ReadNOW

The massive power outage in Spain and Portugal this week has raised questions about whether Europe’s power grid is ready for the rapid electrification and ramping up of renewable energy sources like wind and solar called for by EU climate policy and increasingly seen as a geopolitical imperative.

One theory that has been gaining traction in the hours since the power outage just after 12:30 on Monday is that the collapse was triggered by the failure of a high voltage power line between France and Spain.

That is certainly the theory being pushed by the electricity company association Eurelectric. “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 industry group said on Tuesday.

“The fault triggered a domino disrupting electricity supply not only in Spain but also in Portugal, Andorra, and parts of France,” Eurelectric said.

Why that happened has yet to be clarified. Briefing journalists, a European Commission energy official said that EU regulations require the transmission system operators (TSOs) involved in the incident to conduct a detailed investigation and produce a report within six months.

One thing seems clear, however: there was no shortage of electricity moments before the crash, when solar power alone was covering over half of demand, and surplus power was being exported to France via a 2.8GW high-voltage interconnector. It remains to be established exactly what tripped a precipitous shutdown of solar power – over 10 GW in a matter of minutes – and all other sources in the generation mix.

Electricity islands

The European Commission has recognised that Europe’s power grid is not fit for purpose, and will need to be rapidly built up in line with rising demand, driven largely by the planned electrification of sectors that have traditionally been powered by fossil fuels: electric cars replacing petrol and diesel models, and heat pumps replacing gas boilers.

In the Clean Industrial Deal published in February, the EU executive promised to deliver a ‘grids package’ early in 2026, which should put legislative flesh on the bones of an ‘action plan’ delivered in late 2023. It is now aiming at presenting the package towards the end of this year.

Electricity firms are among those pushing hardest for the EU to take decisive action. “As society relies more and more on electricity, it’s crucial that electricity is reliable,” Eurelectric secretary-general Kristian Ruby said.

Under the current target, all EU countries should have in place internal and cross border power lines capable of importing or exporting 15% of their national generation capacity.

The European Commission estimates this could cost €584 billion, a figure the EU executive said in its last annual energy review “might put the current model of refinancing these investments through consumer tariffs under strain”.

To make things worse, as the campaign group Climate Action Network Europe noted recently, the 11 countries that have not yet met the 15% target are home to 86% of the EU’s wind and solar capacity.

Apart from isolated Cyprus and Ireland, whose first power line to the EU (now the UK no longer counts) is under construction, Spain is the furthest from meeting the 2030 connection target.

It is currently on just 4%, one point behind fellow laggards Greece, Italy and Poland, although a second link to France, under the Bay of Biscay, is under construction and due online in 2028.

“Widespread blackouts like this have virtually always been triggered by transmission network failures – not by generation, renewables or otherwise,” said Michael Hogan, a senior advisor at the Regulatory Assistance Project, an NGO specialising in energy policy.

The degree to which its relative isolation from the European grid contributed to the disastrous power cut should be established in the coming weeks, but it undoubtedly prevents surplus green electricity being channelled to other parts of Europe that could use it to replace coal or gas-fired generation.

Huge amounts of energy and money are wasted each year when solar arrays are switched off or wind turbines brought to a standstill simply because there is nowhere for the electricity to go.

France, where nuclear power predominates, is only capable of shunting the equivalent 6% of its generation potential across its borders. And even Germany, which prides itself on its energy transition is only at 11%.

A patchwork of grids

Euronews asked Ronnie Belmans, emeritus professor at the KU Leuven university in Belgium and a veteran expert on power grids, how repeats of the Iberian blackout could be avoided in future.

“First of all, you need a good grid,” Belmans said. “Spain is not well connected to the rest of Europe, they have only one serious connection,” Belmans said, in reference to the trans-Pyrenean line.

The situation – which some have blamed at least in part on a reluctance over the years of the French government to expose its nuclear industry to competition from cheaper green energy – was “shameful” he said.

Moreover, grid planning in Europe is currently largely in the hands of transmission system operators, through a quasi-official EU body known as ENTSO-E – a situation that critics have long complained entails a conflict of interests.

For Belmans, having a “bunch of TSOs sitting together around the table” at regular intervals and presenting their own national plans – reflecting their own economic interests – is no way to run a European power grid.

“What is missing is an independent development plan in Europe,” he said, suggesting that steps should be made towards an independent transnational system operator under the control of the EU’s energy regulatory agency ACER.

“It could be empowered to designate how much and where new overlay grid capacity is needed independent of national borders,” Belmans said.

With the European Commission still working on its grids package, the next indication of its appetite for reform should come next week, with the expected publication of a plan to wean Europe off Russian fossil fuels by 2027.

With scant petroleum resources of its own, the EU has already increased its renewable energy targets and streamlined planning procedures since the Ukraine invasion. Even before this week’s events, whatever proves to be their specific cause, it was clear Europe’s grid wasn’t ready.