Energy Security: Net Zero Spain Leans on Nuclear, Gas to Keep Lights On After Historic Blackout
by Oliver JJ Lane
Spain is running its national power grid in “strengthened mode”, using more nuclear and natural gas in place of the renewables it vaunted before last month’s historic blackout, but still hasn’t said what started the outage.
Spain still hasn’t officially acknowledged it knows what caused the historic blackout that started in the south of the nation and cascaded to totally knock out all electricity in two European countries, but now says it is certain it wasn’t the victim of a cyber attack. Two weeks after the total loss of all energy generation on the Iberian peninsula of Spain and Portugal, the national generation agency Red Eléctrica (RE) and the government ministry are now agreed there was no digital intrusion detected, Minister for Ecological Transition and Energy Sara Aagesen told their national Parliament this week, reports EnergyNews.
Euronews cites the remarks of the minister, who revealed for the first time that the cascade that disconnected power source after power source from the national grid started at a substation in Grenada, Andalusia, on April 28th. Yet what caused that substation to disconnect, causing that chain-reaction, has not yet been revealed, and the Spanish government say it could be months before they publish a report.