‘No one can say that there will be no new incident in the future’

For Luís Mira Amaral, it makes no sense to have been taking so long to replace the energy after the blackout that occurred on Monday and strange that this collapse only happened now. « It could have happened before, » he says to the sunrise. The former minister also calls into question the fact that we only have two Blackstart generators-a system that allows when there is no power in the network and no tension in the network can tear the generators-which, in his view, has not allowed to have a quick response capacity.
«What happened is that we only had this system in the tapada of Outeiro that was a center that I launched and in the old central of Bode Castle. The government has already announced that there will be two more hydraulic plants with this system. However, when asked if it will be sufficient only: «The experts of the story have to do a network simulation. There are simulation methods that allow it to easily calculate whether or not it is sufficient. Already in my time simulated the power grid on computer, but having four blackstarts is better than two, perhaps may even need a few more ».

What did you do?
Although Mira Amaral remember that there is no certainty about what happened in Spain, the economist recalls that the neighboring country was, at the time, with a large production of renewable energy, namely photovoltaic, saying that this is ‘very sensitive to brightness, that is, the problem is not only when there is no sunshine and low production because panels are very sensitive to luminosity.’ And, according to it, “what happened is that photovoltaic production fell a lot, had to hang up and could not compensate because a network based on a large amount of renewables lack of classic generators – only 5% of natural gas centers at that time – and the other generators had no response capacity. The nuclear power plants when there is a small disturbance for reasons of caution and prudence immediately turn off.
He adds: «The electrical system with a large component of renewable energy has no mechanical inertia as the old systems of the large classic centers – coal, natural and nuclear – and the Spanish system turned off from Portuguese. What happened? As we were importing from Spain when this interconnection is cut, we were missing 34% energy for our consumption. And the network had no capacity to immediately compensate for energy loss, our system was in trouble and we had the blackout », noting that the big problem was Portugal not having a contingency plan to respond to these possible flaws.

The former governor does not question the idea of ​​importing energy in Spain, since, from an economic point of view he was more favorable and nods that we are in the Iberian market of electricity, but regrets the lack of ability to respond to this type of failure. «What this crisis shows is that, from the moment we hang up from Spain, we can not stand it. The number of hours we had without electricity is shameful and shows that the country is not prepared for such a situation. We have to realize that there may always be an incident in Spain, whatever, and when they turn off, Portugal must be able to function in autonomous mode ‘, noting that’ even because we had stopped centers that should have entered service as soon as possible ‘.

Do we learn the lesson?
Mira Amaral regrets the results of this lack of action that jumped in sight. «Telecommunications systems did not work, SIRESP also failed and what does this show? That the country, both in the electrical system and in communications it was totally devoid of a contingency plan to meet such a situation.

And jokes the work that has been done by the last governments. “The PSD and PS governments were just talking about the energy transition, which we were the greatest in this matter, which we had greater possibilities to lead in this energy transition, but we forgot to do homework because at any time Spain can fail. And if the Spaniards make the nuclear power plants to end there will be a greater likelihood that there will be such failures, as there will be a greater dependence on renewables and such a scene may repeat in the future more likely than now, ”he concludes.