Sanchez Provides Few Answers on Spain’s Lingering Blackout

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(Bloomberg) — Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez offered few answers and no concrete time frame for when the country’s power grid would be fully operational after suffering the worst outage in Europe in over a decade. 

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Addressing a nation reeling from the sudden blackout that disrupted public transit, phone services and airports, Sanchez had little to offer beyond words of sympathy. 

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“We are aware of the relevance and tremendous impact of what’s happening today, of the seriousness for people’s everyday lives, of economic losses for businesses, companies and industries, of the anxiety that it’s causing in thousands of homes,” he said.

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The last time a blackout of this scale happened in Europe was in 2006 when some 15 million households were affected. That outage was caused by a frequency drop that originated in Germany and split the region into three. It lasted for two hours, while Spain’s breakdown has already stretched far beyond that with no clear end in sight.

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Transmission grids need to stay at a stable frequency to operate smoothly and any deviations can damage equipment. When grid frequency starts changing rapidly, it causes so-called oscillations, which can cause chain reactions that ultimately lead to a blackout. That’s what happened in Spain, but how the sequence was set off remains uncertain.

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“We still don’t have conclusive information on the causes of the cuts,” Sanchez said. “It’s better not to speculate. We will know the causes, we’re not ruling out any hypothesis.”

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“For the moment, the investigation seems to point to a technical/cable issue,” the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity said in an emailed statement, but added that it’s “closely monitoring” the situation and is in contact with national and EU authorities. 

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While some areas across Spain — including parts of Madrid — gradually came back online in the afternoon, restoring all supply in the country will take until at least the evening, according to grid operator Red Electrica.

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The event shows just how fragile grids can be. When one transmission line fails, it can overload others, and “you have the cascading effect,” Artjoms Obusevs, senior researcher at ZHAW School of Engineering in Switzerland.