that the government carried out any sort of experiment on the grid prior to the outage.”
“It is irresponsible to assign blame while the cause of the blackout remains under investigation. And it is equally irresponsible to claim that the government was conducting experiments,” she added.
The head of Spain’s electricity operator REE, Beatriz Corredor, also called the report “completely false” in an interview with Spanish daily newspaper La Vanguardia published on Wednesday.
“There was no excess of renewable energy” on Apr 28, nor short circuits, overloads or cyberattacks on the grid, she said, dismissing several widely circulated theories.
Instead she said it appears that producers of “conventional” energy such as gas, nuclear and hydro plants “failed to properly regulate voltage” on the day of the outage.
She did not say if this played a direct role in the blackout.
