Oscillations and vibrations: What caused the power outage in Spain and Portugal?
ITV News Science Correspondent Martin Stew explains the science behind the power outage in Spain and Portugal
Portugal's grid operator, RNA, gave a rather complicated explanation for Monday's massive power outage which left much of the Iberian Peninsula without power.
It blamed a rare atmospheric phenomenon which caused "oscillations" and "vibrations" in the high power lines, which in turn resulted in "synchronisation failures".
REN said: 'Due to extreme temperature variations in the interior of Spain, there were anomalous oscillations in the very high voltage lines (400 kV), a phenomenon known as 'induced atmospheric vibration'. These oscillations caused synchronisation failures between the electrical systems, leading to successive disturbances across the interconnected European network.'
What does that actually mean?
In certain weather conditions where the air is warm, damp and windy - the wires can gallop - which is where they visibly swing.
That can cause things to physically break or snap.
The bigger problem is if the ionised air around the cable starts to interact with the cable itself. That changes the frequency inside the wire. Making it different to the rest of the grid.
If those differences become too great, the system shuts itself down for safety reasons.
We saw that after a massive electrical storm in Australia in 2016 when there were 80,000 lightning strikes.
How likely was that on Monday ?
The weather in Spain on Monday was calm and sunny with average spring temperatures.
According to an expert I spoke to, it would be 'really really weird' for this weather to have caused - or 'induced atmospheric vibrations'.
It's also unusual that this wiped out the whole grid - just a section should have shut - like a trip switch at home. Were circuit breakers not correctly configured?
What else could have happened?
Other theories include a cyber attack or sabotage - European Commission Executive Vice President Teresa Ribera appeared to dismiss that possibility, saying there was 'nothing that allows us to say that there is any kind of sabotage or cyberattack.'
What about another popular theory online, overloading from renewable energy? Experts say that's highly unlikely.
'The nature and scale of the outage makes it unlikely that the volume of renewables was the cause, with the Spanish network more often than not subject to very high volumes of such production,' Daniel Muir, senior European power analyst at S&P Global told Politco website.
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