A new power outage has hit the Canary Islands one week after the energy blackout. Following the failure of the Los Guinchos substation on La Palma, 23% of the island’s population was without power this Thursday, affecting approximately 19,526 consumers in several municipalities. A total of around 83,875 people live on La Palma. The outage lasted two hours.
Alberto Hernández, the Director General of Energy for the Government of the Canary Islands, explained that the substation failure caused a mismatch between energy supply and demand, prompting a shutdown to protect the generating facilities.
“Nothing broke,” emphasized Hernández, pointing out that the causes of the first outage have yet to be determined. He reported that just 30 minutes after the outage, which occurred at 9:47 a.m., 40% of the power was restored, and full restoration occurred at 11:34 a.m.
Endesa, through its subsidiary e-Distribución, reported that the supply drop affected customers in Los Llanos de Aridane, Breña Alta, El Paso, Tajaraste, Santa Cruz de La Palma, Punta Gorda, San Andrés y Sauces, and Garafía.
Hernández explained that the current government had declared an energy emergency on the islands due to the lack of energy production on La Gomera and the presence of outdated facilities in the rest of the archipelago. He added that it would take a year for all the measures taken to be implemented on all islands. However, they are working to avoid such outages or minimize them as much as possible, although he clarified that “incidents may occur.”
Sara Aagesen, Minister for Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenges, pointed out that renewable energy production on La Palma had not even reached 1% as of Thursday, as the energy supply comes from the “Diesel Thermal Park.” She recalled that the islands tend to have the most problems with power outages due to their isolated systems.
In her statements to La Sexta’s “Al rojo vivo,” Aagesen referred to the power outage experienced on La Palma this Thursday. She stated that the ministry had received notification from the grid operator, Red Eléctrica, which also reported the affected substation.
The minister took the opportunity to clarify that the islands often face the greatest challenges in this area due to their isolated nature.
This incident represents the second power outage in a week, following another outage last Thursday that left around 300 users without power for several hours. The Cabildo has requested that the stability of the energy supply be guaranteed.
Reactions from the Canary Islands
Fernando González, Minister of Energy and Industry of the Cabildo de La Palma, stated in this context that “in light of the ongoing and worrying series of power outages that continue to affect La Palma, including the one lasting more than an hour this Thursday, we make a strong appeal to the Ministry of Ecological Transition and Energy of the Government of the Canary Islands to intervene immediately within its responsibilities and work decisively to resolve this serious problem.”
In a press release, González expressed “his deep indignation and concern about the frequency and duration of the power outages” and emphasized that “La Palma cannot afford another power outage.”
“We are talking about a problem that directly affects the quality of life of thousands of citizens, seriously harms our economy, especially the tourism sector and small and medium-sized enterprises, and generates a feeling of insecurity and unbearable helplessness,” he concluded.
