Spanish power outage investigation released: Traditional power plant support weaknesses exposed

Public news

On June 17th, the Spanish government officially released the investigation report on the nationwide power outage on April 28th. The report clearly states that the main cause of this major power outage was a sudden increase in voltage, which led to 60% of the generator units being disconnected from the grid.
The investigation found that the power grid operator REE has deficiencies in scheduling, failing to arrange sufficient thermal power units to provide necessary voltage support for the power grid. Meanwhile, some gas-fired power plants have failed to fulfill their reactive power regulation obligations, resulting in a lack of dynamic stability capability for the entire power system.
To prevent similar accidents from happening again, the Spanish Ministry of Energy announced that it will take a series of measures to forcibly upgrade the voltage control system of the power grid and actively promote interconnection with the European mainland power grid. Analysts believe that this measure will accelerate the replacement process of old auto transformers and promote the deployment of high-voltage switchgear equipped with intelligent monitoring modules, thereby enhancing the real-time response capability of the power grid and ensuring stable power supply.