Aagesen reveals a third incident on the power grid before the massive blackout

BarcelonaThe Third Vice President of the Spanish government and Minister for Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge, Sara Aagesen, has announced that the ongoing investigation has revealed a third, previously unknown, incident in the electrical system that occurred 19 seconds before the massive blackout on April 28th. She has focused on the source of the incident.

"When we zoomed in, we also wanted to know not only the information from those five seconds in which the two pieces of information already provided by Red Eléctrica occurred. We looked at the minutes before [the blackout] happened and saw that 19 seconds before it, there was also a loss of generation, therefore, one on the other hand, and the two previous ones," Aagesen said in an interview on Spanish National Television (TVE) this Monday morning. The Minister for Ecological Transition explained that it remains to be seen whether there is a relationship between them or not, as well as the cause and the consequence. Regarding the third known incident, the minister commented that they are identifying how much loss of electricity generation there was, in what type of facilities, and why it occurred.

Aagesen acknowledged that there are still "many things" to be identified, while defending the word prudence "It's complicated in that context." "There's a great desire to know; we're the first, but we will provide rigorous and reliable information," the minister said. She also stated that the Spanish government has no evidence that a facility or power plant itself failed. "What we know, as I say, is three milestones: the first, 19 seconds earlier; another just in southwest Spain; and, subsequently, 1.3 seconds later, another loss of generation," Aagesen said.

The Minister of Energy announced that "almost" all the information needed to complete the reconstruction of last Monday's blackout incident has now arrived. However, the Spanish government has made new requests this weekend, with the deadline for receipt ending on Monday, May 5th: "Today we expect to receive this new requested documentation, in which we not only request more information from the operators we had already requested, but we also expand the number of operators," referring to distributors and those with 1,000 megawatts (MW).

Meanwhile, the electricity companies are also making their moves. Beyond collaborating in terms of sending information, this Monday the employers' association Aelec (which groups the main state electricity companies: Iberdrola, Endesa, and EDP Spain) demanded participation in the committee investigating the blackout, something the minister has cooled off.

Warning from Red Eléctrica

However, the minister has categorically denied that the electricity companies informed her at any point that the blackout could occur. "They had never warned us, we had never been aware of anything like this," she commented. In any case, Red Eléctrica (REE), the electricity system operator, did recommend to the Ministry for Ecological Transition the need to review the existing protection criteria for the electricity system in light of the massive introduction of renewable energy, as well as the push for the digitalization of grids and other electronic equipment, such as transformers.

Specifically, on January 24, the system operator sent a proposal dated May 2024 proposing to "update" the general protection criteria for the peninsular, island, and non-peninsular electricity system, which are governed by documents from 1996 and 2011 and desired by the current protection system. In any case, sources from the Ministry of Ecological Transition emphasize that as long as the level of synchronous generation (produced by stable sources such as gas, nuclear, or hydroelectric plants) was maintained, "no significant changes were expected."

"The ministry has been working on this proposal [for REE] to include it in the revision of regulations on electricity grids, which includes the review of investment limits in relation to GDP," among other issues, explain Aagesen's ministry.

Ribera asks that renewables not be blamed

Regarding the generation mix, the European Commission's Executive Vice President for Net, Fair and Competitive Transition, Teresa Ribera, expressed caution regarding last week's power outage: "We must fully understand what happened; we cannot rush into this Thursday of courage." In a dialogue organized by the Association of European Journalists (APEC) at the College of Journalists, she criticized those "who are trigger-happy against renewables," the association reported in a statement.

"We are in the midst of an energy and industrial revolution that gives us the capacity to be more autonomous. Let us not confuse the enemy," she said, recalling that episodes like this and the war in Ukraine highlight the need for a united Europe.

400 million impact

For its part, CaixaBank Research—the research department of CaixaBank—has estimated that the impact of the blackout was less than €400 million in Spain, concentrated mainly in a decrease in consumption on April 28. This represents less than one-tenth of a percentage point of Spain's gross domestic product (GDP, the indicator that measures economic activity).

"Consumer spending by Spanish households as a whole fell by 35% due to the blackout," indicates CaixaBank Research in a study that compared the evolution of in-person spending on cards, cash withdrawals, and online consumption on the day of the power outage with that of other Mondays, as well as with that of other Mondays. However, the decline in consumption "was largely offset by higher-than-normal spending in the following days," offsetting just over half of the drop, according to the report.