Dozens of people take shelter at Atocha train station, Madrid, where they will spend the night after the electricity blackout. Photo / Getty Images
Dozens of people take shelter at Atocha train station, Madrid, where they will spend the night after the electricity blackout. Photo / Getty Images
A reliance on net-zero energy left Spain and Portugal vulnerable to mass blackouts, experts say.
Tens of millions were without power, affecting flights, trains, and essential services.
Emergency measures were activated to restore electricity, with investigations under way into the cause.
A reliance on net-zero energy left Spain and Portugal vulnerable to the mass blackouts engulfing the region, experts say.
In what is believed to be Europe’s largest power cut, tens of millions of people were left without electricity, while flights were grounded, trains halted, and whole cities were left without power, internet access or other vital services late yesterday.
The cause of the initial fault in the region’s electricity grid is being investigated, and the EU has insisted there were no indications it was a cyberattack.
However, energy experts have blamed a heavy reliance on solar and wind farms in Spain for leaving the region’s power grid vulnerable to such a crisis.
Spain is increasingly relying on solar and wind energy. Photo / Red Electrica
A state of emergency was declared in Spain, while in Portugal, water company Epal said supplies could also be disrupted.
Queues formed at shops, with people looking to purchase emergency supplies such as gaslights, generators and batteries.
Energy operators are fighting to restore power in Spain, Portugal and parts of France, and residents are being urged to avoid travel and use mobile phones sparingly. More than half of Spain’s power has been restored, the country’s REE electricity operator said today.
Tens of thousands of British travellers could be affected by airport disruption in the region.
Spain has had a massive increase in renewable and low-carbon electricity generation in recent years. Two decades ago, more than 80% of its power came from burning fossil fuels such as coal and gas, as well as nuclear. Solar and wind provided less than 5%.
By 2023, renewable energy provided 50.3% of power. Yesterday, the proportion of renewables was far higher. Just before the crash, solar was providing about 53% of Spain’s electricity, with another 11% from wind, according to power distributor Red Eléctrica data. Gas was providing only about 6%.
Spain was forced to activate emergency measures to restore electricity across parts of the country’s north and south, including switching hydroelectric plants back on and importing power through giant cables with France and Morocco.
Traditional energy systems have mechanisms that allow them to keep running even if there is a shock, such as a surge or loss of power.
However, solar and wind do not have the same ability.
How it all works
Electricity grids need what is known as inertia to help balance the network and maintain electricity supplies at a stable frequency. Inertia is created by generators with spinning parts – such as turbines running on gas, coal or hydropower – which wind and solar do not have.
Britain’s National Energy Systems Operator (Neso) compared it to “the shock absorbers in your car’s suspension, which dampen the effect of a sudden bump in the road and keep your car stable and moving forward”.
Kathryn Porter, an independent energy analyst, said: “In a low-inertia environment, the frequency can change much faster. If you have had a significant grid fault in one area, or a cyber attack, or whatever it may be, the grid operators therefore have less time to react.
“That can lead to cascading failures if you cannot get it under control quickly.”
Duncan Burt, a former British grid operator and strategy chief at Reactive Technologies, said: “If you have got a very high solar day, then your grid is less stable, unless you’ve taken actions to mitigate that. So you would expect things to be less stable than normal.”
Reform Party deputy leader and energy spokesman Richard Tice said the events in Spain should be a warning to Britain and showed the risks of net-zero.
“We need to know the exact causes, but this should be seen as a wake-up call to the eco-zealots.
“Power grids need to operate within tight parameters to remain stable. Wind and solar outputs, by contrast, vary hugely over long and short periods, so they add risk to the system. The UK’s grid operators and our Government should take heed.”
There have long been warnings about this kind of vulnerability in net-zero systems.
The European Court of Auditors, an arm’s-length body that oversees EU spending, warned earlier this month the growth of renewables was making it harder to balance the grids of different countries.
It said in a report: “Renewable energy sources have higher intermittency and variability because their output depends on weather conditions, unlike traditional power plants that can adjust output to meet demand”.
“This, in turn, makes balancing the system more challenging.
“Consequently, grid reinforcement, the installation of specific equipment, and more modern, smart and innovative technologies may be required to accommodate these energy sources.”
Britain’s plans
Under plans drawn up by Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, Britain is hoping to decarbonise its energy system by 2030. The plan requires a huge shift to renewable energy and will make the UK one of the fastest adopters of net-zero in the world.
Craig Dyke at Neso said: “We are monitoring the situation closely and are liaising with our counterparts in neighbouring European countries to offer any assistance that may be required.”
A Government spokesman said: “Our electricity network continues to operate as normal and there are no expected impacts on the UK.”
On Monday night, Spain’s energy operator Red Eléctrica estimated it could take between six to 10 hours to restore power, while REN in Portugal said it could take up to a week for normal service to resume.
Hospitals were forced to switch to emergency generators, and traffic lights in the region were knocked out after blackouts swept the Iberian Peninsula. Mobile networks were also hit, leaving people relying on battery-powered radios to get updates and news.
Passengers were also forced to flee through dark tunnels on underground networks in Spain and Portugal, and emergency services workers carried out 286 rescue operations to free people trapped inside elevators across Madrid.
Elsewhere, British tennis player Jacob Fearnley was forced to leave the clay court at the Madrid Open after scoreboards and a camera above the court were affected.
The Portuguese Cabinet convened an emergency meeting at the Prime Minister’s residence in response to the blackouts, and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez visited Red Eléctrica to follow efforts at restoring grid operations.
Slow return of power
About three and a half hours after the blackout began, power had returned to parts of Galicia, the Basque Country, and Catalonia, but officials warned it could be days before full normality resumes.
In a televised address, Sanchez called on the public to “cooperate with all authorities, to act with responsibility and civility”.
Portuguese authorities said the blackouts may have been caused by a “very large oscillation in the electrical voltage” in the Spanish system.
The cybersecurity wing of the European Union suggested a technical or cable fault was responsible for the outage.
Preliminary findings from the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) suggested it was not an attack.
A spokesman said the investigation ”seems to point to a technical/cable issue”.
In a televised address, Sanchez said: “We still do not have conclusive information about the reasons for this outage ... It’s better not to speculate, we will know the causes, we do not rule out any hypothesis.”
Flight disruptions
Ongoing issues raise the prospect of significant disruption for British holidaymakers and travellers in the region.
More than 500 flights were scheduled to leave Britain for airports in Portugal and Spain, equivalent to almost 100,000 seats.
The blackout is thought to be Europe’s biggest ever, eclipsing a 2003 outage that left 56 million people in Italy and parts of Switzerland without electricity for up to 12 hours.
The largest power cut in history was in India in 2012, when 700 million people, roughly 10% of the world’s population at the time, were left without electricity.
