At approximately 12:30 p.m. on April 28, 2025, Spain suddenly lost 15 gigawatts of electricity: 60 percent of its national electricity consumption. Since demand outpaced any remaining generation, the nation’s entire grid suffered a catastrophic failure. The entire Iberian Peninsula, including all of Spain and Portugal, along with portions of southern France, saw its industry, commerce, transportation, communication, and lifestyles skid to a complete halt.
This historic disaster – accounting for at least five, and possibly as many as seven, fatalities – only took five seconds to occur.
Renewable sources like wind and solar accounted for 78 percent of electricity generation in the impacted system, with solar alone contributing nearly 60 percent. Conversely, traditional fossil-fuel and nuclear plants accounted for only 15 percent. The risk of large-scale blackouts in electricity systems with high shares of renewable energy has been known and acknowledged for some time, but the scope and reach of the April 28 wipeout has shined a light on the issue like never before.
A key culprit can be found in the concept of non-synchronous instability in the electrical grid system. Synchronous generators, as utilized in traditional power plants, provide frequency regulation and inertia through their rotating masses, helping to stabilize grid frequency and voltage during sudden fluctuations or imbalances. By contrast, solar and wind installations are non-synchronous, meaning that they depend on a stable grid to function correctly and cannot autonomously support grid stability during disturbances. This makes the grid more vulnerable to potential disruptions, as was the case on April 28. The Iberian system that failed so quickly and so spectacularly lacked the inertia needed to absorb the shock.
And the system is not out of the woods yet. The risk of ongoing power interruptions is rising, warned Redeia, a leading Spanish energy provider, because the closure of coal, gas-fired, and nuclear plants reduces the grid’s balancing capacities – in other words, the result of not having the inertia to fill the gaps in reliability.
The solution to this potentially chronic issue across the Iberian Peninsula – and anywhere in the world, for that matter – could not be more obvious. Stop, or at the very least greatly slow down, the rush to rely on renewable energy as a dominant source of power generation. Let natural resources like coal continue to provide the fuel to keep traditional baseload power plants running efficiently, affordably, and reliably – while always providing the inertia energy to carry users through the peaks and valleys of electricity supply and demand.
Sources:
https://www.the-sun.com/news/14129858/first-spain-power-outage-deaths-woman-oxygen
