Reuters
Spain and Portugal switched their power back on after the worst blackout in their history, though authorities offered little explanation for what had caused it or how they would prevent it happening again.
Traffic lights were back on, train and metro services slowly returned and schools reopened. Commuters battled with delays to get back to work after an outage that had left people stranded in lifts and cut off from phone contact with their families.
The sudden outage had seen the equivalent of 60% of demand in Spain drop in five seconds around midday on Monday.
While Spanish grid operator REE on Tuesday ruled out a cyber attack as the cause, Spain's High Court said it would investigate whether the country's energy infrastructure had suffered a terrorist strike while Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said his government had not ruled out any hypothesis.
"We must not rush to (conclusions) and (commit) errors through haste," Sanchez said on Tuesday. "We will find out what happened in those five seconds."
REE said it had identified two incidents of power generation loss, probably from solar plants, in Spain’s southwest that caused instability in the electric system and led to a breakdown of its interconnection with France.
Spain is one of Europe's biggest producers of renewable energy, and the blackout sparked debate about whether the volatility of supply from solar or wind made its power systems more vulnerable.
Redeia, which owns Red Electrica, warned in February in its annual report that it faced a risk of "disconnections due to the high penetration of renewables without the technical capacities necessary for an adequate response in the face of disturbances".
Investment bank RBC said the economic cost of the blackout could range between 2.25 billion and 4.5 billion euros, blaming the Spanish government for being too complacent about infrastructure in a system dependent on solar power with little battery storage.
SEAT said power returned to its Barcelona car plant at 1:00 am on Tuesday but that it still wasn't at full production.
Volkswagen said its plant in Navarra lost a day of production - equivalent to 1,400 cars - as it was not able to restart until 2:30 pm on Tuesday.
Traffic lights were back on, train and metro services slowly returned and schools reopened. Commuters battled with delays to get back to work after an outage that had left people stranded in lifts and cut off from phone contact with their families.
The sudden outage had seen the equivalent of 60% of demand in Spain drop in five seconds around midday on Monday.
While Spanish grid operator REE on Tuesday ruled out a cyber attack as the cause, Spain's High Court said it would investigate whether the country's energy infrastructure had suffered a terrorist strike while Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said his government had not ruled out any hypothesis.
"We must not rush to (conclusions) and (commit) errors through haste," Sanchez said on Tuesday. "We will find out what happened in those five seconds."
REE said it had identified two incidents of power generation loss, probably from solar plants, in Spain’s southwest that caused instability in the electric system and led to a breakdown of its interconnection with France.
Spain is one of Europe's biggest producers of renewable energy, and the blackout sparked debate about whether the volatility of supply from solar or wind made its power systems more vulnerable.
Redeia, which owns Red Electrica, warned in February in its annual report that it faced a risk of "disconnections due to the high penetration of renewables without the technical capacities necessary for an adequate response in the face of disturbances".
Investment bank RBC said the economic cost of the blackout could range between 2.25 billion and 4.5 billion euros, blaming the Spanish government for being too complacent about infrastructure in a system dependent on solar power with little battery storage.
SEAT said power returned to its Barcelona car plant at 1:00 am on Tuesday but that it still wasn't at full production.
Volkswagen said its plant in Navarra lost a day of production - equivalent to 1,400 cars - as it was not able to restart until 2:30 pm on Tuesday.
