Spain and Portugal lost power Monday in a massive electricity blackout that affected public transport systems, traffic lights, hospitals, manufacturing and nuclear power plants.
Outages were reported from Madrid to Lisbon, with large parts of the Iberian Peninsula without power as of early Monday afternoon.
The blackout was caused by a “very strong oscillation in the electrical network” that led Spain’s power system to “disconnect from the European system, and the collapse of the Iberian electricity network at 12:38,” said Eduardo Prieto, director of Spanish transmission system operator Red Eléctrica.
Prieto refused to speculate as to what had caused the power surge and declined to say if a cyberattack could have contributed to the blackout. While the flow of electricity has been reestablished in some parts of Spain, he added that it would take between six and 10 hours to have service fully restored throughout the rest of the country.
“At the moment there is nothing that allows us to say that there is any kind of sabotage or cyberattack,” said European Commission Executive Vice President Teresa Ribera, a former top minister in the Spanish government.
“And obviously we are working with the utmost caution and we will have to continue investigating to determine what are the specific causes that have generated this incident, which is one of the most serious that have been recorded in Europe for a long time,” Ribera added.
Spain and Portugal have a highly integrated energy grid that operates as an energy island and is linked to the rest of Europe through a small number of cross-border interconnections with France.
The European Commission has for years called for greater integration of the countries’ energy systems, but while Madrid, Lisbon and Paris have repeatedly signaled their will to move forward with that plan, advances have been slow to come.
Portugal’s E-Redes operator said the blackout was due to a “problem in the European power grid” and that data collected following the blackout suggested a voltage imbalance was responsible for the collapse.
Portuguese Presidency Minister António Leitão Amaro told news agency Lusa that the imbalance appeared to be linked to “a problem in Spain’s transportation network, the exact details of which have yet to be identified.”
Spain’s opposition to Israel’s war in Gaza and its support for Kyiv against Russia’s aggression have made it a major target for cyberattacks. The Joint Cyberspace Command, which reports to the Defense Staff and oversees cybersecurity, and the National Cryptologic Center, are both looking into the blackout.
Massive power outages in Europe have previously been triggered by minor disruptions to national grid systems. In 2003 the entirety of Italy was left without power after a power line in Switzerland was disabled by a tree.
Source: Politico.eu
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