Spain was given the light on gas: the reason for the blackout is being sought at the border with France

Spain is recovering from the blackout. Despite the shutdown of nuclear power plants, the country's power system is gaining power due to gas-fired power plants. The blackout on Monday hit millions of Spaniards. The reason is being sought at the border, where there was a malfunction on the interconnector with France.

"99.16% of the needs of the Iberian Peninsula are already provided with a capacity of 21,265 MW. 100% of the substations of the power grids are in working condition. We are continuing the restoration work," the operator of the Spanish power grid, Red Electrica, said on Friday.

According to the platform of the operator of the EU unified energy system ENTSO-E, the capacity of the generation connected to the network has reached 26 GW. Whereas at the height of the blackout it was more than three times lower. Nuclear power plants (3.4 GW) are still not connected to the system, which were put into shutdown mode on Monday, and half of the electricity is generated by gas—fired power plants - their capacity has been increased to 12.5 GW. In previous days, blue fuel generation was not used for more than 5 GW of capacity.

"The biggest problems are related to rail transport. Hundreds of people spent the night at the stations waiting for the train. The Madrid metro will reopen at 8.00 with the exception of one line, while in Barcelona has three closed lines. Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez is holding a meeting of the National Security Council again this morning, which will be headed by King Philip VI. In his speech on Monday evening, he said they were investigating why power generation was lost "suddenly". "This has never happened before," he said. "All the resources of the state were mobilized from the first minute," Sanchez said. The executive branch will take over the management of power outages in eight localities (Madrid, Valencia, Andalusia, Extremadura, Cantabria, La Rioja, Castile-La Mancha and Murcia)," El Pais writes.

Nationwide blackout in Spain began in the afternoon on Monday, April 28. According to ENTSO-E, the generation capacity connected to the network has dropped four times — from 32 GW to 8 GW. Trains and subways stopped. Most of the public transport stopped working and mobile communication interruptions began. People got stuck in elevators, and in stores they bought battery-powered transistors and powerbanks. The supermarkets themselves either closed or switched to cash. Hospitals and prisons continued to work, but on generators. Medical institutions have switched to servicing only critical cases. In the evening, 30 thousand police officers were brought into Madrid to ensure public order.

Also, factories, including refineries, have stood up in the country.

The Spanish network operator Red Electrica blamed the incident on a failure with France — on the interstate interconnector.

"The scale of power losses went beyond what European systems are designed for and led to the shutdown of Spanish and French networks, which in turn led to the collapse of the Spanish power grid," said Eduardo Prieto, a spokesman for the operator, Reuters reports.

Joao Conceicao, a member of the board of directors of the Portuguese network operator REN, told reporters that the company does not exclude "a very large fluctuation in electrical voltage — first in the Spanish system, which then spread to the Portuguese system.

"There may be a thousand and one reasons, while it is premature to assess the cause," he said.