EU chief Antonio Costa dominated out the potential for a cyberattack concerning the large energy outage that hit Spain and Portugal on Monday.
“At this point, there are no indications of any cyber attack,” Costa, who heads the European Council representing EU member states, wrote on X
“Grid operators in both countries are working on finding the cause, and on restoring the electricity supply,” Costa mentioned.
The European Commission mentioned on Monday it was “in contact” with Spanish and Portuguese authorities to know the underlying explanation for a large blackout.
“The commission will keep monitoring the situation and make sure that there is smooth information exchange amongst all relevant parties,” a spokesperson for the EU’s government arm mentioned.
Electricity was minimize off throughout Spain and Portugal, and briefly in a part of southwestern France, in a blackout that impacted hundreds of thousands of individuals, grid operators mentioned.
Costa, who’s a former Portuguese prime minister, can also be in touch with the Spanish and Portuguese leaders, an EU official mentioned.
The huge energy outage that has hit Spain and Portugal, inflicting chaos on Monday throughout the Iberian Peninsula, will take one other six to 10 hours to restore, the Spanish newspaper El País reported, citing Spain’s electrical energy grid operator.
The firm, Red Eléctrica, mentioned in social media posts from 3:32 p.m. (1332 GMT) that energy had been restored to substations in a number of areas within the north, south and west of the peninsula.
“We are continuing to work with all available resources to restore power as soon as possible throughout the entire territory,” the posts mentioned. The key aim in the intervening time is to provide energy to the technology models.
Railway firm Renfe mentioned that your complete Spanish nationwide energy grid had failed at 12:30 p.m. (1030 GMT), inflicting trains to halt.
The explanation for the outage has not been introduced.
According to El País, the INCIBE cybersecurity authority is investigating the incident and has not dominated out a cyberattack.
Reporters from dpa in Madrid and Barcelona confirmed the outage throughout each cities, with the Madrid Open tennis event additionally suspended.
Infrastructure, telephone networks and visitors had been all affected, as visitors lights turned off and lifts grew to become caught.
Spain’s Health Ministry mentioned hospitals weren’t as severely hit because of backup turbines.
In neighbouring Portugal, there was a blackout in a number of areas, broadcaster RTP reported.
Spain’s Canary and Balearic Islands weren’t affected, whereas an influence outage in neighbouring Andorra lasted only some seconds earlier than the grid was robotically reconnected to the French grid, operator FEDA mentioned on X.
Parts of France’s Basque area had been additionally affected for a short while earlier than energy was restored.
The European Commission mentioned it’s in touch with Spanish and Portuguese authorities.
“The commission is in contact with the national authorities of Spain and Portugal… to understand the underlying cause and the impact of the situation,” a spokeswoman mentioned in Brussels.
“There are protocols in place to restore the functioning of the system,” she added.
Source: www.dailysabah.com