Spain-Portugal power outage live: Officials race to find cause of blackout as electricity returns to homes

Power outages left tens of millions of people in Spain and Portugal in the dark on Monday.

The blackouts shut off phone service and traffic lights, stopped trains, and cut off water access for U.S. Open champion Coco Gauff following her win at the Madrid Open, along with countless others.

Hospitals and other emergency services switched to generators, and gas stations stopped working. The outage also briefly impacted France, and there were reports of an internet disruption in Morocco.

The cause of the outages remains under investigation, and officials with Portuguese energy company Redes Energéticas Nacionais have denied reports that it was tied to an “atmospheric phenomenon,” according to The New York Times. Spanish President Pedro Sánchez has urged people not to speculate.

Could the blackout happen in the US? Read here:

The UK has been looking at how to deal with “different kinds of challenges and threats”, the home secretary has said, after the major power outage in Spain and Portugal.

Asked whether the power cut there had triggered a fear that British infrastructure could be affected in the same way, Yvette Cooper told Sky News that the UK has a “continued approach” to “resilience” and “security issues”.

She added: “We’ve been looking, as part of wider security reviews across the country, how we deal with both resilience and also different kinds of challenges and threats.

“Some of which can be the traditional security challenges, some of which can be the kinds of resilience – things that we’re talking about in Spain and Portugal – and we obviously support them and the governments there in the work that they’re doing.”

More than 99 per cent of the energy demand in Spain has been restored, electricity operator Red Electrica said on Tuesday morning.

By 7am, electricity had been restored to almost the entire country after the severe blackout wreaked havoc across the Iberian peninsula.

Portugal has also announced a full recovery from its blackout, with all 6.4 million electricity clients having their power supplies normalised, the government has said.

But with life slowly returning to normal, many people are still crowded into train stations waiting to board, with internet connections were intermittent.

The Madrid Open, the tennis tournament being held this week, was still affected by the power outage after its cancellation the previous day and delayed the opening of its doors. In several regions, classes remain suspended.

It is unclear what caused the blackout, prime minister Pedro Sanchez said on Monday.

“We have never had a complete collapse of the system,” Sanchez said, explaining how Spain’s power grid lost 15 gigawatts, the equivalent of 60% of its national demand, in just five seconds.

Officials said there was little precedent for this kind of widespread electric failure across all of the Iberian Peninsula, but the prospect of foul play has been ruled out by authorities.

Earlier, however, Portuguese grid operator REN had said that a “rare atmospheric phenomenon” in Spain caused the widespread outage.

Climate correspondent Nick Ferris explains what this means:

The Portuguese grid operator REN claimed that extreme temperature variations in Spain’s interior had caused ‘induced atmospheric vibration’ in the power grid.

They suggested that vibrations in the power lines – which normally create the ‘hum’ you can hear when electricity passes through – became so bad that the entire network broke down.

REN described it as a “complex phenomenon” that could take up to a week to fix, due to the need to rebalance international electricity flows.

Spanish authorities have said that they are still investigating the cause of the blackout, but hope to have it fixed by the end of Monday.

Portugal’s prime minister Luis Montenegro said he expected power to be restored in the coming hours.

The Independent’s travel correspondent Simon Calder writes:

After the power outage around noon on Monday 28 April hobbled airports, airlines and air-traffic control systems, the final flight cancellation count has just been announced by aviation analysts Cirium.

Passengers travelling to, from and within Spain encountered 413 cancellations, while the score for Portugal is 372. But because many of those are links between the two countries, and are therefore “double counted,” The Independent believes the true total is around 500 – affecting an estimated 80,000 passengers.

The worst affected airport was Lisbon, with 45 per cent of departures grounded. Next was Seville, where one-third of departing flights were cancelled. In absolute terms, though, Madrid and Barcelona were the Spanish cities with the highest number of cancellations – around 50 at each.

Cirium says that 25 flights from the UK to Portugal were cancelled, along with 11 outbound flights to Spain. The same number of inbound services were affected. In total, upwards of 4,000 passengers trying to get to or from Great Britain had their flights grounded. Northern Ireland’s airports suffered no cancellations.

Portugal has fully recovered from its blackout, with all 6.4 million electricity clients having their power supplies normalised, the government has said.

All airports are now operating although some recovery efforts are still underway in Lisbon, the government announced.

Trains are now working, schools reopening and the health service is fully stabilised.

Transport systems are unravelling in Spain and Portugal following massive power cuts across the Iberian peninsula.

The electricity supply in both countries appears to have shut down at around 12.30pm local time on Monday – hitting everything from traffic lights to trains, including underground railways. While the exact cause of the shutdown is still not clear, the impact on travellers is all too evident.

Spain is by far the biggest draw of any overseas country for British holidaymakers, and Portugal is also very popular. The Independent estimates about 500,000 tourists are currently in Spain – including the Balearic and Canary islands.

Our travel correspondent Simon Calder reports:

Portugal’s entire grid has been “stabilised” after mass outages across most of the Iberian Peninsula, and all power substations were back on line before midnight, grid operator REN has announced.