Spanish utility Red Eléctrica has ruled out a cyber-attack as the cause for the extensive collapse of its grid yesterday as attention turns to a potential solar plants shutdown.
Eduardo Prieto, Director of Operational Services for Red Eléctrica Española (REE), said, “We have been able to conclude that there was no type of intrusion into Red Eléctrica’s control systems that could have caused the incident.”
Despite external interference being ruled out, Spain’s entire energy and grid infrastructure will remain under scrutiny as the investigation swings into action. “It is much more serious that the network has failed by itself than due to a cyber-attack,” said one commentator on YouTube after the conference.
Air separation units (ASUs), which rely on continuous electricity supply to produce oxygen, nitrogen, and argon, are likely to have tripped or switched to emergency control modes.
Industrial gas majors such as Air Liquide, Linde, Air Products (through Carburos Metálicos) and Nippon Gases maintain ASU facilities across the region and would have initiated shutdown or backup procedures.
Spain has been rapidly expanding its solar industry in recent years, with much of the country averaging 3,000 hours annually.
The country reached 100% renewable power on 21 April, in the week before the blackout, so it is understandable why many commentators are questioning whether its rising dependency has created more grid vulnerability. The answer won’t be known until investigators have completed their work.
The energy source could, however, be less significant than the engineering and technical checks and competencies.
Prof Keith Bell, Professor of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, University of Strathclyde, said while such events are unusual, they have happened in power systems using fossil fuels, nuclear, hydro and variable renewables.
“It doesn’t matter where you are getting the energy from, you’ve got to get the engineering right in order to ensure resilient supplies of electricity. Thanks to the design of power systems and well-established system operation protocols, major power outages like this are mercifully rare. However, it is impossible to guarantee that something of this scale will never happen.”
The European system, including the UK, has become increasingly interconnected in recent years. This is generally positive, helping balance variations in supply and demand, particularly as countries decarbonise.
“But it also means greater interdependence with other countries, and heavier reliance on electricity across sectors like transport, heating, cooling, and data centres, which leads to new routes in which the power system is exposed to weather risk,” said Professor David Brayshaw, Professor of Climate Science and Energy Meteorology at the University of Reading.
“Meanwhile, technical changes mean the system now has less ‘inertia’, so imbalances must be corrected more quickly. Outage events, when they occur, are likely to become more significant and widespread.”
What could have caused it?
Large-scale power blackouts can be caused by various reasons, often in combination. Common causes include extreme weather events (such as storms, heatwaves, or lightning strikes), equipment failures in critical components like transformers or generators, and system instability when parts of the grid fall out of synchronisation.
Very rare environmental phenomena, such as rapid atmospheric changes causing physical oscillations in transmission lines, can be a cause. This has been reported by some outlets in the current Spain–Portugal incident.
