The company plans to initiate “legal actions” against Beatriz Corredor, president of Red Eléctrica (REE), according to legal sources.
In a Senate hearing on September 11, Beatriz Corredor stated that the blackout was due to non-compliance by electricity generating companies, without naming any specific company.
She referred to a photovoltaic unit in the Badajoz area, identified by the Spanish press as belonging to Iberdrola, which she alleged “misbehaved” on the day of the blackout, making the system “much more vulnerable”.
Although she did not name Iberdrola, the company believes this insinuation attacks “its honor”, according to legal sources.
In a report presented on June 18, REE attributed the blackout to non-compliance by energy producers and rejected accusations of poor planning.
“If the generators with dynamic voltage control obligations had complied, there would not have been a blackout,” said Concha Sánchez, director-general of Operation at Red Eléctrica.
REE reported that after significant system oscillations from 12:03 local time on April 28, several production plants disconnected incorrectly, leading to a total blackout, even though system voltage was “entirely within established legal limits”.
REE denied poor planning in the days and hours before the blackout, contrary to claims by the Spanish government in a report and by the Spanish energy producers association Aelec, insisting the collapse would have been avoided if production units had met their obligations that day as requested by the operator.
A Spanish government report also in June blamed both REE and power producers for the blackout, concluding there was poor planning by Red Eléctrica and non-compliance by producers.
The Iberian blackout on April 28 was triggered by a series of sudden renewable energy production shutdowns, leading to a loss of synchronization with the continental European grid, according to a panel of European experts.
A report released this month by 45 experts from grid operators and regulators in 12 countries classifies the incident as “scale 3” — the most severe under European legislation — describing it as “the most significant in the European electrical system in over 20 years”, affecting millions of citizens and causing severe disruptions to essential services.
According to the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSO-E), the sequence of failures began at 12:32 (Brussels time) with the sudden disconnection of several solar and wind plants in southern Spain, followed by additional losses in regions like Granada, Badajoz, Seville, and Cáceres.
The report notes that regional coordination centers’ analyses on the eve of the incident had not identified significant risks.
