Two European nations hit by total power cut
The lights went off in several European nations on Monday causing chaos with no cause yet found for the massive power outage.
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As many as 60 million people in Europe were left without power after a huge blackout that spanned several nations.
There is still no clear reason for the outage which cut power to all of Portugal, Spain and – briefly – to south western France on Monday morning.
Just shy of 60 million people live on the Iberian Peninsula which is shared by Spain and Portugal.
A state of emergency has been delcared in Spain.
Power has begun to be restored to parts of Spain with the help of electricity from France and Morocco but Portugal remains without power hours later.
The two countries have seen chaotic scenes with all power to shops interrupted, no digital payments, phone lines down, traffic lights out and railways and metro systems brought to a halt.
There were images of long queues in darkened supermarkets as people paid with cash. In holiday resorts, tourists also paid cash but kicked back with beers in the sun.
Emergency services workers carried out 286 rescue operations on Monday to free people trapped inside lifts in Spain’s Madrid region during a nationwide blackout, the head of the regional government said.
One man posted a video on social media saying the blackout trapped him in a lift without coverage for around 40 minutes.
“By hitting the door and shouting a neighbour heard me and informed the municipal police,” who came half an hour later to free him, he said.
Spain and Portugal have a highly integrated energy grid that operates as an energy island and is linked to the rest of Europe through a small number of cross-border interconnections with France.
There have been conflicting reasons given for the massive outage.
Portugal has said the fault lies with Spain’s electricity grid. Portuguese energy company REN said “extreme temperature variations” in Spain had led to anomalous oscillations in the very high voltage lines”.
“These oscillations caused synchronisation failures between the electrical systems, leading to successive disturbances across the interconnected European network.”
The European Union said there was no indication of a cyber attack.
However, there are reports from Spain’s national cybersecurity office that a cyber-attack might have been a cause.
“We still don’t have conclusive information about the cause,” Spanish Premier Pedro Sánchez said at a press conference on Monday evening. “We don’t rule out any scenarios.”
“We must focus on the most important thing now: bringing back electricity to all households,” Mr Sánchez added.
Spanish authoiroteis have asked people to use phones sparingly out of concern for overloading the telecommunications network which has been partly knocked out of use.
On Monday afternoon, Spain’s transmission operator said power had begun to be restored to the country’s north, west and south including populous regions including Catalonian, where Barcelona is situated.
At 9.30 pm, 20 per cent of Spain had power with some electricty now restored to Madrid.
There is still no power in Portugal.
Originally published as Two European nations hit by total power cut
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