Portugal to invest €137m in grid upgrades following April blackout
The Portuguese government has announced a series of measures to strengthen the power system following the April 28 blackout that affected Portugal, Spain and parts of France.
Among the measures is €137 million ($158.5 million) aimed at bolstering the resilience of the power grid.
Portugal’s Environment and Energy minister Maria Graça Carvalho said in a press conference that the set of measures aims to ensure the country and its power system is better prepared for emergency situations.
Specifically, the grid investment is divided into three technical components: two shunt reactors that will control the network’s voltage profiles; two STATCOMs that will provide automatic and instantaneous voltage control through reactive power regulation; and a synchronous compensator that also serves for automatic voltage regulation through rotating masses.
The investment into the grid forms part of a wider investment from the Portuguese government totalling €400 million ($462.6 million) across three pillars: resilience of critical infrastructures, energy transition, and international cooperation.
Other measures announced include doubling the number of ‘black start’ power stations from two to four, bolstering the resilience of critical infrastructure, such as hospitals and water and sanitation companies with solar panels and batteries.
More on the blackout in Iberia:
Jolt to the system: What the Iberian blackout says about grid investment
Five seconds to failure: Iberia’s blackout and grid resilience in a high-renewables future
April blackout and grid resilience
The April blackout that hit the Iberian Peninsula, which is still under investigation by an Expert Panel from ENTSO-E with a final report due in October, highlighted the urgent need for more resilience measures in grid systems.
Two weeks ago, Europe’s TSO association released an update of their investigation, saying the blackout was of an “exceptional character”, demonstrating the need for improved measures against cascading voltage increases.
The Spanish government in June released a report on the causes of the April 28 Iberia blackout, saying the event was caused by a ‘multifactoral origin’ that caused a chain reaction of overvoltage disconnections.
The government claimed that Spain’s system operator, Red Eléctrica, shared responsibility due to voltage miscalculations; Red Eléctrica submitted its own report, attributing the causes to generation interruptions.
Both reports from Red Eléctrica and the Spanish government will be considered in ENTSO-E’s investigation, the European TSO Network says.