Widespread power outage hits Spain and neighboring countries France and Portugal
Power went down Monday afternoon in vast areas of Spain, crossing over into Portugal and France, causing widespread outages in homes and businesses and bringing transportation infrastructure to a halt. Lisbon, Madrid, Seville, Barcelona, and Valencia are reportedly affected. The outage began at around 12:30PM CET.
Play has been suspended at the Madrid Open tennis tournament, according to Sky News. Madrid’s underground rail system has reportedly been evacuated and traffic lights in the city aren’t operating. Air traffic in Spain and Portugal is also reportedly affected by outages at area airports, with Spanish airport operator Aena saying on X that backup generators are currently active at impacted airports. Emergency services in Madrid are also still operational and running on backup generators.
Portuguese police are reporting that traffic lights are down across the country, according to Reuters, alongside the metro in Lisbon and Porto being shut down and trains not running. A statement from Portuguese national energy supplier E-Redes, seen by The New York Times, says that the interruption “was due to a problem in the European electricity grid,” with Spain and France also impacted “due to faults in very high voltage lines.” The Basque Coast and the Burgundy region were also affected by the outages, according to the energy supplier.
In its latest statements reported by BBC News, E-Redes says the outages are related to a “rare atmospheric phenomenon” known as “induced atmospheric vibration.” The company says these are “anomalous oscillations in the very high voltage lines” caused by “extreme temperature variations” in Spain, and that it could take “up to a week” to fully restore the destabilized European power networks.
BREAKING: Massive — really, massive — electricity outage hits Spain, which large part of the country suffering blackouts (including Madrid and Barcelona).
Data from Spain's national grid shows a lost of >10 GW of demand, from ~26GW to ~12GW in a few seconds. Reason unknonw. pic.twitter.com/KwvDxOOLQJ
Red Eléctrica, Spain’s national electricity system operator, said in a statement seen by Bloomberg earlier today that it may take between six to ten hours to restore nationwide power. The company said it’s working with energy companies to restore power in regions that are affected by the outage, and that power has already been restored at “substations in several areas in the north, south, and west of the peninsula.”
The Spanish Directorate-General for Traffic is advising people to avoid driving where possible due to the outage, noting that traffic lights and powered road signs are not working. Meanwhile, France’s electricity transmission system operator says that all power has now been restored to the Basque region.
Update, 9:00AM ET: added power restoration time estimates from Red Eléctrica
Update, 11:40AM ET: added information from E-Redes regarding what caused the outages.