Spain-Portugal blackouts live: Officials race to identify cause after power supply finally restored

Power cuts in Spain and Portugal had “no effects in the UK” but the UK government is monitoring the situation and “any lessons learned from this event”, an energy minister has said.

Kerry McCarthy told the Commons: “Well, first of all, I think the whole House will want to send support to Spain and Portugal following the incidents yesterday.

“There were no effects in the UK but we do continue to closely monitor the situation and any lessons learned from this event.

“I’m not going to speculate as to the causes of that event but what we need to do is to ensure that our own systems are as resilient as possible.”

Ms McCarthy’s response came to the DUP’s Gregory Campbell, the MP for East Londonderry, who had raised questions over the reliance on net zero emissions.

“Given the sheer scale of the outages in both Portugal and Spain over the past few days, is it likely that the conference will consider and possibly conclude that there is some correlation between the obsession with net zero and what happened in Portugal and Spain?” he had asked.

Control room staff noticed the first incident at around 2am at the Keadby 2 gas-fired power plant in Lincolnshire, as well as the Viking Link interconnector between the UK and Denmark. Then, power plant failures were again seen at around 6pm.

National Energy System Operator (Neso), the quango that operates Britain’s grid, has confirmed to The Independent that officials are investigating the unexpected activity, with the cause still unknown. It is thought that there was a disconnection from the network in both instances, which was contained by control room engineers each time.

Emergency services in Spain received twice the number of calls as usual to the 112 emergency line during the power blackout across the country and neighbouring Portugal on Monday.

The 112 emergency services in Madrid saw nearly 5,000 calls from the start of the blackout at 12.33pm on Monday until 7am next day.

In Catalonia, there were around 14,000 calls to 112 between noon on Monday and 8am Tuesday, rising from approximately 7,100 calls received on a usual day.

The Valencian Community recorded nearly 32,000 calls, the highest among regions that shared data, while the Basque Country received 3,500 – twice the usual number – mostly for elevator rescues and power issues.

The Spanish armed forces said they responded to 7,117 emergency calls from people since the outage began on Monday.

It was in addition to support for hospitals and other facilities during the crisis that saw millions of people stranded or stuck in various places.

According to the Ministry of Defence, the military assisted 7,117 people and distributed 4,465 blankets, 1,612 rations and 3,520 bottles of water.

A state of emergency was declared in Spain and Portugal after the two countries were plunged into darkness.

Authorities are investigating seven deaths and their links to the mass power blackout in the country on Monday, state broadcaster RTVE reported.

At least six people died “under different circumstances” in the towns of Ferrol, Dumbría, Betanzos (A Coruña), and Taboadela (Ourense).

A man died in a fire started by a candle in the Carabanchel neighborhood of Madrid, following the outage.

Spain’s Civil Guard found the bodies of an elderly couple, aged 81 and 77, along with their son,56, at their home in Taboadela, a town in the northwestern region of Galicia.

Authorities believe the three died from carbon monoxide poisoning, likely caused by fumes from a generator located outside the house. One of the victims is said to have suffered from respiratory problems and occasionally needed breathing support.

Three more deaths linked to the outage were reported on Monday in Galicia: a 59-year-old man with health issues in Ferrol, an 80-year-old man in Betanzos, and an 86-year-old man in Dumbria.

Power has started returning to households with more than 99 per cent of the country’s supply restored.

A “black start” is the process of restoring power after a major cut.

It involves gradually restarting power plants individually and reconnecting them to the grid.

As Spain tried to get more power back on Monday it turned more gas and hydropower plants online and increased power imports from France and Morocco.

Some have jumped on the suggestion that Spain’s push to use renewable energy had made an impact. Last year, renewables accounted for 53 per cent of the country’s power generation. Solar photovoltaic (PV) accounted for 59 per cent of Spain’s electricity at the time of the blackout, wind nearly 12 per cent, nuclear almost 11 per cent and combined cycle gas plants 5 per cent, Red Electrica data showed.

In a span of just five minutes, between 12.30pm and 12.35 pm local time on Monday, solar PV generation plunged by more than 50 per cent to 8 gigawatts (GW) from more than 18 GW, the data showed.

The Independent’s climate correspondent Nick Ferris explains:

The sweeping power outage that hit Spain and Portugal this week has raised questions about the electricity grid in a region not normally known for blackouts.

Monday’s outage, one of the worst ever in Europe, started in the afternoon and lasted through nightfall, affecting tens of millions of people across the Iberian Peninsula. It disrupted businesses, hospitals, transit systems, cellular networks and other critical infrastructure.

Authorities in Spain and Portugal are still investigating exactly what caused the failure, though some information has emerged about happened.

Read to know everything that happened.

The EU will begin a thorough investigation of the blackout in Spain and Portugal, EU energy commissioner Dan Jorgensen has said.

It comes after the Portuguese prime minister called on the EU’s Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators to perform an independent audit of the outage.