More than 4.5 million residents in Spain and Portugal were left without electricity on Monday in what was one of the biggest blackouts ever in Portugal. The failure blacked out power across much of the Iberian Peninsula. Efforts at swift restoration by first responders and utility workers got service restored to 99 percent of these areas in just five weeks. The exact reasons for this blackout are still unclear as authorities begin investigations.
He underscored the emergency of the moment. He noted that “this generalized blackout occurred because, in just five seconds, more than half of the electricity-generation capacity was lost.”
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has gone to great lengths to deny that the widespread use of solar and wind energy was behind the outage. He added that lacking connections to the European power grid was not the reason. This claim has led some to wonder what exactly is behind the failure of Spain’s electrical infrastructure.
Prof. Manuel Alcázar Ortega, deputy director of the Department of Electrical Engineering at the Polytechnic University of Valencia, proposed a different cause for the crash. He suggested that it could be due to two “disconnections of generation,” perhaps due to the intermittency of renewable energy sources. He emphasized the importance of managing renewable energy production, stating that there is a need to “limit the production of photovoltaic energy at times of low demand, in favor of rolling generation that provides inertia to the system and can respond better to frequency variations.”
Underlying issues experts point to systemic vulnerabilities in Spain’s power grid. De Simón Martín, an authority on electrical engineering, pointed out that “the Spanish peninsular power grid has historically been robust and reliable thanks to its high degree of meshing at high and very high voltage.” He cautioned that “with low interconnection capacity and a high share of inverter-based renewable generation, our grid today is more vulnerable and has less margin to react to disturbances.”
Each year the investigators will examine the grid’s vulnerabilities. The natural barriers of the Pyrenees and the very limited international interconnections due to it form important geographical barriers. This issue has been known for years to be key for the electrical infrastructure of Spain. The increasing share of renewable generation in Spain may have aggravated disconnection issues. This scenario underscores the dire need for better real-time management of grid balance.
Energy transition in Spain is moving at a remarkable pace. It strives to obtain 81 percent of its power from clean energy by 2030. Today, renewables account for 66 percent of its installed capacity. By the end of 2022, they accounted for almost 59 percent of the country’s power generation. Although this transition from fossil fuels to a renewable energy economy is critical for achieving climate change goals, it has created new obstacles to sustaining grid stability.
Finally, the Spanish government has committed to an independent investigation into the incident. In addition, the European Commission has ordered Spain to provide a full account of what happened within three months. Authorities are looking into what caused that blackout. In the opposite corner, many experts and advocates have called on the government to expand electricity interconnections with France and other European countries to avoid such incidents in the future.
Sadly, this incident demonstrates just how critical resilience has become for electrical networks. It is on policymakers and energy leaders to heed this important lesson. By making improved interconnections we could make both systems more stable and less vulnerable, thereby keeping our citizens connected to a more reliable energy supply.
Leave a Reply