Spain’s Telecinco TV channel has accessed the internal exchanges of Red Eléctrica technicians which are under analysis by an investigative committee.
In the days preceding April’s blackout, technicians had been complaining of excessive current fluctuations resulting from solar power sources. These concerns were being expressed right up to the start of the outage.
On April 26 a technician communicated with Red Eléctrica (REE):
Technician: “We are experiencing a ton of power fluctuations“.
REE: “Yes, we see several areas affected, ok? It has to do with solar“.
On April 28, just minutes before the system outage:
Technician: “Do you have any idea what is going on with the current? There is a spike; within one hour this has happened five or six times“.
REE: “Yes, it’s the solar; it comes in and out according to price and because of readjustments“.
On June 3, a panel of experts from the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (Entso-E) met for a second time to discuss the origin of the blackout of April 28 in Spain and Portugal.
The entity’s objectivity has been questioned by commercial operators, leading it to create a public-use information website with the chronology of the incident.
Entso-E identified two significant power oscillations in the half-hour preceding the power collapse around 12.30pm CET, the second of which was adequately managed by the the power compensation mechanisms that reduced power circulation between Spain and France.
A subsequent power surge was, though, not properly compensated for and resulted in a power collapse in southern Spain that quickly brought down the entire peninsular network, following a disconnect with the French electrical grid, as a response to a fall in supply synchronicity.
Entso-E praised the work of technicians with Red Eléctrica in Spain and REN in Portugal, in re-establishing power in just a few hours, working in close collaboration with the French RTE and Moroccan ONEE.
The panel comprises experts from the Energy Regulators Co-operation Agency (ACER), the national regulatory authorities and the Regional Co-ordination Centres (CCR), headed by Klaus Kaschnitz (APG, Austria) and Richard Balog (MAVIR, Hungary).
The meetings are set to continue and will likely focus on why the system in southern Spain failed to manage the oscillations as normal.