Catalonia recovers 100% of its electrical power after outage affecting Spain

Catalonia had recovered 100% of its electrical power by Tuesday morning at 7:45 am after a massive power outage affected the territory, Spain, and Portugal from Monday at 12:33 pm.

Sources from the energy company Endesa told the Catalan News Agency (ACN) that the service had returned to its regular operation after the historic outage the previous day.

Spain's national grid operator Red Eléctrica reported at 7:00 am that 99.16% of the power grid was back online, but that, despite the recovery of electricity, people may still experience some issues.

During the power outage, the 112 emergency hotline received 13,177 phone calls. In total, it received 11,519 between 12:00 pm and 11:59 pm, and 1,658 more between 12:00 am and 6:00 am.

By 11 pm, according to Catalonia's Civil Protection Service, at least 63% of Catalonia had recovered its electricity. Interior minister Núria Parlon said at the time that more than 2.5 million users in the territory had seen their supply return and that schools will operate "normally" on Tuesday.

In a press conference on Tuesday at 11:30 am, Spain's Red Eléctrica managers denied any knowledge of a cyberattack on the network.

The origin of the power outage may be linked to an issue in the generation system that began in the southwest of Spain, according to the company's director of operational services, Eduardo Prieto.

Prieto promised that the company would implement "the necessary measures" to prevent a similar incident from occurring again.

Rodalies

Catalonia's Rodalies commuter train network partially recovered its service on the R1, R2, R2 North, R3, and R4 lines on Tuesday at 11:00 am.

The other lines will remain suspended until further notice.

Renfe had halted all services on Tuesday morning due to the "network's voltage instability," which officials said made it impossible to guarantee safe operations.

The message came a few minutes after a previous statement saying that the service would resume at 60% capacity.

Rodalies' director, Antonio Carmona, said that after initial journeys, authorities confirmed that they could not offer a "secure" service.

Carmona apologized to commuters for the situation and reminded everyone that this has been an "unexpected" situation and professionals have been working "all night" to try and recover a "minimum service."

High-speed trains between Madrid and Barcelona are working without any problems. However, neither the trains going to Valencia nor the ones going to the French-Spanish border are in service.

The Catalan Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat commuter train network and Barcelona Metro have resumed normal operations. The TRAM tramway is also operating as usual.

Electricity demand as usual, 17 hours later 

The electricity demand in Barcelona did not return to expected levels until 7:15 am on Tuesday morning, according to data from the company responsible for operating Spain's national electricity transmission system, Red Eléctrica de España (REE). At that time, nearly 17 hours after the power outage, consumption reached 28,029 MW, marking the first instance the expected levels were met since the blackout began. 

The disruption started abruptly at 12:30 pm and the situation began to noticeably improve around 5:30 pm, though demand was still 40% lower than usual at that point.  

By 10:00 pm, the gap had reduced to 30%, and around 11:30 pm, demand quickly jumped from 20,000 to 22,000 megawatts (MW), just 10% below the expected level. By 1:00 am, power restore was back at 90% mark, and by 4:00 am, at 96%. 

The lowest demand on the Spanish mainland occurred at 1:35 pm on Monday, when it dropped to 12,254 MW. From there, demand steadily increased and returned to normal early on Tuesday morning. By 8:00 am, it had already gone over 30,000 MW, slightly higher than at the same time the previous day. 

At 11:15 am on Tuesday, Red Eléctrica announced that the power system on the mainland had returned to normal. On social media platform X, the company said the morning peak had been reached at 8:35 am with 28,677 MW consumed, and predicted the evening peak would hit at 9:10 pm with 31,200 MW. 

What happened?

Although the reason behind the power outage is as of yet unclear, electricity use in Spain almost halved when the outage took place, based on Red Eléctrica data. Power demand dropped from 27,000 MW to 15,970 MW. 

Around 6:00 pm and 7:00 pm, the system recovered 16,000 MW, which represents around 60% of the expected electricity services. 

By midnight, Red Eléctrica reported that 61.35% of Spain's network was back in service.

During a televised statement on Monday afternoon, Spanish PM Pedro Sánchez said that the government "does not rule out any hypothesis," as "there is no conclusive information on the causes of this power outage."