Investigators from Spain’s cybersecurity agency and the CNI intelligence service will seek information from the country’s grid operator, REE, and private energy companies as part of a probe into the causes of massive blackouts across Spain and Portugal, Reuters has reported.
Two sources told Reuters that the investigation would happen in full collaboration with the energy companies and was aimed at gathering all necessary data and information as soon as possible.
Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has separately announced a government investigation into the massive power outage that halted trains, shut airports and trapped people in lifts on Monday across the entire Iberian peninsula.
More than 50 million people were plunged into darkness across Spain and Portugal after a massive loss of power generation sparked widespread blackouts. (Reuters: Jon Nazca)
REE has denied that a dependence on solar power was to blame for Spain and Portugal being plunged into darkness, after Mr Sanchez’s opponents pointed the finger at low investment in a system that increasingly relies on intermittent renewable energy sources.
The grid operator, which is headed by former Socialist minister Beatriz Corredor, has narrowed down the source of the outage to two separate incidents of loss of generation in substations in south-western Spain, but says it has yet to identify their exact location and that it is too early to explain what caused them.
In an interview with Cadena SER radio, Ms Corredor said on Wednesday that it was wrong to blame the outage on Spain’s high share of renewable energy.
The mass power outages halted public transport routes, shut airports and trapped people in lifts for hours. (Reuters: Jon Nazca)
“These technologies are already stable and they have systems that allow them to operate as a conventional generation system without any safety issues,” she said, adding she was not considering resigning.
Just before the system crashed, solar energy accounted for 53 per cent of electricity production, wind for almost 11 per cent and nuclear and gas for 15 per cent, according to REE data.
The share of renewables as a source of electricity production in Spain has grown to 56 per cent in 2024 from 43 per cent a decade earlier, according to REE. Spain is targeting 81 per cent by 2030.
A government investigation has now been called into the causes of the blackouts, with Spain’s grid operator REE to be questioned by cybersecurity investigators. (Reuters: Bruna Casas)
Energy Minister Sara Aagesen said the government had given power companies a deadline of late on Wednesday to provide data for “every millisecond during those five seconds” when the system on Monday experienced a huge loss of generation, triggering a disconnection from the rest of Europe.
One problem on Monday was that there was not enough backstop stable power, such as gas and nuclear, to handle the sudden fall of power generation, an industry source told Reuters.
“The problem wasn’t so much the massive entry of renewables, rather the lack of synchronous generation,” the source said.
Fierce political debate rages over energy sources
Political opponents of the Spanish prime minister have also accused him of taking too long to explain the blackout, suggesting he was covering up for failings at REE.
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“Since REE has ruled out the possibility of a cyber attack, we can only point to the malfunctioning of REE, which has state investment and therefore its leaders are appointed by the government,” Miguel Tellado, a parliamentary spokesperson for the opposition conservative People’s Party, said in an interview on RTVE.
He called for an independent investigation to be conducted by Spain’s parliament rather than the government probe Sanchez has announced.
REE itself warned in May 2024 of the risks of a major outage. Renewable sources are spread across the country’s territory and connect to substations that were not designed to handle high volumes of generation, it said in a report.
To withstand sudden oscillations in frequency, the grid needs to invest in load-shedding relays to act as shock absorbers when there’s a plunge in generation, REE said.
This message was echoed in a January report by Spain’s competition watchdog CNMC, which said the voltage on the electricity grid had sometimes “reached maximum values close to the authorised thresholds, and have even exceeded them at certain times”.
Spain’s government said it had asked private energy companies for “maximum collaboration and transparency” to help identify the cause of the outage.
Asked about the controversy, Ecological Transition Minister Sara Aagesen said on Wednesday the cause of the blackout was still unknown and it was “imprudent to speculate”.
“The system has worked perfectly well with similar demand and a comparable energy mix. Consequently, pointing the finger at renewables … does not seem appropriate,” she said.
Earlier this week, Mr Sanchez also defended his government’s energy model and stressed that the cause of the outage was not yet known.
“Those who link this incident to the lack of nuclear power are frankly lying or demonstrating their ignorance,” he told a news conference.
“Nuclear power plants, far from being a solution, have been a problem” during the blackout because “it was necessary to divert large amounts of energy to them to keep their cores stable”, Mr Sanchez said.
The outage could have been caused by a lack of supply from stable sources such as gas, nuclear or hydropower on the day and an excess of unstable sources such as sun and wind that caused a disparity when there was a drop in demand, Jorge Sanz, former president of the Commission of Experts on Energy Transition Scenarios, told TVE.
This caused transport networks to disconnect as a precaution and triggered a collapse of the grid, he said.
The government expects private and public investment of some 52 billion euros ($92b) through 2030 to upgrade the power grid so it can handle the surge in demand from data centres and electric vehicles. Aelec, the utility lobby, has said that is not enough.
Jordi Sevilla, REE’s chair until 2020, wrote in an opinion piece in Cinco Dias newspaper that the government was moving too fast to decommission nuclear power plants that can provide stable generation to offset the peaks and troughs of intermittent renewable energy.
AFP/Reuters