Red Eléctrica rules out a cyberattack as the cause of the massive blackout.

Barcelona / MadridRed Eléctrica, the company that manages the Spanish electricity grid, has definitively ruled out that Monday's massive blackout was caused by a cyberattack, although Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has said that the government has not yet completely ruled out this possibility. Furthermore, the management company clarified that the system outage occurred over a five-second period, during which two "generation disconnections" were recorded, causing the grid to collapse.

Eduardo Prieto, director of operations at Red Eléctrica, has not confirmed any possible cause for the massive power outage, but has ruled out one. Specifically, the company's operations director ruled out the possibility that the failure was caused by a "cyber incident." "We can conclude that there was indeed no computer intrusion," he stated at a press conference in Madrid.

The company collaborated with the National Intelligence Center (CNI, the Spanish intelligence services) and the National Center for the Protection of Critical Infrastructures (CNPIC) to determine whether the system outage was caused by cyberattacks. Finally, neither of the two agencies nor Red Eléctrica have found any evidence that the origin of the blackout was external or the result of some type of attack. "It is important that the identification be done with rigor and precision, with an analysis of the data," said Prieto, who urged "no speculation about the origins and development of the incident."

Despite Red Eléctrica's conclusion, the Spanish Prime Minister has expressed greater caution. "Red Eléctrica has made it known that it rules out any cyberattack on the transmission grid, but the government's responsibility is to conduct an independent analysis and examine all the factors and not rule out any hypothesis until we have the results, which will be made public," Sánchez said in a press conference, in which he asserted that a cyberattack was "the option." "The Cryptologic Center is conducting its analysis, and I hope it is this diagnosis. I am not questioning it [Red Eléctrica's], but we will conduct our analysis. Not only on the transmission grid, but also on generation," Sánchez said.

"We are not ruling out any hypothesis, but we are not highlighting one over another." "Everyone should do the same," Sánchez said. "We respect that private operators release their information and rule out some hypotheses, but we want to do the analysis ourselves, because it's important that we do so," said the Spanish Prime Minister, who believes that the government must know with certainty "what happened," so "it will take time."

The paradox is that, although 80% of Red Eléctrica's shares are privately held (the company is listed on the stock exchange and is part of the Ibex 35), the State remains the company's largest shareholder, holding 20% of the capital through the State Industrial Participation Company (Sociedad Estatal de Participaciones Industriales, SEPI). The group's president is a party colleague of Sánchez, Beatriz Corredor, who served as Minister of Housing in José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero's government and as a PSOE member of Congress between 2019 and 2020, among other positions linked to the socialist party.

Collapse in five seconds

Prieto explained that the Spanish electrical system collapsed in a span of five seconds at 12:33 a.m. on Monday. A second and a half. "A second and a half may seem short and is nothing for any human intervention, but in the electrical world, it's a very long time," Prieto indicated.

However, a second generation disconnection immediately occurred, once again affecting the entire system and becoming permanent. This new incident caused "a fluctuation in flows" throughout the system, forcing the disconnection of the Iberian grid from the French grid. In less than three seconds, the entire grid disconnected until it reached zero volts; that is, without the ability to deliver power to any point on the grid.

The two disconnection episodes represented a sudden reduction of 15 gigawatts (GW), equivalent to 60% of the electricity being consumed at that time. Regarding which facilities failed to cause this drop in power generation, Prieto stated that "we will only be able to determine the exact details once all the information from the control centers has been received and analyzed." However, the fact that Red Eléctrica knows for certain that the outage begins in the southwest of the peninsula "may suggest that the loss of generation is due to solar energy," he added, in a possible new disagreement with the government, which has also ruled out that the cause of the blackout was "excessive production" of renewables.

Power to the Spanish electricity system was fully restored at 11:15 a.m. on Tuesday, Prieto announced, and during the day the grid has been operating "in a normal, stable, and correct manner."