Portugal’s civil protection authority still in the dark over causes of blackout

Portugal’s National Authority for Emergency and Civil Protection (ANEPEC) say that they still don’t know the cause of the blackout”, and that its investigation is still ongoing.

The agency’s president, José Manuel Moura, told reporters on Wednesday that there were “zero victims” from the power cut on Monday.

In terms of the financial impact of the blackout on Portuguese industry, according to the business daily Negócios, industry lost around €20 million mainly down to the abrupt stoppage of machinery.

The General Director of the Portuguese Association of Metallurgic, Metal-mechanical and Allied Industries (AIMMAP), Mafalda Gramaxo said it had a high level of impact that could exceed €20 million.

“The first direct loss was zero production and zero turnover. Some companies have generators, but they cannot cope with massive energy needed to run heavy machines and can only supply invoicing departments and powering computers,” he said.

And added: “With a loss of working hours, particularly part of the first shift and all of the second, it accounts for a loss of €16 million.”

To this amount is added losses caused by damaged machines because of the abrupt stoppage with resulting high repair and maintenance costs.

Portugal’s dairy sector says the power cut cost producers around €3 million according to Confragi, the Confederation of Agricultural Cooperatives

However, overall, the economy probably lost around 0.1% of total quarterly value because of the importance of the energy sector on Portugal’s GDP, which while small, has raised alarm bells among analysts to other potential future weaknesses.

However, the fall in electrical production resulting in the loss of one day’s production in itself has had an estimated impact on the economy of around 1% of quarterly GDP, with the energy worth around 10% of this, or perhaps less, meaning that the impact would be around 0.1% of quarterly GDP according to João Borges de Assunção who heads the Católica University’s Nucleus of Economic Studies (NECEP).

However, other energy dependent sectors such as the banking sector were less affected largely because they had backup systems that could offset the power failure and avoid a fall in productive activity.

That said, the nationwide ATM system Multibanco operated by SIBS did not function in many places because of the blackout while some bank branches were working behind closed doors although they were closed to the public.

The president of Spain’s national electricity grid, Red Eléctrica, said the outage that blacked out most of the country and neighbouring Portugal on Monday was not a company error and promised it “won’t happen again”.

Speaking to Spanish media, Beatriz Corredor denied the blackout was connected to renewable energy and defended the robustness of Spain’s electricity system, which she called the “best and most resilient in Europe.”

“Relating Monday’s serious incident to the spike in renewables is not correct,” she said.

Beatriz Corredor also ruled out the theory that a cyberattack caused the power outage but confirmed that Spain’s High Court was still pursuing it as a possibility as part of its investigation.

However, a well-placed source in the renewable energy sector with business in both the UK and Portugal told Essential Business on Wednesday that it could well have been a cyber attack since all the other possibilities were not plausible given the sophistication of the current system. When put to him that the EU had denied a cyberattack was behind the outage, he said: “Well they would, wouldn’t they. They would never admit to such a vulnerability.”

Meanwhile, the caretaker government is now looking to secure Portugal’s energy independence following the 12-hour blackout.

While the government sets up an Independent Technical Commission to assess authorities’ reactions and management mechanisms, as well as the resilience of critical infrastructures and services, the electricity transmission company REN shut down commercial energy exchanges that normally take place between Portugal and Spain on April 30.

REN director João Faria Conceição explained this was a precautionary move to allow “complete stabilization of the system” .