The island of La Palma recovered electricity this Monday, November 2, after suffering a widespread blackout that left 50,508 customers without power for nearly four hours. The incident began at 6:38 a.m., in the middle of an electrical storm, and forced the activation of the Territorial Emergency Plan for Civil Protection of Canarias (PLATECA). Finally, Endesa and Red Eléctrica confirmed the restoration of 100% of the service at 10:26 a.m., after a complex sequence of maneuvers to get the island electrical system back into operation.
The restoration was not immediate or simultaneous in all municipalities. Technicians had to recover the generation capacity of the Los Guinchos thermal power plant, progressively connect its equipment, and stabilize the grid before restoring electricity to all users. The operation was completed in three hours and 48 minutes, although the problems had begun before the general blackout, with a fault in the Guinchos-Valle electric transmission line that had left thousands of customers without supply during the early hours of the morning.
What caused the general blackout in La Palma
The first incident was recorded at 4:10 a.m., when a failure occurred in the 66-kilovolt transmission line that connects Guinchos with Valle. According to the report provided by the Cabildo de La Palma, this fault caused the loss of voltage in the Valle substation and left 17,624 supplies without electricity. The teams managed to restore the service at 5:40 a.m. through maneuvers in the medium-voltage network, although the high-voltage line continued out of service.
The situation worsened at 6:38 a.m., when a second incident caused the disconnection of the Los Guinchos thermal power plant and the so-called "zero energy", which left the entire island without supply. The episode coincided with an intense electrical storm and heavy rainfall that had forced a maximum alert for rain to be declared in La Palma. However, the exact technical causes of the blackout are still pending clarification, so it has not been definitively confirmed what role the weather conditions played.
How electricity was restored step by step
The restoration of supply began to advance at 7:56 hours, when Red Eléctrica carried out a local maneuver of closing a switch that made it possible to give way to the process of connecting the generation units. From that moment, Endesa was able to begin the necessary work to restore voltage to the grid, although a new setback arose that complicated the operation.
At 8:16 hours the start-up of mobile gas unit number 2 failed, so the technicians had to resort to an alternative: putting diesel unit number 15 into operation. This equipment managed to connect to the grid at 8:40 hours, initially contributing one megawatt of power. Its entry into service made it possible to recover the electrical frequency and begin to progressively energize the installations.
At 9:00 hours, the 20-kilovolt electrical bars were already energized and approximately 1,300 customers had recovered electricity. By then, three generation units were operating and the workers had finished repairing the Guinchos-Valle line, although its commissioning was still pending. The recovery continued in stages until, at 10:26 hours, Red Eléctrica confirmed the complete restoration of supply throughout La Palma.
Why all the power cannot be recovered at once after a zero-energy event
A zero-energy event occurs when an electrical system completely loses its ability to supply electricity. Unlike a localized outage, a blackout of this kind requires progressively rebuilding the conditions necessary for the grid to function again with stability, especially in island territories that have isolated electrical systems.
In the case of La Palma, the technicians had to start generation units, restore the voltage and frequency of the grid, and progressively incorporate consumption. This procedure makes it possible to prevent the simultaneous entry of too much demand from causing new instabilities or disconnections.
The operation was also conditioned by the failure of the Guinchos-Valle line and the difficulties in starting one of the mobile gas units. The use of the diesel unit was essential to begin the effective recovery of the grid, before other generation equipment could be brought in and service restored to the more than 50,000 affected supplies.
The Government of Canarias activates the emergency plan for the blackout
The General Directorate of Emergencies of the Government of Canarias activated at 7:30 a.m. the alert situation of PLATECA in light of the general loss of electrical supply. The measure made it possible to reinforce monitoring of the incident, coordinate the administrations and operators involved, and assess the possible consequences on essential services.
The blackout also coincided with an episode of heavy rain and storms that especially affected the eastern slope of La Palma. During the early hours, very high rainfall was recorded in different parts of the island, which complicated a day marked both by weather incidents and by the interruption of electricity.
Once the supply was restored, the Ministry of Ecological Transition and Energy of the Government of Canarias confirmed that it was maintaining contacts with Endesa and Red Eléctrica to investigate the causes of the incident and analyze the necessary measures to reduce the risk of new episodes.
The structural problems of the electrical grid of La Palma
The blackout has once again brought to the table the shortcomings of the electrical system of La Palma. The Minister of Ecological Transition and Energy of the Government of Canarias, Mariano Hernández Zapata, has warned that La Palma is burdened by structural problems related to the generation, transport, and distribution of electricity, a situation that he considers necessary to correct in order to guarantee the security of supply.
The regional government maintains that some of the planned actions to strengthen the infrastructure are already underway, while others are advancing at a slower pace than desired. The recovery of the supply does not mean, therefore, that the structural weaknesses of the system have been resolved, nor that the appearance of new incidents can be ruled out.
Concern also responds to recent precedents. La Palma already suffered another zero-energy event on June 10, 2025, after recording several power outages during the month of May of that year. The repetition of these episodes has intensified calls to modernize the facilities and strengthen the reliability of the island electrical system.
Although electricity returned to all affected supplies before four hours had elapsed since the general blackout, the investigation into the causes of the disconnection of Los Guinchos continues to be one of the main pending issues.