The Spanish grid operator has ruled out a cyber attack as the cause of a massive power cut that crippled Spain, Portugal and parts of France on Monday.
Red Eléctrica’s operations director Eduardo Prieto said preliminary findings suggest “there was no kind of interference in the control systems” to imply an attack, echoing Portuguese Prime Minister Luís Montenegro the day before.
But the exact reason behind the cut is still unclear.
The grid operator said on Tuesday they “cannot draw conclusions” until they get concrete data. Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said investigators were trying to pinpoint the cause, and then would take all necessary measures “to ensure that this does not happen again.”
Information is trickling out about what happened at the time of the cut, leading to theories about what could have caused it. Experts told the BBC it was likely caused by several failures.
Sánchez on Monday evening said 15GW of power – the equivalent to 60% of demand at that time – was “suddenly lost from the system… in just five seconds”.
Mr Prieto said during a news conference on Tuesday that there were two “disconnection events” barely a second apart in the south-west of Spain, where there is substantial solar power generation.
One issue that the Spanish grid operator may have been referring to was when power companies identify a mismatch of supply and demand for electricity that could lead to instability, and disconnect temporarily in order to protect their systems.
Credit: bbc.com
