An “extraordinary” power outage in Spain and Portugal has brought businesses across Iberia to a standstill. Public transport, internet connectivity, and businesses and homes across the Iberian Peninsula, have been hit by the outage. More than 50 million people live and work on the Peninsula, with authorities confirming work is ongoing to try and restore […]
An “extraordinary” power outage in Spain and Portugal has brought businesses across Iberia to a standstill.
Public transport, internet connectivity, and businesses and homes across the Iberian Peninsula, have been hit by the outage.
More than 50 million people live and work on the Peninsula, with authorities confirming work is ongoing to try and restore power to the affected parts of the two nations – which includes the capital cities of Madrid and Lisbon, as well as other major cities including Barcelona, Porto and Seville.
Portugal’s grid operator has warned it could take up to a week for the network to fully normalise after the outage, which was first reported around midday local time.
The outage saw traffic lights suddenly stop working, causing traffic to pile up on roads, while train services in both countries have ground to a halt. Passengers at major airports are also facing disruption, with many operating on backup electrical systems.
Spanish telecoms operators have reported severe network disruption due to the outage. Vodafone used its social media platforms to warn users in Spain that its network was “temporarily operating at 70% capacity”.
“In parallel, measures are being taken to maintain communications for as long as possible, prioritising and managing resources and network capacity in the most efficient way,” it said in a statement.
Its Spanish rival MasOrange has also reportedly experienced issues, with the company telling Spanish news outlet El Confidencial that is has resorted to gas-powered generators to keep power on at its Madrid headquarters.
The official cause of the blackout has yet to be determined, but REN blamed a fault in the Soanish electricity grid, claiming extreme temperature variations in Spain had led to “anomalous oscillations” in very high-voltage lines.
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This has yet to be confirmed by the Spanish authorities, with Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez saying there was no conclusive information available on what had triggered the outage. However, Portugal’s National Cybersecurity Centre did confirm there was no evidence the outage had been caused by a cyber-attack.
Eduardo Prieto, head of operations at Red Electrica, called the unprecedented event “exceptional and extraordinary” and warned it could take days for normal service to be resumed, although some substations had been restored in North, South and West Spain by this afternoon.
