Electricity
restored to 90% of Spain and most of Portugal after massive power outage
The outage,
blamed by operators on temperature variations, left tens of millions without
electricity
Sam Jones
and Ashifa Kassam in Madrid, and Jon Henley
Tue 29 Apr
2025 05.54 BST
Lights
flickered back to life across most of Spain and Portugal on Tuesday after a
massive blackout hit the Iberian peninsula, stranding passengers in trains and
elevators while millions lost phone and internet coverage.
Electricity
had been restored to nearly 90% of mainland Spain by early on Tuesday, the grid
operator REE said. Power was restored overnight to around 6.2m households in
Portugal out of 6.5m, according to the national electricity grid operator.
Lights also came on again in Madrid and in Portugal’s capital, Lisbon.
Barely a
corner of the peninsula, which has a joint population of almost 60 million
people, escaped the blackout. But no firm cause for the shutdown has yet
emerged.
Portuguese
prime minister, Luis Montenegro, said the source of the outage was “probably in
Spain”. Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, said that all the potential
causes were being analysed and warned the public not to speculate because of
the risk of “misinformation”.
Earlier, the
blackout was blamed by Portugal’s grid operator REN on extreme temperature
variations, and left the two countries without trains, metros, traffic lights,
ATMs, phone connections and internet access.
People were
trapped in lifts, stuck on trains, stalled in traffic and abandoned in
airports. Hundreds stumbled along pitch-black metro tunnels using their phone
torches; others scrambled for basics in supermarkets that could only take cash,
or began long trudges home from work.
Mobile
networks went down and internet access was cut as power failed at 12.33pm
(11.33 BST). Hospitals postponed routine operations but used generators to
attend to critical cases, and while electronic banking was able to function on
backup systems, most ATM screens were blank.
In scenes
reminiscent of the 2003 outage that caused widespread blackouts in the US
north-east, rail services across the Iberian peninsula were halted, air traffic
disrupted and traffic lights extinguished. Hundreds of people had to be rescued
from jammed lifts.
The mayor of
Madrid, José Luis Martinez-Almeida, had urged people to minimise their journeys
and stay where they were, adding: “It is essential that the emergency services
can circulate.” Play at the Madrid Open tennis tournament was suspended.
By 10pm
local time on Monday, 62% of Spain’s substations were back online (421 of 680)
and 43.3% of the power demand had been met, while Portugal’s grid operator REN
said it had restored power to 85 of the country’s 89 substations.
Red
Eléctrica had previously cautioned that it could take between six and 10 hours
to fully restore supply after what it called an “exceptional and totally
extraordinary” incident.
Along a
major thoroughfare in Madrid’s Argüelles neighbourhood, the restoration of the
power supply prompted whoops of delight and a round of hearty applause among
the many people wandering the street.
Sánchez said
that the power cut originated at 12.33pm, when, for five seconds, 15 gigawatts
of the energy that was being produced – equivalent to 60% of all the energy
that was being used – suddenly disappeared.
“That’s
something that has never happened before,” he added. “What prompted this sudden
disappearance of the supply is something that the experts still haven’t been
able to determine. But they will … All potential causes are being analysed and
no hypothesis or possibility is being ruled out.”
Sánchez
thanked France and Morocco for sending additional electricity to Spain, and
said the current shortfall would be eased using gas and hydroelectric power.
The
Portuguese operator, REN, said the outage was caused by a “rare atmospheric
phenomenon”, with extreme temperature variations in Spain causing “anomalous
oscillations” in very high-voltage lines.
REN said the
phenomenon, known as “induced atmospheric vibration”, caused “synchronisation
failures between the electrical systems, leading to successive disturbances
across the interconnected European network”.
Widespread
outages are unusual in Europe. In 2003, a problem with a hydroelectric power
line between Italy and Switzerland caused blackouts for about 12 hours, and in
2006 an overloaded power network in Germany caused electricity cuts across
parts of the country and in France, Italy, Spain, Austria, Belgium and the
Netherlands.
The prime
minister said additional Nnational Ppolice and Guardia Civil officers had been
deployed across the country to ensure people’s safety overnight, adding that
hospitals were functioning well thanks to the efforts of healthcare workers.
He said
telecommunications services were still suffering interruptions, mainly because
of a lack of electricity supply to antennae.
Sánchez said
that only 344 of the 6,000 flights in Spain on Monday had been cancelled, and
that the country’s roads network was working well, barring some tailbacks.
The main
travel disruption had occurred on the rail network, where 35,000 passengers
trapped on more than 100 trains had been helped by rail companies and the
military emergencies unit. Eleven more trains that had stopped in remote areas
were still waiting to be reached.
In Madrid
and other cities, traffic lights ceased to function, causing gridlock as
vehicles slowed to avoid collisions, while metros were halted. Spain’s national
road authority, DGT, urged motorists to avoid using the roads as much as
possible.
El País
newspaper posted photos and video on its website of passengers navigating
darkened metro tunnels in the Spanish capital and police directing traffic on
the city’s streets. Footage also showed its own reporters working by
torchlight.
The Spanish
health ministry said in a social media update it was in contact with regional
authorities to assess the scope of the widespread blackout but reassured the
public that hospitals had supplementary systems in place.
In Portugal,
the outage hit the capital, Lisbon, and surrounding areas, as well as northern
and southern parts of the country. Lisbon metro carriages were evacuated and
ATMs and electronic payment systems cut out.
Sánchez said
that eight of Spain’s 17 autonomous regions – Andalucía, Castilla-La Mancha,
Extremadura, Galicia, La Rioja, Madrid, Murcia and Valencia – had declared
level 3 emergencies, placing responsibility for the response in the hands of
the central government. He said schools in those areas would be open on
Tuesday, but would not be offering regular classes.
He said the
situation across the country remained very “asymmetric” on Monday night, with
some regions already having 90% of their power restored, while others had
recovered less than 15%.
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário