Power outage on the Iberian Peninsula

Greenland satellite services out of order after outage

Remote regions of Greenland have lost access to vital satellite services following a power outage that hit large parts of Spain and Portugal yesterday, Reuters reports.

The satellite services, which are based in Spain, provide both internet and telephony services that stopped working during the outage, the island's telecom company Tussass announced on Monday evening.

"Right now there is no contact with our equipment in Maspalomas, Spain, which we deeply depend on to be able to supply customers in the satellite area," Tussass said in a statement.

Electricity company: Not caused by cyberattack - triple fault knocked out electricity in five seconds

No cyberattack was behind the massive power outage in Spain and parts of Portugal and France yesterday, according to a preliminary assessment by Spain's state-owned grid operator Red Eléctrica (REE).

“There was no intrusion into Red Eléctrica’s control system,” said its head Eduardo Prieto, according to El País.

Nor were there “atmospheric causes,” or some kind of weather phenomenon, behind the outage, according to REE. This was raised as a possible explanation on Monday. Eduardo Prieto urges people to stop speculating.

No exact cause has yet been identified, but the entire system collapsed within five seconds, writes El Mundo.

The system was stable when “an event in the electrical system consistent with a loss of electricity production” occurred in the southwestern part of the Iberian Peninsula. Just 1.5 seconds later, a similar problem occurred, which worsened the situation. This caused strong movements in the electrical system, resulting in the electricity – and the connection to France – being cut off 3.5 seconds later, reports El Mundo.

“The system could not survive this extreme disturbance,” according to REE.

Shortly afterwards, however, Spain's highest criminal court, the Audiencia Nacional, announced that a cyberattack was still being investigated as one of several possible explanations, AFP writes. 

Statement about rare weather phenomenon was fake

Portugal's national electricity grid operator REN denies that it was behind the dispatch that stated that "a rare atmospheric phenomenon" caused the massive power outage on the Iberian Peninsula yesterday.

- REN confirms that we have not issued this statement, spokesman Bruno Silva told AFP.

The statement in Portuguese gained momentum on social media and was later published by the well-respected news agency Reuters. It led to enormous spread, including in Omni. Several Spanish authorities have since ruled out that the weather had anything to do with it.

The Portuguese newspaper Expresso writes that social media has been flooded with disinformation after the power outage. A wide range of theories, backed by fabricated evidence, have been circulated about the cause of the outage.

There is still no definitive explanation for the outage.