The third vice president of the government and minister for the ecological transition and the demographic challenge, Sara Aagesen, has advanced on Monday that in the ongoing investigation it has been discovered that there was a third incident in the electrical system, which took place 19 seconds before the blackout of April 28 and that it has been located in southern Spain.
“When we have made ‘zoom’ we have also wanted to know not only the information of those five seconds where the two information that already supplied Red Electrica” (REE) occurred. “We have looked at the previous minutes that happened [el apagón] And we have seen that 19 seconds before there was also a loss of generation, therefore another disturbance that adds to the previous two, ”Aagesen advanced in an interview in RTVE, collected by Europa Press.
The minister for the ecological transition has explained that it must be seen if there is a relationship between them and if there is not, as well as the cause and the consequence. He has recognized that there are still “many things” to identify, and has defended that the word prudence “is complicated in this context.” “There is a lot of appetite to know, we are the first, but we are going to give rigorous information and with certainty.”
He also said that the government has no evidence that an installation or central in itself fails. “What we know is, as I say, three milestones, the first 19 seconds before, another right in southwest Spain and later, 1.3 seconds later another loss of generation,” Aagesen clarified.
“Until now we know that this new incidental of 19 seconds before has occurred in southern Spain and the next two occurred in the southwest,” added the third vice president.
Regarding the analysis committee, what the government is doing is characterizing the entire system, identifying atypical situations. “What we have explained many times that the energy system is complex for us to have a magnitude range. We work in potential data that we have requested that more than 750 million data will reach,” he explained.
Aagesen will hold a telematic meeting on Monday with the Minister of Industry and Energy of France, Marc Ferracci, while presiding over the third meeting of the Committee for the analysis of the circumstances that caused the blackout last Monday. The third vice president has defended the need to reinforce the interconnections of Spain with the rest of Europe through France, although the Gallic country has been showing reluctance for the environmental impact. He pointed out that Europe has 10% interconnection objectives of the peninsula and is now “below 3%.”
AELEC, the electric employer of which Endesa, Iberdrola and EDP Spain (although Naturgy) are part, has claimed on Monday to be one of the interested parties in the committee created by the Government to investigate the causes of the blackout and will also request “being able to have full and transparent access to all the information about the incident available to the system operator”, Ree.
-In a statement, the president of AELEC, Marina Serrano, said that the association and its associated companies want to convey “their strongest will to collaborate” in the procedure that is being instructed by the Ministry, “facilitating each and every one of the data that is requested and available in this regard, as it has been done and will continue to be done whenever it is required”.
However, he stressed that this collaboration and transparency not only concerns the companies of the association, “but it must also be effective, particularly, by all those agents of the sector whose fundamental mission is to ensure that the electricity supply is not interrupted in the way it happened last Monday, that is, the system operator”, Ree.
Thus, Serrano indicated that, “to guarantee the impartiality and efficiency in determining the responsibilities to which it would have been, avoiding conflicts of interest,” and taking into account the participation in the Ree Committee, “it must also be counted on the effective participation of AELEC and its associated companies.”
AELEC argues that electric power companies cannot make a complete diagnosis of what happened because they do not have access to the system set, which are held by Ree. It defends that the rest of the system agents -the generators and the distributors -can “have full and transparent access to all the information about the incident available to Red Eléctrica, in the same way that Red Electricity has all the information that, in a diligent way, is sending the rest of the agents of the system”.
The employer defends that both that committee and the diagnosis must have the maximum representation of the agents to which the system operator sent slogans in real time on zero supply day. “Therefore, from AELEC, it is proposed to include generation and distribution agents in that commission,” he said.
In addition, the cabinet led by Sara Aagesen, this committee is composed of representatives of the Government’s presidency, through the Department of National Security, and other ministries: the Ministry of Defense, with the National Intelligence Center and the General Staff; the Interior Ministry, through the National Center for Critical Infrastructure Protection and the Cyber Coordination Office; and the Ministry for digital transformation and public function.
They are also part of the other entities committee, such as the Nuclear Safety Council and the National Cybersecurity Institute of Spain. In addition, it has the support of the National Commission of Markets and Competition (CNMC), as well as the possible incorporation to experts in the field already representatives of other administrations and the public or private sector in order to have the best information about what happened.
