A Long Wait To Find Out

If you are eager to know what caused the nationwide outage on April the 28th, then you will have to wait at least six month. However...

The Red Europea de Gestores de Redes de Transporte de Electricidad (ENTSO-E) announced this timetable because of the complexity of the event. This entity points out in its preliminary report that there had been “two tension and frequency fluctuations” in Europe just before the outage across the Iberian Peninsular, approximately half an hour before.

These anomalies took place between 12.03h and 12.07h and then between 12.19h and 12.21h. In other words, these anomalies finished a mere twelve minutes before the Spanish network collapsed. Both the Spanish and French networks took steps to mitigate these fluctuations.

These fluctuations had ceased before the Spanish network blackout. In fact, at the moment of the outage, Spain was in the throes of exporting 1,000 megawatts to France, 2,000 mw to Portugal and 800 mw to Morocco. In other words, there was no shortage of electricity supply in Spain

The above mentioned entity (ENTSO-E) is the one that has been entrusted with compiling an independent report for the European Union.

At precisely 12:32:57h the tension dropped to only 48 hertz during the transfers and automatically the connection with France and Portugal was cut because of the difference in tension. Then at precisely 12:33:24h, the Spanish network collapsed.

France came back on line at 12.44h, connecting to western Spain via a 400 kW line and 20 minutes later the connection between Morocco and Spain was restored. From then, Spain’a hydro-electric stations began supplying energy to kick start the combined gas-power stations by 13.30h, bringing electricity to the eastern side of the Franco-Spanish border (Barcelona, etc)

At 16.11h and 17.26h Portugal’s two power station with a black start capacity fired up and began to transfer power to Spain via a 220-kW line. Then at 21.35h the 400-kW-line connection between the south of the two countries was also restored.

Portugal was finally restored to full power at 00.22h the next day and Spain around 04.00h.

As an aside concerning black start: A black start is the process of restoring an electric power station, a part of an electric grid, or an industrial plant, to operation without relying on an external power source.

So, rather than an explanation as to why the system collapsed, this is the sequence of it going down and how it was restored.

(Spain)

Keywords: Black Start, Outage, 400 kw, 200 kw, France, Portugal, Morocco, Current Fluctuations, ENTSO-E

news, black start, outage, 400 kw, 200 kw, france, portugal, morocco, current fluctuations, entso-e

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