Europe’s Grid Buckles Under Its Own Future
Tsvetana Paraskova

Monday’s massive power outage in Spain and Portugal, Europe’s worst blackout, triggered a lot of questions, concerns, and a blame game of who done it.

On Monday midday, a sudden massive outage hit the electricity transmission systems of Spain and Portugal, and briefly parts of France, in a very rare blackout in Europe, whose causes are yet to be determined.

The blackout, which began at around 12:00 PM GMT on Monday, hit major cities and transportation networks, leaving authorities scrambling to restore power and ascertain the underlying cause. Airports grounded flights, hospitals postponed routine surgeries, while authorities in both Spain and Portugal declared a state of emergency. Internet and mobile phone services were interrupted.

Blame Game 

Some were quick to point the finger at renewable energy—solar power provided nearly 60% of Spain’s electricity generation immediately before the massive loss of power, while wind energy accounted for another 10%.

Initial speculation swirled around a possible cyber attack or the high dependence of the grid on renewable power generation. Spain and the EU are investigating the cause, but it appears that a cyber attack could be ruled out.

“On Monday 28 April, between 12:38 and 13:30 CET, Spain’s transmission system was disconnected from the European grid at the 400 kV level due to an issue with a power line connecting French and Spanish Catalonia. The fault triggered a domino disrupting electricity supply not only in Spain but also in Portugal, Andorra, and parts of France,” said Eurelectric, the federation of the European electricity industry.

What’s certain is that there wasn’t a shortage of electricity generation before the event. There were reports of anomalous oscillations in the high-voltage lines before the power shut down. These oscillations caused synchronization failures between the electrical systems and eventually ended in disturbances across the interconnected European network, Eurelectric said.

One possible reason for the massive loss of power could be the insufficient grid inertia, which is critical for maintaining a steady frequency. While stable baseload power generators such as gas power plants or nuclear power have spinning generators creating inertia, solar and wind power don’t have rotating generators to keep the inertia long enough to keep the grid frequency in case of sudden power loss, Reuters Energy Columnist Ron Bousso notes. Grids need to have their frequency stable at 50 Hertz to ensure a steady power supply.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said suggestions that Spain’s high share of renewable energy was to blame for the outage were ‘lies’.

“Those linking the blackout to the lack of nuclear power are either lying or demonstrating their ignorance,” Sanchez said.

Grid Resilience Tested 

Whatever the cause, the worst blackout in Europe and the first major system collapse in the era of booming renewable energy installations highlighted the need for investments in storage and grid resilience.

Spain’s “extraordinary event is a stark reminder that the grid is the backbone of our society. With electricity playing an increasingly important role in our society, we need to create all the conditions for enable a secure electricity supply,” Eurelectric said.

David Brayshaw, Professor of Climate Science and Energy Meteorology at the University of Reading in the UK, commented on the blackout,

“If something on the network — a generator, a power line, or even a large electricity user — suddenly disappears, it creates a supply-demand imbalance and the system frequency starts to shift.”

Brayshaw noted that if the shift becomes too large, other components can trip offline, “creating a snowball effect that worsens the imbalance and can trigger a major blackout — sometimes within seconds.”

The Spanish blackout unfolded in a matter of seconds.

Dr Omid Shariati, lecturer in Sustainable Technologies at the University of Reading, said that “a single transmission line failure shouldn't cause widespread blackouts if proper security planning is in place.”

But the expert noted that “no grid is 100% secure, and there's always a small risk of multiple severe problems happening at once.”

In the case of Europe, where renewable energy installations are booming, the grid is not ready to handle all that new inverter-based – not inertia-creating – supply.

Analysts and forecasters have been warning for years that investment in grid capacity, resilience, and transmission lines is lagging behind the rollout of renewables.

Grid investments are lagging behind renewable additions and a lack of transmission capacity could hold back the energy transition, think tank Ember said in a report last year.

“Making sure solar and wind can actually connect to the system is as critical as the panels and turbines themselves,” says Elisabeth Cremona, Energy & Climate Data Analyst at Ember.

“There is no transition without transmission.”

The EU and the world as a whole are unprepared for the massive roll-out of wind and solar—investments in grids are currently insufficient to handle the boom, while energy storage is also behind the curve of renewable power generation.

“As Europe ramps up renewable energy deployment and increasingly electrifies the economy, electricity production and demand are expected to double by 2050,” Agora Energiewende, a think tank, said in a report in 2024.

“A high number of additional generators and consumers will be connected to the power grid at the distribution level. This poses challenges to the existing infrastructure which was not built to handle such increased loads.”

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

Tsvetana is a writer for the U.S.-based Divergente LLC consulting firm with over a decade of experience writing for news outlets such as iNVEZZ and SeeNews. 

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