A mix of factors. At least officially. One thing is certain: in blackout which hit the Spain the renewables they played a leading role. With all due respect to green phenomena. The Sanchez government raises Red Eléctric and the electricity production companies for what happened last April 28 April, when the entire Iberian peninsula remained in the dark. The minister for the ecological transition Sara Aagesen, underlined the presence of a wave of tension in the network that was not adequately mitigated and which caused the collapse of the entire system. On the one hand, Aagesen reported a possible planning error by Red Eléctric for that day. On the other, he highlighted the apparently anomalous operation of the power plants that should have contributed to the control of the voltage. The vice -president did not exclude the possibility that “a combination of both” is the basis of the blackout.
Aagesen, who presented the Council of Ministers on Tuesday relationship On the causes of the Blackout, he explained that the manager of the electrical system had planned the availability of ten conventional power plants (which could be gas, coal, nuclear, etc.) for April 28, taking into account the supply and production forecasts. However, the night before, the owner of one of these plants announced that it would not have been operational the following day. Ree therefore decided not to activate further central. “They made their calculations and realized that it was not necessary,” added Aagesen. It wasn’t like that.
It could be here theplanning errorsecond El Pais. But when it was dealing with managing the peaks of tension that in the end they put the system out of order, the nine central did not operate as expected. “Each of them”, observed the minister, “found a certain degree of non -compliance” and has not absorbed the tension as expected. Politics also reiterated that the system had a sufficient generation capacity to respond. “There was sufficient generation capacity to respond,” he observed, clarifying that the problem was not the lack of generation, like those who, during the worst phase of the energy crisis of 2021 and 2022, feared a large -scale blackout.
In a sort of Disclaimer, the government denies that this relationship is “a judgment”, excluding the resignation at the moment, in response to a question on if the government had already requested the step back of the president of Ree, Beatriz Editor. In addition, he refused to provide specific details on which plants failed and which companies belonged to. The Ministry for the ecological transition has asked the companies for the authorization to provide these data, but many of them asked that they were not made public, and the Agesen department believes that they are protected by law. However, saying that there are plants that have not absorbed reactive power as they should have means to point the finger at large electrical companies: Iberdrola, Endesa, Naturgy and Edp, which together represent almost the entire traditional generation park.
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The government is preparing a Package of measures To strengthen the system and prevent future blackouts such as the end of April. The minister has a precision that the report has not yet collected all the information requested from the parties involved. In analysis, Aagesen concludes that the blackout was caused by a “multifactorial” problem.
On the morning of April 28, several were detected fluctuations. And, given this situation, a few minutes before the blackout, Red Eléctric has ordered the activation of a new system, a combined gas cycle, the fastest response technology in situations like this. But it was not possible to do it before 14:00, when the blackout had already started. The lack of synchronous generation had already caused overseas on the morning of April 28. But also the actions taken by the system manager to mitigate fluctuations have contributed to this increase in tension. When one loss was blocked, another was opened. To check the frequency fluctuations, measures have been adopted that have further increased the tension of the system.
In the period before the blackout, the voltage It was very high and supported, which caused the extinguishing of generators. The interruptions began to occur in Granada, Badajoz, Segovia, Huelva and Cáceres. Of these safety interruptions, some have been activated improperly, stressed Aagesen, indicating a second source of responsibility for electrical companies. “The disconnections, some of which apparently improper, increase the tension” the analysis of the ministry.
These disconnections represented, as underlined the number four of the executive, one unstoppable chain reaction who prevented from checking the blackout. In these circumstances, the firewalls used to limit this type of phenomena to specific areas or areas – up to six loading of the load have been attempted, all failed – have proved to be completely insufficient.
Having definitively excluding a IT attack As a cause of the detention of the Iberian electrical system, the study identified different “vulnerability” of this type in different stages of the Spanish electrical system. These gaps will have to be corrected if you want to avoid that an attack of this type causes a large -scale blackout in the future. In the middle of the storm that surrounded the alleged case of corruption that involved the last two organizational secretaries of the PSOE, the investigation into the Blackout massif on April 28 suffered an acceleration. On May 21, Aagesen assured the Senate that his intention was to present the final report within three months. That is, before August. This means that the investigation conducted by the Government has moved significantly faster than expected, almost a month and a half before the deadline set by the commission of analysis of the electricity crisis.
Although the Spanish and European authorities had provided some details on what happened (the previous fluctuations of the continental electrical system, the overtesions in the South and South-West of Spain that preceded the first national electric blackout of the history or the failure of the firewalls, which prevented the problem in some areas or regions to avoid the final outcome), public opinion was not yet aware of the entire sequence of events. The official presentation of the report comes after the meetings of the Commission of Inquiry established by the executive following the Blackout have changed step in the last few days. Coincidence or not, this speed also coincided with the case of Santos Cerdán, overwhelmed by an investigation into corruption.
A long and complex document, which will not be the last. Between disputes and absent details, there will be other reports on the matter. In summary, three large fragility factors can be listing: management by Red Eléctric de España; errors and lack of market operators; The malfunction of renewable systems. Yes, because 22 percent of those in service at the time of collapse would not have respected the technical criteria. A testimony of the underestimation of the safety needs of the network in a moment of profound transformation of the electrical system. Just think that the role of the much -praised renewable is still governed by a twenty -five year ago.
And there is another detail that cannot go unnoticed. From 29 April onwards, the manager of the Spanish network has increased the share of conventional synchronous generation (i.e. gas and nuclear) and lowered the renewable generation share (i.e. photovoltaic and wind). The costs in the bill has obviously increased. Before they were so advantageous because only the system safety crumbs were spent. Necessarily that the renewables then cost little …
In short, it appears at least recklessly to continue on the Green road at all costs, which will lead Spain to concentrate exclusively on the sources of green energy. And accidents like those of April 28 risk becoming normal if it is ideology that moves political choices: blackout has a clear political matrix, non -technical. Because investing billions in renewables without investing in network safety is simply madness.
Franco Lodige, June 19, 2025
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