Yesterday lunchtime, at around 12:30 pm Madrid time (11:30 am in Lisbon/GMT), the entire Iberian Peninsula suddenly lost electricity as a monster power outage took down the grid that feeds both Spain and Portugal – as well as part of France. By midnight, power had been restored across the region, and as the authorities now scramble to figure out the cause of the blackout, confusing reports about a “rare atmospheric phenomenon” have begun to surface.
According to some Portuguese media outlets, the claim was first announced by Reuters before later being retracted. Quoting a supposed statement from Portugal’s electric network Redes Energéticas Nacionais (REN), the news agency stated that “extreme temperature variations in the interior of Spain… [had caused] anomalous oscillations in the very high voltage lines (400 kV), a phenomenon known as ‘induced atmospheric vibration‘.”
“These oscillations caused synchronization failures between the electrical systems, leading to successive disturbances across the interconnected European network,” continued the statement, which also warned that it could take up to a week to restore power. However, REN has now reportedly denied that it ever provided this information, all of which just adds to the chaos and confusion generated by the whole event.
What we do know is that the outage occurred when the Spanish electricity grid suddenly experienced a 60 percent drop in its power generation capacity, resulting in 15 gigawatts of electricity being lost in just five seconds. Unable to balance the massive discrepancy between supply and demand, the entire system went into shut-down, taking with it the interconnected Portuguese grid.
The result was absolute mayhem across both countries, as card payments, traffic lights, and home appliances all suddenly became nonoperational. Even the Madrid Open tennis tournament was affected, with all play canceled for the day.
Commenting on the possible cause of the outage, Jianzhong Wu, Professor of Multi-Vector Energy Systems at the University of Cardiff, said in a statement that “a proper investigation will take time, and the explanation of ‘induced atmospheric vibration’ still needs to be verified. The real cause could be very different.”
“‘Induced atmospheric vibration’ could mean unusual physical movements of power lines caused by rapid and extreme changes in atmospheric conditions, such as temperature shifts or localised weather phenomena,” he continued. “However, further information is not yet available from the network operators, and the true mechanism still requires verification.”
Meanwhile, Professor Janusz Bialek, Principal Research Fellow in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Imperial College London, said, “Early reports talk about a ‘rare atmospheric phenomenon’ but there is no information about what it was and what it caused.” He goes on to explain that outages on this scale are usually triggered by multiple failures occurring at different points on the grid at the same time, which could be caused by an array of factors.
“Apart from faults tripping lines or power stations, it could be a malfunction of a computer system, communication network, alarm system, a human mistake, or unforeseen interaction between different controllers in the system,” he said.
For now, then, the cause of the colossal blackout remains unknown, with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez stating that all theories remain on the table – including the possibility of a cyber attack.
Source Link: Did A "Rare Atmospheric Phenomenon” Trigger A Massive Power Outage Across Spain And Portugal?
