The place where the blackout began

Huéneja, a small Granada municipality of approximately one thousand inhabitants, has become an epicenter of the eyes after the blackout that left the Iberian Peninsula on April 28.

First substation to fall. With a powerful renewable energy concentration, Huéneja’s electrical substation was, according to The Energy Newspaperthe first great disconnection in the chain of events that caused the energy zero a month ago.

Here, Red Eléctrica has been operating for more than a decade a 400 kV substation designed to evacuate the growing production of renewable energies in the area. Huéneja’s substation recorded the first generation drop in the moments before the great blackout.

A renewable hub. Huéneja’s electrical substation is connected window, photovoltaic and thermosoles. In total, about 668 MW of installed power pour their energy into this knot: 376 MW windings, 142 MW photovoltaic and 150 MW Termosoles.

That fateful day, all this connected generation was suddenly disconnected. From what we know, the protections jumped when detecting an over -the higher than the permitted limits, from outside the substation.

A late expansion. On May 5, just a week after the blackout and while the causes were still investigated, the Government of Spain authorized Red Electric to expand the huéneja substation. This action, published in the BOE of May 21It has a budget of 7.5 million euros aimed at feeding the electrical train network.

Bruno Vuan, connoisseur of the sector, I already pointed to Huéneja As a candidate for the start of the blackout, highlighting her concentration of power and questioning the tension control capacity for that generation. But Huéneja was not the cause of the blackout, but the first big piece of dominoes to fall.

The origin is not the cause. Paraphrasing the expert Fernando Rodríguezthat Huéneja’s substation was the origin of the blackout does not mean that it was the cause. The failure of a substation does not grave the entire system, designed to withstand this type of oscillations.

There were moments later other two disconnections to the southwest of the peninsula. The “causes” interacted with each other, and also with their effects, touring the system as a zipper that dulls Spain and Portugal.

The complete schedule. After the incident in Huéneja at 12:32:57, two other important generation losses occurred in Badajoz and Seville in just twenty seconds, adding a total of 2.2 Gigaveatians disconnected.

Luis Badesa, professor at the Polytechnic University of Madrid, had already signed over overthes as suspects. According to its analysis, the point of no return arrived at 12:33:20, when the Iberian Peninsula lost the connection with France, becoming an “electric island.”

What failed then? According to Redeia, the Electric Red Matrix was not the energy mix, It was not the lack of inertiaThey were not the renewables. In an interview with The avant -gardehis president Beatriz Corredor said: “There was no transport network and the operation of the system was correct.”

Corridor points to “some conventional generators” that had that day “some voltage control parameters below those established by the regulations.” The president of Redeia has put the focus on conventional energies, which did not control the tension correctly.

Image | Voltae

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