Spain identifies power failure 'ground zero' in Iberian blackout probe
Spain's investigation into the blackout that affected the Iberian Peninsula in late April revealed initial power generation failures in three Spanish provinces — Granada, Badajoz, and Seville, Minister for Ecological Transition Sara Aagesen told the Spanish Congress of Deputies on Wednesday.
The substation in Granada was ground zero, and the power failure caused a loss of 2.2 gigawatts of electricity, causing a chain of grid disconnections. The cause of the substations' failures remains unknown at this time.
During her speech at the plenary session, Aagesen said that the ongoing investigation has ruled out several hypotheses, including that the massive outage that started on 28 April was due to coverage, backup, or network size.
The government is acting seriously to get to the bottom of it, Aagesen reiterated. "The government is working with rigour and not making hypotheses, because that is what the Spanish people deserve. Rigour and truth," she explained.
The findings are the first clear conclusions to be made public after more than two weeks since the blackout that saw Spain and Portugal grind to a halt.
Aagesen said this remains "an extremely complex investigation" because "millions of bits of data" are being analysed.
At the same time, the energy minister pointed out that, according to the data available, half an hour before the blackout, "two oscillations in the Iberian system with the rest of the European continent" were recorded.
This observation coincides with preliminary reports from the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSO-E), which pointed to "two periods of power and frequency swings in the synchronous area of continental Europe."
Aagesen has assured that the government will continue "relentlessly" to "identify the causes" of this "extremely complex" incident, which "does not come with simple explanations".
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