The expected report of the committee that the Government created after the historic peninsular blackout of April 28 to explain its causes “With total transparency”, In expression of Pedro Sánchez, hidden, at the request of companies, what facilities they failed.
The government announced Tuesday that it would publish “in the afternoon” the reportwhich finally did not make public until 23.00 at night.
It is a document without legal validity (the participation of companies in this investigation was voluntary, remember government sources) and full of studs to preserve confidentiality. The 182 pages report distributes responsibilities between the system operator, Electric Red, and the electricity, at the conclusion that the blackout had a “multifactorial” origin related to surge problems.
Specifically, “a combination of conditions that brought the system to the point that it triggered a reaction in over -overdraft, not having identified a unique failure that can explain on its own the fall of the system.”
On the advice of the State Advocacy, the report has “anonymity” information due to an “obligation of confidentiality”, “in most occasions” at the request of the actors involved, according to the explanations of the third vice president and minister for the ecological transition, Sara Aagesen, who will appear this week in the commission of official secrets of the Congress of the Deputies.
The document does not indicate responsibilities because, as Aagesen said in the press conference after the Council of Ministers, it will be “the administrative procedures” and judicial that must be set, in reference to the decisions that in their case take the regulator of the sector, the National Commission of the Markets and the Competition (CNMC) and the National Court, which has opened investigation proceedings. As a background are the millionaire compensation at stake that will claim those affected by the cut.
The “multifactorial” origin of “a systemic situation of overwhelming that is the one that causes the generalized generation disconnection”, according to the report, and resulted in the largest blackout of the history of Spain, starts the eve. On Sunday 27, the system operator, Red Eléctrica (REE), whose largest shareholder (20%) is the state, programmed the activity of 10 thermal plants (most, gas plants with synchronous technology, in the slang of the sector) with the ability to regulate tension in the so -called technical restriction market, where the combined cycle plants usually go, which work with natural gas.
This is the “lowest” number of plants scheduled “from the beginning of the year”, highlights the Executive. In addition, one of those gas plants is declared unavailable (none is identified, but it is “in the southern zone,” says the report) at 8:00 p.m. on Sunday; And Ree does not replenish it from 9.00 in the day of the blackout, which points to a planning error of the system operator, although, according to Aages in an interview in the SER, “in view of the circumstances and their simulations they saw that it was not necessary.”
On Monday of the blackout, “some” of those gas plants that were able to regulate the tension (and charge for it) did not do so and “some, even produced reactive energy, the opposite of what is required, contributing to increase the problem,” according to the department of Aagesen. Again, it does not identify what plants are. That information “will come,” Aagesen said in the SER.
The employer Aelec, to which Iberdrola and Endesa belong, said Tuesday that it has “evidence” that the centrals of its partners “have met the regulatory requirements in the field of tension control, as contemplated in the process of calculating technical restrictions” or even “above” those demands.
Half an hour before the blackout, the two oscillations in the system that the European Association of Transportists Entso-E have begun, which also prepares its own report. The first oscillation, “atypical”, originates at 12.03 in a photovoltaic generation installation in Badajoz that is not identified. There is one of the largest photovoltaic in Europe, the Núñez de Balboa, of Iberdrola, with 500 megawatts of power.
This plant with “an anomalous oscillatory behavior in the active and reactive power output”, according to the report, forces according to ecological transition “to modify the system configuration, increasing the difficulties in stabilizing tension.” The oscillation takes 4 minutes and 42 seconds to cushion.
After a second more common oscillation originating in Central Europe, the system operator claims the availability of a central capable of contributing to regulate the tension, “but it was technically impossible to do it before the collapse”: I needed an hour and a half to do so.
Next, generation centrals were disconnected, “some in an apparently improper way” because they did so before exceeding the voltage thresholds established by the regulations for it (between 380 kV and 435 kV in the transport network). Once the chain reaction began, the usual protections of the electrical system could not stop or contain this process.
Some of these protections, such as the deslastres, “were able to contribute to the phenomenon of over -theothearter by further downloading the lines, contributing to the rise of tensions, because they acted to compensate for the fall of generation and not to manage the tension.”
“In summary, tension control resources were missing, either because they were not scheduled in sufficiency, either because those who were scheduled did not provide it properly, or by a combination of both, but not because they were missing in the country; there was a generation park rather than enough to respond,” according to ecological transition.
This Wednesday will appear at the Ree offices in three songs (Madrid) the non -executive president of her matrix Redeia, former Minister Beatriz Corredor, together with the CEO, Roberto García Merino, and the general director of Operation of Ree, Concha Sánchez, to present the report of the system operator on the incident “In compliance with current regulations.”
Without delivering information
The Committee has found “restrictions” when accessing all the information requested by several system agents, with sending letters included in the sector, as Eldiario.es advanced. This is the information about these generation disconnections, as confirmed on Tuesday night Aagesen.
Once its work is over, “and always within the conditions of transparency and confidentiality with which it has been conducted, it will inform the CNMC those issues that deserve to be studied to, where appropriate, open the corresponding administrative procedures, with all the guarantees, and all its consequences,” according to the Government.
The interministerial commission report finally rules out the cyber attack theory that the Executive kept open for weeks.
The Government will approve in the next Council of Ministers a package of measures to increase the robustness of the electrical system and urges the CNMC to be approved at once the new voltage control service that according to the superregulator itself is obsolete and that Ree proposed in 2021. CNMC itself proposed to change it in 2019 and in 2022, after recognizing “continuous problems of tension control”, he decided to test that It would allow renewables to regulate massive tension with less cost overrun for the consumer, with a pilot project. He did it, the president of the super -regulator, Cani Fernández, said after the blackout, because the EU forced them to do so.
Thus, the report recommends on the one hand the “approval and urgent implementation of the new voltage control service”; and, on the other, “to accelerate the Constitution and adequate endowment of the National Energy Commission” (CNE), the old regulator that absorbed the CNMC in 2013, to have a “specialized and focused supervisor exclusively in the energy sector, in view of the high complexity and specificity of the sector, the growing abundance and concretion of applicable technical regulations, the need for greater supervision and transparency, and the criticality of the sector for the sector set of society, of the national economy and security ”. The bill to recover the CNE has been bogged down in Congress for months.
The report has been submitted 49 days after the blackout, “practically half of the time that Europe gives to present its report to the EU” and long earlier than expected.
Aagesen had promised that the document would be ready before three months from the incident, but in recent days (in parallel to the explosion of the scandal of alleged corruption of Santos Cerdán, already former secretary of Organization of the PSOE) the meetings of the interministerial committee that has investigated the cut. The last ones, last Friday, Sunday and Monday.
This body chaired by AAGESEN and formed “by state professionals of recognized prestige” was created on April 30. It was made up of several ministries and has held 14 meetings since that historic Iberian zero, which has caused cross accusations among electrical companies (singularly Iberdrola), and the system operator, with the background of the multimillion -dollar compensation at stake.
In the investigation, more than 75 people have participated in 6 teams, “with unprecedented public-private coordination and 3 levels of analysis”: the system operator, the control centers distributed throughout the territory and the generation facilities.
The Committee has analyzed millions of data on the operations of the electrical system, from technical reports and assessments of the operators to variable measurements such as tension, frequency or power. The report structures the facts in 5 phases: instability in the morning of the blackout and even the previous days; the oscillations between 12:00 and 12:30 on April 28; generation losses; the peninsular collapse and the replacement phase of the supply.
