Lessons from Spain and Portugal’s massive blackout

At approximately 12:30 p.m. on Monday, April 28, all of Spain and Portugal as well as a sliver of France were plunged into what was described by Reuters as the biggest blackout in Europe’s history.

Chaos ensued. More than 50 million people were without power, metro and commuter trains were paralyzed, ATMs stopped functioning, the internet shut down. Although power was restored the next day, the precise cause of the blackout remains unknown. To fill the void, blame has been cast upon a wide variety of suspects, from the intermittency of wind and solar energy to a possible cyberattack (which was quickly ruled out).

In the wake of the power outage, the need to understand how to mitigate massive disruptions in the supply of electricity has come into sharp relief as the demand for power soars. From 2025 to 2027, global electricity consumption is expected to rise every year by the equivalent of what Japan consumes today, a stunning increase over a short period of time.

As Canada embarks on a push to become an energy superpower, some important lessons emerge from southern Europe’s power loss. Here are key takeways from the blackout that experts say can inform how to build a stable, fossil-free electrical grid, acknowledging that more insights are likely to surface over time.

What happened?

While the order of events is clear, the catalyzing factors that triggered the power outage in the Iberian Peninsula remain fuzzy.

Red Eléctrica de España, the Spanish grid operator, suggested that one likely factor was a drop in energy production at a solar plant in southwest Spain. This caused an initial power failure followed seconds later by a massive drop in other renewable production. This second drop was especially devastating, amounting to an approximate loss of 15 gigawatts of electricity generating capacity, as much as 60% of Spain’s power demand at the time, according to Carbon Brief.

Some have argued that the high share of renewables in Spain’s electricity mix is the main culprit behind the blackout, including Pratheeksha Ramdas, an analyst at Rystad Energy, who told Bloomberg News that “Spain’s high renewable penetration exposed difficulties in balancing intermittent supply.” But others point out that only days earlier, Spain’s grid had operated on 100% renewables without problems.

Moreover, many systems fail in electricity supply, not only renewables, and outages at this scale happen somewhere in the world around once a year on average.

Despite the lack of definitive answers, experts cite the following as essential to grid stability as the world shifts to a clean energy economy.

Six takeaways

Backup supply

As leaders in the transition to a green energy system, both Spain and Portugal operate grids that are heavily reliant on weather-dependent sources of power: solar and wind contribute more than 75% of combined output. Few generators powered by fossil fuels, hydro or nuclear were running at the time of the outage.

“Wind and solar are intermittent by definition, meaning you can’t really plan for when these sources produce energy; they produce when the weather cooperates, not necessarily when we want them to,” explains Vidya Vankayala, director of the Smart Microgrid Applied Research Team (SMART) at B.C.’s Institute of Technology.

In an interview with the Vancouver Sun, Vankayala noted that the grid everywhere is experiencing pressures it hasn’t been built for. “We need to invest in our assets,” he adds in an interview with Corporate Knights. “Practically speaking, we cannot abandon conventional energy. Renewables must be introduced gradually.”

Grid maintenance

To ensure that a grid is balanced – meaning that there is neither too much nor too little generation in the network – distribution systems must be well maintained and upgraded over time. When a grid is not in balance, the system will shut down automatically, which is often the reason for power cuts.

Vankayala likens the electrical grid to a house. “Imagine you have a home that’s been built, say, 100 years ago, and over time, you keep adding to it, but the house is still sitting on the same foundation,” he says. “With an energy system, we don’t have the ability to demolish the existing house and build a new one. We are building as we are living in the house, and you want to cause as little disruption as possible. That’s where the difficulty is. We are expanding the energy supply while the system needs to be maintained and operated at the same time.”

Kesavarthiniy Savarimuthu, an analyst with BloombergNEF, pointed out that Spain’s grid investment is less than half the European average and lacks sufficient battery storage, which, he argues, could have helped the system respond more quickly to a drop in generation.

Kristian Ruby, secretary-general of Eurelectric, a federation representing Europe’s electric industry, told Euronews Next that investment into the grids “is not happening at the pace that’s needed and that’s something that needs to change,” adding, “we need to basically develop the grid infrastructure of our system at the same pace as we’re developing the generation side.”

