Spanish authorities were experimenting with how far they could push their reliance on renewable energy before the Iberian Peninsula was hit with a massive power outage last month, it has been suggested.
As people wait for more answers on what caused the power cut that disrupted tens of millions of lives across Spain and Portugal, several have questioned Spain’s heavy reliance on renewable energy sources as it plans to phase out nuclear reactors.
Spain’s socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has rejected such criticism, asking for patience while the government investigates the causes of the historic blackout.
Spain’s electric grid operator Red Eléctrica de España pinned it on a significant and unprecedented drop in power generation.
Now, it has been suggested that the Spanish government was carrying out an experiment before the country’s grid system crashed, The Telegraph reports.
Under said test, authorities had been trialling how far they could push their reliance on renewables as they prepared for Spain’s phase-out of nuclear reactors from 2027.
The Spanish Association of Electrical Energy Companies (Aelec), which has criticised the inquiry into the blackout’s cause, has now said it was not the country’s generators that failed to deliver power to the grid, but rather it was the grid that failed to manage it and then shut down automatically.
The head of Spain’s photovoltaic association, Jose Donoso, had made a similar suggestion earlier this month, telling newsoutlet 20Minutos: ‘It’s a matter of logic; the fact that the entire system goes down because of a photovoltaic plant makes no sense.
Hellbound and Down 