A major power outage that paralyzed the Iberian Peninsula in April was caused by "overvoltage" on the grid that triggered "a chain reaction," according to a government report released Tuesday.
Aagesen singled out the role of the Spanish grid operator REE and certain energy companies she did not name which disconnected their plants "inappropriately... to protect their installations."
She also pointed to "insufficient voltage control capacity" on the system that day, due in part to a programming flaw, stressing that Spain's grid is theoretically robust enough to handle such situations.
Due to these misjudgments "we reached a point of no return with an uncontrollable chain reaction" that could only have been managed if steps had been taken beforehand to absorb the overvoltage problems, she added.
Considering just recently a bunch of chinese PV converters have been found to contain extra parts not in the schematics and can be made to create overvoltage remotely, without leaving evidence, I wouldn't dismiss the possibility outright.
I mean, it wouldn't have caused the failed voltage regulation itself, but it is realistically possible the initial cause of overvoltage was a hack.
The right-wing opposition has questioned the Socialist-led coalition government's phase-out of nuclear energy and reliance on renewables, saying they made Spain more vulnerable to blackouts.
But the government says there is no evidence to suggest "an excess of renewables or the lack of nuclear power plants" caused the crisis.