In Spain, "many days" to know the causes of the mega-power outage, warns the Minister of the Environment

"We are talking about many more days" to wait to know the precise causes of the incident, Sara Aagesen said in an interview published Sunday in El Pais, referring in particular to a very complex electrical system (...).

"All hypotheses are open," the minister assured, even that of a "cyberattack."

But, questioned several times about the role that renewable energies could have played in this failure, the minister ended up admitting the possibility of an initial anomaly coming from photovoltaic installations in the southwest of Spain, as had already been mentioned by the Spanish electricity network manager (REE).

"To date, we don't know which installations in the system have stopped working" in this region, said Sara Aagesen. "Talking about solar photovoltaics might be premature, even though we can see the different production technologies in the region on the map. And there is a lot of solar photovoltaics in southwest Spain."

But "renewable energies are not dangerous in themselves," the minister insisted: "pointing the finger at them as the cause of the incident" is, according to her, "a facile diagnosis" and is "irresponsible and simplistic."

Following the outage, industry experts questioned whether a possible imbalance between electricity production and demand, which is more difficult to correct without adequate technologies in a network where wind and solar power are more important, could have contributed to the collapse of the Spanish system.

The country's electricity production has incorporated this "energy mix for a long time," the minister recalled, "ruling out" from the outset the possibility of "a large amount of renewable energy entering the system, since there have been many other days with more solar production in Spain, and much less demand, and (that) the system has worked very well."

"Renewable energies allow Spain to achieve significant energy independence in a geopolitically vulnerable world," assured the Minister for Ecological Transition.

She also stressed the need for connectivity, particularly with France: "Given what happened on Monday, it is clear that the more interconnections we have, the more robust the Iberian system will be."

For environmental reasons, France views the installation of two new interconnections across the Pyrenees with disapproval, the minister assured. "We insist that this must be an objective that extends beyond our two countries alone. We are talking about a European market, and this cannot be a debate between France and Spain."

"France must realize that interconnections must be made, whatever happens," she concludes, saying she is "convinced that we can mitigate the environmental impact."