A few days after the immense power failure which affected the Iberian Peninsula, the Spanish Minister of the Ecological Transition, Sara Aagesen, issued the hypothesis of a dysfunction of photovoltaic installations as the main cause.
An extraordinary breakdown. On Monday, April 28, the entire Iberian Peninsula experienced a generalized power cut, plunging 55 million people in the dark. The cause of this breakdown is still not known, but Spain and Portugal work jointly to unravel the origins of this general blackout.
The Spanish Minister of the Ecological Transition, Sara Aagesen, spoke this Sunday in the newspaper El País: “To date, we do not know which installations have ceased to operate in the system. Talking about photovoltaic solar could be premature, even if the cartographic analysis of production technologies in the region shows a high concentration of photovoltaic solar in the southwest of Spain ”.
Other hypotheses have also been envisaged, including that of a cyber attack. Justice has also opened an investigation to explore this track. However, the manager of the Spanish electricity network (REE) considered this hypothesis not very credible after having verified all the control systems.
An ecological transition questioned?
Spain leads an ambitious ecological policy. Indeed, renewable energies now represent more than 50% of the national energy mix, with the aim of reaching 80% by 2030. While the standards of green Europe amount to 45% for the end of the decade.
For example, on April 16, the entire electricity demand in Spain was covered by renewable energies. More than 45% came from wind energy, 27% of photovoltaic solar energy, 23% of hydroelectrics and 2% of thermal solar.
Following the announcement of the vast breakdown, several political leaders questioned the green strategy of Spain, yet ahead of the European average. AFD’s head of Germany, Alice Weidel, quickly reacted to her X account: “The electricity failure in Spain is a warning. If it is confirmed that it is the fluctuations of green energy from wind and solar that caused the collapse of the networks ”.
The Spanish Minister of the Ecological Transition nevertheless recalled that this energy mix has long been in place in the Iberian Peninsula, without ever having caused such an incident. She also pointed out that similar breakdowns had already occurred elsewhere, notably in London in 2003, and in the United Kingdom in 2019, but also in France in 1978.
An electric island
What gives this breakdown a particular magnitude is in particular its duration. According to the region, the Iberian Peninsula was deprived of electricity between ten and twenty hours. One of the major problems of Spain and Portugal lies in their relative energy autarky.
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