Causes The power avat, which left millions in Spain and Portugal without electricity on Monday, has not yet been fully determined, although the service was restored to 99 percent of the Iberian Peninsula. Red Eléctrica, a public company responsible for servicing the Spanish transmission infrastructure, initially ruled out cyber attack, human error or extraordinary weather or weather conditions as a cause of failure. The company indicates that the incident could come from two “disconnections of the generation”, probably related to the inherent variability of renewable sources.
Specialists emphasize that this type of total blackout – a unique and sporadic event – is also a security mechanism of the electricity system itself. For the mesh to work stable, energy production must be kept in balance with wear; The imbalance can cause blackout and potentially damage the infrastructure.
Maintaining a network balance is the duty of a system operator that monitors parameters, such as electrical frequency, voltage and load from real -time substation. When there are significant discrepancies between production and demand, automatic disconnections are activated in specific network areas to avoid imbalance. In the most earnest situations, the impact of these activated disconnections can extend to the entire network.
“This generalized blackout took place, because in just five seconds more than half of the capacity of generating electricity was lost,” said Álvaro de la Puente Gil, professor of electrical engineering at the School of Mining Engineering University of León, in the comments Science Media Center (SMC) in Spain. The net, unable to balance such a violent decline between production and demand, protected automatically, disconnecting both internally and from the rest of the European grid.
In the comments to SMC Miguel de Simón Martín, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of León, explains that balance on the net is usually guaranteed by three things. The first is a sophisticated network of connected lines, known as a mesh that spreads electric flows on the mesh to prevent overload. Secondly, there are connections with the networks of neighboring countries that allow you to import or export energy if necessary to balance the production and demand.
Finally, there is something called “mechanical inertia”. Synchronous generators – huge spinning machines that produce electricity in energy stations – also store a lot of energy in very huge rotational parts. Imagine, say, coal -fired power plant. Even if it stops burning coal to produce more power, huge, ponderous turbines, from which it uses to create electricity, will continue to rotate for some time due to the energy stored in them. This phenomenon is known as mechanical inertia, it can act as a buffer against sudden fluctuations in the grid. When there are imbalances between energy production and demand, synchronous generators can accelerate or leisurely down their rotational speed to balance things, basically acting as a grid shock absorber by absorbing or releasing energy if necessary.
“The large, well -fighted mesh, with strong connections and abundant synchronous generators, will be more stable and less susceptible to failures,” says De Simón Martín, “Spanish Peninsula power network is historically solid and reliable international international, international, international, international, enables international, international conditions, conditional, conditional, conditional, conditionally, conditionally, conditionally, conditionally, conditionally, conditionally, conditional, conditionally, conditionally, conditionally, conditionally, conditionally, conditionally, conditional, conditionally, conditionally, conditionally, conditionally, conditionally, conditionally, conditionally, conditionally, conditionally, conditionally, conditional, conditionally, conditionally, conditional, conditionally, conditionally, conditionally, conditionally, conditionally, conditionally, conditionally, conditionally, conditionally, conditionally, conditionally, conditionally, conditionally, the geographical barrier of Pyrenees.