Spain’s private energy giants have been dragged into the fallout from Monday’s vast Iberian blackout, with Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez demanding their full cooperation to find out what went wrong.
Red Eléctrica, the country’s national grid operator, says it has “more or less tracked down” the cause – but it’s still combing through vast amounts of data.
“We know the cause and we have it more or less tracked down,” said Beatriz Corredor, president of Red Eléctrica. “The thing is there are millions of pieces of information because signals are sent every millisecond.”
The blackout, which hit Spain and Portugal at 12.33pm on Monday, saw 15 gigawatts – around 60% of energy in use – vanish from the grid in just five seconds.
The outage lasted into the night and left passengers trapped in trains and lifts.
At least five deaths in Spain are thought to be linked to the incident.
Although a cyber-attack has been ruled out by operators, Spain’s top criminal court has launched a probe into possible “computer sabotage” against critical infrastructure.
Sánchez, who says he first learned of Red Eléctrica’s cyber findings via the media, has created a commission to investigate and summoned energy firms including Iberdrola, Endesa, EDP, Acciona Energía and Naturgy to an emergency meeting.
