MADRID (Reuters) -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 Prieto 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, which in turn led to the collapse of the Spanish electricity network.
“As the 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 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.
(Reporting by Joan Faus and Inti Landauro, editing by Aislinn Laing and Sonali Paul)
