“SECURE SUPPLY”
Sanchez also denied reports that a shortfall of nuclear energy was behind the outage, saying proponents of the suggestion were “lying or demonstrating their ignorance” in a response to criticism from the far-right Vox party.
Nuclear power, which the leftist government has planned to phase out, “was no more resilient” than other electricity sources and “with a greater dependence on nuclear, the recovery would not have been so quick”, Sanchez said.
Portuguese Prime Minister Luis Montenegro, who is facing an early general election next month, said his government had requested an independent audit of electrical systems from the EU Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER) and created a commission to assess the handling of the crisis.
For Pratheeksha Ramdas, a senior analyst at the consulting firm Rystad Energy, the episode highlighted the region’s “heavy dependence on cross-border electricity flows”.
The high percentage of renewables in Spain’s energy mix “exposed difficulties in balancing intermittent supply, while Portugal’s complete reliance on imports underscored its lack of flexibility and energy storage”, Ramdas wrote in a research note.