Storage

Municipalities, developers, utilities and governments should not think of renewable energy as simply energy production through solar or wind but rather as a combination portfolio that includes extensive battery storage.

Many countries, such as Denmark and Germany, successfully operate electricity systems with high levels of variable renewable energy by using advanced grid management, energy storage and strong regional connections that, in combination, reinforce resilience and reliability.

Clean energy projects that include adequate storage capacity also offer a high degree of flexibility. Flexibility refers to the ability to adjust the generation, transmission and distribution of energy so that the variable supply in energy from renewables syncs with the daily peaks and valleys of demand.

Wind Europe put out a statement saying that a key lesson from the power loss is that Europe must speed up renewables; invest in stronger, smarter electricity grids; and expand storage capacity.

Demand response

The supply and management of renewable power is just one half of the equation. The other is demand response.

Brendan Haley, senior director of policy strategy at Efficiency Canada, says that “the first step is to mitigate the projected increase in demand with more energy efficiency. There are numerous ways to save electricity, and any savings across the entire grid network matter.”

Demand response refers to influencing the customer’s use of electricity in ways that encourage more efficient energy consumption and smooths out spikes in demand, putting less strain on the grid. “Demand-side solutions make the buildings where people live and businesses where people work resilient to power outages,” Haley says. “Batteries can keep the lights on, and well-insulated homes and buildings can maintain their internal temperatures.”

Vankayala agrees that demand management is key and leads directly to carbon emission reductions while lowering costs.

Cross-regional connections vs. close to home

The sprawling electrical network that connects Spain, Portugal and parts of France can be seen as both a strength and a weakness – a topic of particular relevance for Canada amidst a push to establish interties between provinces. (North–south transmission connections between Canada and the United States are more numerous than east–west connections between provinces.)

Inter-regional transmission can help systems respond to disruptions in electricity supply by providing access to energy from neighbouring systems, as noted in a report put out by the Canadian Climate Institute and research from Corporate Knights’ Climate Dollars project. This can be especially important when local supply is threatened by, for example, severe weather events. But cross-regional connections also raise the risk that problems in one place will affect the other.

Haley argues that the power loss across the entirety of the Iberian Peninsula “should make us question the resilience benefits of cross-border interties. The intertie was lost with France as that grid severed the connection to protect its own generators and grid infrastructure. Doing whatever is possible to balance supply and demand locally and domestically is important to keep the lights on when faced with an unanticipated grid event.”

Utilities across North America and Europe are increasingly looking at virtual power plants (VPPs) as a cost-effective, energy-efficient means of meeting the increase in consumption. A VPP consists of hundreds or even thousands of households and businesses that can connect their electrical devices – EVs, home appliances, batteries and the like – to the grid to be used as an additional energy supply source.

B.C. Hydro launched a pilot project in Sun Peaks near Kamloops and Harrison Mills outside Mission to test the potential for using household batteries to store energy when demand is low and release it into the grid when electrical use peaks.

In 2024, Puerto Rico began using batteries installed in private residences that connected to rooftop solar panels as backup power for its electrical system to help prevent sudden power losses and as an alternative to fossil-fuel-burning peaker plants. The goal is to enroll 6,500 participants, which would provide 26 megawatts of power.

Energy autonomy

A clean grid is far less reliant on imported or traded fossil fuels, allowing for much greater domestic control over supply, cost and reliability.

A report released by the International Institute for Sustainable Development highlights that “a well-designed renewable-based power grid not only protects consumers from sudden spikes in electricity costs but also enhances Canada’s energy independence, making the country more resilient in an increasingly volatile fossil fuel economy.” Not to mention an increasingly volatile geopolitical landscape.

Clean energy superpower

As Canada embarks on its goal to become a leader in the energy sector, it will need to develop a comprehensive national energy strategy, Vankayala says. “What I’m suggesting is [leadership], not just in production of energy, but also being able to call our own shots for the whole value chain. Canada has lots of capacity, lots of resources that we can bring to bear to produce energy. Canada can be a net energy exporter of all forms: hydro, technology, nuclear.”

“My dream,” Vankayala says, “is that one day I wake up and I can build an entire energy system with entirely Canadian-made components, Canadian-made technology, Canadian resources, and then we can sell all that at a profit to the rest of the world.”