Europe was on the brink of a major blackout on January 8. As ENTSOE, the body that brings together European carriers, has just explained, at 2:05 p.m. the large continental electrical system had to desynchronize into two separate areas to deal with problems in the electrical transmission network.
According to the agency, the frequency in the northwestern area of continental Europe decreased significantly, which endangered the continuity of the supply.
Given the low frequency in the north-western area, a fact that could have caused the line protections to trip and supply to be interrupted, the interruptible services contracted in France and Italy were disconnected, a total of around 1.7 GW. These services, which barely exist in Spain anymore, correspond to large customers who are contracted by the respective System Operators to stop consuming electricity if the network frequency falls below a certain threshold. In addition, 420 MW and 60 MW of backup power were automatically activated from the Nordic areas and Great Britain. These countermeasures ensured that as early as 14:09 CET the diversion was limited to the north-western area.
Due to the great overfrequency in the Southeast Zone, countermeasures were activated to reduce the power supply of the generation units and stabilize the frequency.
The automatic response and coordinated actions taken by TSOs in continental Europe ensured that the situation was quickly restored to normal operations. Actions were coordinated between network operators to reconnect the two areas as quickly as possible again. Therefore, the interruptible services contracted in Italy could be reconnected at 14:47 CET and in France at 14:48 CET. At 15:08 CET, both areas reconnected to a synchronous area in Continental Europe.
ENTSO-E has kept the European Commission and the Electricity Coordination Group composed of representatives of the Member States informed.
The situation is subject to the results of a detailed investigation into the event that is ongoing.
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