Re: The Spanish Grid Drop-out - recently released information.

On 2025-05-10 18:46, Bill Sloman wrote:

One of my LinkedIn contacts - an IEEE contact in this case - posted some new data on LinkedIn, from a "Simon Gallagher, Managing Director at UK Networks Services | CEng | FIET | FEI | MBA "

Today the ministry said that they have ruled out a hacking of the REE, but not in other places. And that it originated in Granada, Badajoz and Sevilla (loss of generation).
Spanish:
<https://www.eldiario.es/economia/aagesen-avanza-desconexiones-generacion-apagon-empezaron-granada-badajoz-sevilla_1_12297171.html>
  Aagesen says that the generation disconnections before the blackout began in Granada, Badajoz and Seville.
     They began with a substation in Granada and then occurred in Badajoz and Seville; the vice-president speaks of ‘overvoltage’ problems, rules out a cyber-attack on Red Eléctrica and stresses that ‘hypotheses have already been ruled out’: it was not a problem of coverage, reserve ‘or the size of the networks’.
The Third Vice-President and Minister for Ecological Transition, Sara Aagesen, announced this Wednesday in the Congress of Deputies that the generation losses prior to the historic blackout on 28 April ‘began in Granada, Badajoz and Seville’. Aagesen, who confirmed that a cyber-attack on Red Eléctrica has been ruled out, spoke of problems of ‘overvoltage’ in the system and explained that they are analysing whether the oscillations detected in Europe half an hour before the cut were related to the incident.
In an appearance in the plenary session to explain the crisis, the vice-president explained that, after ‘at least two periods of oscillations’ in the 30 minutes prior to the blackout, which were detected in the peninsular and European system, with “low” demand at that time, there were ‘three losses’ of generation: the first, ‘in a substation in Granada’ at 12 hours, 32 minutes and 57 seconds; 19 seconds later, another substation in Badajoz was disconnected; and 20.3 seconds later, another in Seville. ‘The sum of these three events’ accumulated a loss of just over 2.2 gigawatts ‘in 20 seconds’.
  The committee investigating the blackout is analyzing “disconnections that may be due to overvoltage as a triggering element of the cascading drop” that came just after. The control systems of the different operators reflect that that morning “recorded volatility in the voltages”, previous: “Rises and falls” prior to that zero and those oscillations. That is why they are analyzing “not only that morning”, but also the days prior to the blackout.
Aagesen explained that after these disconnections in these three provinces, the synchronism with the European system was lost: the interconnections with France jump, the Iberian Peninsula is isolated from the rest of the continent and the “deregulation” occurs, that is, the demand ceases to be fed. After disconnecting “the first step of deregulation”, the frequency in the grid “continues to drop” and “successive steps of deregulation” are activated in a short period of time. At 12 hours, 33 minutes and 22 seconds “the sixth time step of dredging” is activated and the system ends up collapsing to “peninsular zero”.
The Vice-president explained that the inter-ministerial committee that is analyzing the causes of the incident, which has already held six meetings and has a group dedicated to the electricity system and another for cybersecurity, is analyzing “millions of data with the best equipment on behalf of the Administration”. He stated that the collaboration of the sector's agents is being “full”. Information has been requested from more than thirty generation control centers, distributors and aggregations of large generation productions above 1,000 megawatts.
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
(... continues on the link)
--
Cheers, Carlos.