Power restored to around 90% of mainland Spain
Published: 04:04 AM,Apr 29,2025 | EDITED : 08:04 AM,Apr 29,2025
Travelers lie on the floor as they prepare to spend the night at the train station
Madrid - Electricity had been restored to nearly 90 percent of mainland Spain after the massive outage that hit the Iberian Peninsula, the national grid operator said early Tuesday. As of 04:00 am (0200 GMT), 87.37 percent of the electric supply had been restored, said REE after the outage, which began at around midday on Monday.
A massive blackout that hit most of the Iberian Peninsula on Monday was due to a sudden, large drop in power supply that caused the grid interconnection between Spain and France to trip, according to Spanish grid operator REE.
The network lost 15 gigawatts of electricity generation in five seconds at around 1033 GMT, the Energy Ministry said on Monday evening, without explaining the reason for the loss. REE's system operations chief, Eduardo Priet,o told reporters the loss of power supply was beyond the extent that European systems are designed to handle and caused the Spanish and French grids to disconnect, leading to the collapse of the Spanish electricity network.
'As a result of this disconnection and the serious imbalance of band generation that is in our electrical system, the electrical system collapsed,' he said in a news conference.
The ultimate reasons behind the massive loss of power on Monday morning were not identified by REE staff, and no hypothesis is ruled out, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said in a national address.
The blackout that lasted for several hours caused massive disruptions in Spain and Portugal. Power was gradually restored in most of both countries on Monday evening.
A massive blackout that hit most of the Iberian Peninsula on Monday was due to a sudden, large drop in power supply that caused the grid interconnection between Spain and France to trip, according to Spanish grid operator REE.
The network lost 15 gigawatts of electricity generation in five seconds at around 1033 GMT, the Energy Ministry said on Monday evening, without explaining the reason for the loss. REE's system operations chief, Eduardo Priet,o told reporters the loss of power supply was beyond the extent that European systems are designed to handle and caused the Spanish and French grids to disconnect, leading to the collapse of the Spanish electricity network.
'As a result of this disconnection and the serious imbalance of band generation that is in our electrical system, the electrical system collapsed,' he said in a news conference.
The ultimate reasons behind the massive loss of power on Monday morning were not identified by REE staff, and no hypothesis is ruled out, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said in a national address.
The blackout that lasted for several hours caused massive disruptions in Spain and Portugal. Power was gradually restored in most of both countries on Monday evening.