A sweeping power outage left millions of people in Spain, Portugal and parts of France without electricity on Monday, leading to chaotic scenes and widespread disruption.
A problem with the power connection between France and Spain was a contributing factor to the outage, the head of a trade body that represents Europe’s power industry said.
Kristian Ruby, of Eurelectric, told the BBC Radio 4’s The World Tonight a “specific incident with an interconnector between France and Spain” occurred on Monday.
Mr Ruby said this “meant the Spanish grid was disconnected from the broader European grid”.
He added that the interconnector incident was unlikely to have caused the outage on its own and that there were “likely to have been other elements in this equation”.
A day of widespread disruption saw trains cancelled and evacuated in some regions, and traffic lights stop working as delays mounted at airports.
As of Monday evening, 11 trains remained stranded, Spanish Transport Minister Oscar Puente said.
With shops, homes and restaurants plunged into darkness – and some people stuck in lifts – Spain’s electricity network said by mid-afternoon that restoring power could take several hours.
By Monday night, 50% of power had been restored across Spain, according to Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. While Portuguese energy provider REN said electricity had been restored to 750,000 customers.
But a state of emergency remained in place, with regions able to request the special status.
Sánchez said the cause of the outage was still being investigated and warned against speculation, while Portuguese Prime Minister Luís Montenegro said there was “no indication” of a cyber attack.
(BBC News)
