La Palma, the green island of the Canary Islands, experienced a comprehensive power outage on Tuesday that brought public life to a standstill for almost three hours. A so-called “zero point” in the Los Guinchos power plant led to 83,875 inhabitants and 50,289 subscribers being left without electricity. This incident once again raises questions about the stability of the energy supply in the Canary Islands, which have repeatedly been affected by power outages recently.
The Fateful Tuesday: Details of the Blackout on La Palma
On Tuesday at 5:32 PM (Canary Islands time), La Palma plunged into darkness. According to Endesa, the island’s energy provider, the cause was a “failure of the generation turbine” in the Los Guinchos power plant. The real-time energy demand graph from Red Eléctrica showed a drastic drop from a planned 29 megawatts (MWh) to 1.2 MWh before the supply completely dropped to zero. The 112 Emergency Coordination Center (CECOES) of the Government of the Canary Islands confirmed the problem’s location at the Los Guinchos power plant in the municipality of Breña Alta. Fortunately, hours later, Endesa was able to announce that power had been restored to 100% of users. During the incident, the territorial emergency plan of the Civil Protection of the Autonomous Community of the Canary Islands (Plateca) was activated, but no serious incidents related to the blackout were reported.
La Palma’s Power Problems: A Chronicle of Outages
The recent blackout is unfortunately not an isolated case for La Palma. In May alone, including the current event, there were six power outages. A prominent example was May 8, when 19,526 consumers were affected – also triggered by problems in the Los Guinchos substation. The causes of these recurring interruptions are diverse, ranging from technical failures to damage caused by earthworks on underground facilities. On May 14, there were even two separate outages affecting thousands of customers. This accumulation of incidents had already caused “concern” for the Minister for Ecological Transition of the Government of the Canary Islands, Mariano Hernández Zapata. He announced inspections and formal explanations from the companies responsible for the power grid. The last total blackout on La Palma occurred in March 2018.
Canary Islands: An Archipelago, Many Isolated Grids
The Canary Islands have a complex and vulnerable energy infrastructure. Instead of a contiguous power system, they have six isolated systems. Only Lanzarote and Fuerteventura are connected. This means that in the event of a power outage on one island, the others cannot come to the rescue, which increases the vulnerability to blackouts. The history of the Canary Islands is marked by partial and complete power outages, as occurred between 2019 and 2020 on several islands of the archipelago. A recent example is La Gomera, which also experienced a zero point in its energy supply in July 2023 due to a fire at the El Palmar thermal power plant.
Financial Consequences and the Future of Energy Supply
The recurring power outages not only affect the population but also the islands’ finances. In November 2024, the Government of the Canary Islands was forced to repay 50 million euros to electricity companies. This sum resulted from penalties imposed since 2018 due to power outages, whose processing times had, however, expired. This financial burden underscores the urgency of investing in the modernization and stabilization of the energy supply in the Canary Islands to prevent future blackouts and ensure the quality of life for residents and economic stability.
Conclusion: A Challenge for La Palma’s Future
The recent blackout on La Palma is another alarm signal highlighting the need for a robust and reliable energy infrastructure in the Canary Islands. It remains to be seen what concrete measures will be taken to reduce the island’s vulnerability to power outages and ensure a sustainable energy future.
