The streets of Lisbon are “calm and serene,” the mayor said, but the Portuguese capital is still dealing with a host of challenges following a widespread power outages.
“The information that I have right now, it will be another 6 or 7 hours, but I’m counting that overnight, probably, the situation will not be solved,” Lisbon Mayor Carlos Moedas told CNN of the status of restoring power, with nightfall approaching.
The head of Portugal’s electricity grid operator also said energy is expected to be restored “within five to six hours.” João Faria Conceição, of Rede Electrica Nacional (REN), said Porto, the second-largest city, should be reconnected within a couple of hours, while Lisbon will take longer.
“At this moment in time we have preliminary information that around 300,000 consumers are connected,” Conceição said. Portugal has a population of more than 10 million people.
Moedas said police and firefighters are on the streets helping people and some buses are running, but he encouraged residents to stay inside if they can.
As for the cause of the outage, the mayor said officials “don’t have any information about any kind of attack,” emphasizing that “it can be just a technical issue.”
“But of course, a technical issue — that never happened before. So I understand that people can be a little bit scared by the situation. But the city is working, the people are working, the transportation is working, the hospitals are working,” he said.
Portugal Prime Minister Luis Montenegro said the outage originated in Spain. Portugal imports electricity from Spain in the morning, because Spain is one hour ahead and electricity produced by its solar plants is cheaper than producing it internally, during those hours, Conceição said. While Spain received support from France and Morocco, Portugal had no country to turn to for emergency supplies of electricity.
