The situation is returning to normal after the extended Blackout which from 12:33 from yesterday hit Spain, Portugal and the South of France. The manager of the Spanish electricity network Red Eléctric de España (Ree) said at 11:15 today having “normalized” the functioning of the national electrical system, while according to the most recent update of the Manager of the Portuguese electricity network, the activity of all electrical subsits in the country has been restored. Trains and planes have returned to circular and electricity is active again in infrastructure and homes.
On the other hand, at the moment the Spanish government has not issued official communications on Possible causes of the collapse of the electricity grid. Numerous hypotheses have circulated, from the hacker attack to an unidentified “rare atmospheric phenomenon” which has been called Induced atmospheric vibrationsup to real conspiracy theories who would see the accident as an attack by Israel, but the truth is that None of these hypotheses can be confirmed And the only one who can tell us something will be the Spanish government.
From this point of view it appears however anomalous That the government, more than 24 hours after one of the most serious blackouts in European history, has not yet given official explanations on the hypotheses currently on the pitch on what could have triggered an accident of this reach. The hypothesis of the cyber-attack is currently the driver, but the Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez He announced a commission of investigation into the causes of the Blackout.
The Blackout data in Spain and Portugal: what happened
To provide the curve that shows the collapse of the electricity grid in Spain is the same Reewhich manages the national electricity grid. The yellow line in the graph below shows the collapse in the use of electricity in the country: it is impressive to see how the decline was very quick: over a handful of minutes the question passed by about 26 Gigawatt to “Just” 10 Gigawatt.
At the time of blackout the81.48% of energy was produced by renewable sourcesdivided into 54.86% product via Solar photovoltaic, 10.87% through wind, 9.86% through hydroelectric And 10.52% through nuclear. The Blackout has completely interrupted the production of energy from nuclear and central coal plants, but not completely the energy produced via wind, hydroelectric and sunny.
As can be seen from the graph, around midnight the curve of real demand begins to meet that of the planned demand, to return to 100% declared around 11 this morning.
The hypotheses on possible causes: all doubts
There was a lot of talk about the possibility of the possibility what significant thermal changes They could have caused sufficient oscillations in the frequency of the electricity grid to cause generalized blackout. Average all the world have reported the hypothesis of Induced atmospheric vibrations Based on the declaration of a spokesman for the body that manages the Portuguese electricity network:
Due to the extreme temperature variations within Spain, anomalous oscillations have occurred in the lines with very high tension (400 kV), a phenomenon known as “induced atmospheric vibration”. These oscillations have caused synchronization failures between electrical systems, leading to subsequent disorders through the interconnected European network.
Without excluding this explanation a priori, however it is not clear For various reasons:
- The meteorological situation in Spain at the moment was far from extreme: the Spanish meteorological agency, AEMET, confirms it, according to which “unusual meteorological phenomena or atmospheric phenomena or atmospheric phenomena have not been detected, nor were sudden changes in the temperature in our network of weather stations”;
- The manager of the Portuguese network did not officially express himself on the possible causes, above all because the problem originated in Spain and therefore hardly in Portugal could have had details on the origin of the problem;
- On the net it is extremely difficult to find information on the phenomenon of Induced atmospheric vibrations: It is therefore not clear nor what it is exactly nor how this phenomenon could have caused such an extensive and generalized blackout.
Also the hypothesis of a cyber-attack Leave the time it finds. In fact, there are no support elements, as also confirmed by the President of the European Council António Costaformer Prime Minister of Portuguese, and by the vice-president of the European Commission Teresa Ribera.
Many then made one turn buffalo according to which the blackout was a deliberate act by Israel as a retaliation for the suppression by the Spanish government of a loan of 6.6 million dollars for the armament of the Jewish state. In fact, there are no reasons to believe in such a imaginative story, in the light also of the fact that Spain is a second floor geopolitical actor in the Israeli-Palestinian question.
