Published by Global Banking & Finance Review®
Posted on February 12, 2026
2 min readLast updated: February 12, 2026
Add as preferred source on GoogleIberdrola defends its solar plant against claims of mismanagement during Spain's April blackout, as CEO testifies before the Senate.
MADRID, Feb 12 (Reuters) - The CEO of Iberdrola in Spain on Thursday rejected the claim by the head of the country's power grid operator that mismanagement at a solar plant owned by the utility could have contributed to last year's massive blackout on April 28.
Mario Ruiz-Tagle's testimony before an investigating committee in Spain's Senate was the first public acknowledgement by Iberdrola that it owned the infrastructure singled out by the grid operator, the Nunez de Balboa solar plant in the southwestern province of Badajoz.
"I'm going to tell you for the first time that the plant is my property," he said, denying there was poor management or poor operation at the plant that day.
A spokesperson for Redeia - owner of grid operator REE - declined to comment.
Beatriz Corredor, who chairs Redeia, had told the same upper-house committee in September that mismanagement and poor control of a large solar plant in Badajoz had made the country's power system more vulnerable on the day of the nationwide outage.
The plant "behaved improperly and made the system much more vulnerable as a result", she said, without disclosing the plant's name, owner or its exact location.
(Reporting by Pietro Lombardi; Additional reporting by Paolo Laudani; Writing by David Latona; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)
A solar plant is a facility that converts sunlight into electricity using solar panels. These plants can significantly contribute to renewable energy production.
Renewable energy is energy derived from natural sources that are replenished at a faster rate than they are consumed, such as solar, wind, and hydropower.
Risk management involves identifying, assessing, and prioritizing risks followed by coordinated efforts to minimize, monitor, and control the probability of unfortunate events.
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