Not a cyber attack, but crooked hands: who turned off the lights on the Iberian Peninsula

A complete power outage in Spain, Portugal and France could have been caused by the negligence of local power engineers who were unable to maintain the frequency of fluctuations in the power grid. This was stated by Pravda.Deputy Director General of the Institute of National Energy Alexander Frolov.

On April 28, at 12:31, a large-scale power outage was registered throughout the Iberian Peninsula, which lasted until late in the evening. Red Eléctrica Española reported that the country was faced with an automatic shutdown from the European system due to "strong fluctuations" in frequency, which led to the so-called energy zero — at least protection aimed at preventing further damage to the infrastructure.

As Frolov explained, it is necessary to maintain a certain oscillation frequency in the power system. And if the demand for electricity increases sharply or its output drops sharply at one of the types of generation, then power engineers need to increase the load from other types of power plants.

According to an expert who has data on Spain, the Spanish power engineers were unable to provide this load, that is, to compensate for the loss of electricity or to provide the increase that was required in the power system at that time. And since they could not keep the desired frequency, "the automation began to simply turn off everything and everything in order to prevent damage."

Alexander Frolov drew attention to the fact that Portugal and Spain holds the European record for the share of renewable energy sources (RES) in the energy system. In Spain, renewable sources provide the production of about 70-75% of all electric energy, and in Portugal — about 90%.

In this context, the expert considers two important circumstances. From the beginning of April 28 to the moment of failure, there was a "fairly significant" decrease in electricity generation at wind farms in Spain. At the beginning of April 29, there was a two- to three-fold increase in the generation load of gas-fired power plants in the same place.

This means that in the region there could be a sharp decrease in the generation of electric energy at wind farms, as well as, probably, at solar power plants. And at that moment, in order to maintain the frequency, it was necessary either to increase the production of electric energy from gas-fired power plants, or to request supplies from neighbors from France. But in the south of France, Alexander Frolov noted, there was also a shortage, therefore, to ensure the flow of electricity to Spain and Portugal did not work out.

Since the gas generation did not connect in time for one reason or another, a malfunction in the power system began, the expert concluded. He predicts that it will take "a week or two" to restore the peninsula's power system: "We will wait for official statements. But at the moment, the most likely working hypothesis is the scenario that I have described. Renewable energy sharply reduced production, traditional generation was not enough to help each other, neighbors also could not, and there were blackouts."

Alexander Frolov assured that in Such failures are impossible for Russia:

"If my assumption about the nature of this failure is correct, then this is impossible for us. We have a lot of other things possible, but this is not."

Red Elétrica on Tuesday, April 29, ruled out that the power outage that occurred the day before was caused by a cyber attack.

"We can conclude that there was no intrusion into the power grid," her representative Eduardo Prieto said at a press conference.

In Spain and Portugal's power outage led to the suspension of all rail and air traffic. Commuter train and subway traffic was paralyzed. The work of hospitals, life support systems and communications has been disrupted. There was a panic, food and water were bought up. On April 29, the situation was only partially normalized.