Power supply restored in northern Greater Porto and Santarém region

REN informs that following today's blackout, it is gradually restoring power to priority locations, namely hospitals, security forces, water supply infrastructure and transport, having already restored supply in the Greater Porto area and Santarém, and expects to restore supply in the Greater Lisbon area within the next few hours, although it is still difficult to give an exact time.

The blackout that hit the whole of mainland Portugal today was caused by a significant voltage fluctuation in the Spanish grid at a time when Portugal was importing energy from Spain. With this fluctuation, the control and protection systems of the Portuguese power stations, as expected in a situation of this kind, shut down, causing the blackout.
Faced with this situation, Portugal initially resorted to its black start capacity (starting up power stations autonomously from a total power outage) at the Tapada do Outeiro gas-fired power station, which allowed power to be restored very carefully in areas of Greater Porto.

With the Castelo de Bode power station and the support of some connections with Spain, it is expected that power will be restored to areas further south of the country in the medium term.

This is a process that must be carried out very gradually and carefully, slowly, in order to ensure that power is restored with maximum safety and to guarantee the maximum stability of the national electricity grid.