The Spanish government has blamed the national grid operator and private power generation companies for an energy blackout that caused widespread chaos in Spain and Portugal earlier this year. The incident, which occurred on April 28, saw both countries disconnected from the European electricity grid for several hours. During this time, businesses, schools, universities, government buildings, and transport hubs were without power, with traffic light failures leading to gridlock. Schoolchildren, students, and workers were sent home for the day, while many others were trapped in lifts or stranded on trains in remote rural areas.
In the immediate aftermath, the left-wing coalition government did not provide an explanation, instead urging patience as it conducted an investigation. Nearly two months after the unprecedented outage, Minister for Ecological Transition Sara Aagesen presented a report detailing the causes. She stated that the partly state-owned grid operator, Red Electrica, had miscalculated the power capacity needs for the day, explaining that the ‘system did not have enough dynamic voltage capacity.’ Aagesen noted that the regulator should have switched on another thermal plant but ‘made their calculations and decided it was not necessary.’ She also criticized private generators for failing to regulate the grid’s voltage shortly before the blackout, pointing out that ‘generation firms which were supposed to control voltage and which, in addition, were paid to do just that did not absorb all the voltage they were supposed to when tension was high.’ While she did not name the responsible companies, she indicated that accountability would be demanded from them.
Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez suggested the possibility that private electricity companies might have played a role in the blackout during a press conference the day after the outage. However, the new report also raises questions about Beatriz Corredor, president of Red Electrica and a former Socialist minister, who had previously asserted that the grid regulator was not at fault. Aagesen stated there was no evidence of a cyberattack behind the blackout, and the government also maintained that Spain’s renewable energy output was not to blame. The incident has sparked a broader discussion about the reliability of the energy grid and the responsibilities of both public and private entities in managing power supply.