At the end of April, there was a massive power outage on the Iberian Peninsula, leaving large parts of Portugal and Spain without electricity. A chain of errors by various power plant operators led to an overvoltage in the grid, resulting in a shutdown.
On the one hand, the grid operator Red Electrica may not have planned the production with sufficient caution and, on the other hand, a large number of power plant operators may not have complied with the necessary system specifications of the grid, which gradually disconnected them from the grid and thus caused the overvoltage.
Almost full grid operation was restored the very next day, minimizing the damage in the region. Incidents like these are the exception, but they show how networked and flexible our electricity system of the future must be in order to be prepared for the demands of the future.
The climate and energy model region is analyzing how the critical buildings in the three municipalities can be prepared for an emergency and thus create a basis for planning.
(C) tzahiV from Getty Images Signature view.
