The Iberian peninsula suffered one of Europe’s worst blackouts in living memory on 28th April. Initial investigations show that wind and solar power were not to blame, but this is a wake-up call to invest in grid resilience and energy storage.
Wind farms were not to blame for Iberia’s huge blackout last month. That is the finding from initial investigations into the cause of the crisis.
On 28th April at 12.33pm local time, the Iberian Peninsula was hit by one of Europe’s worst electrical blackouts in living memory, and the energy industry has mostly stayed in the dark since then. But we are now getting a clearer idea of why it happened after weeks of speculation. It is a story the wind sector needs to be told.
The Spanish Government’s Minister for Ecological Transition Sara Aagesen said on 14th May that the blackout was sparked in Spain by a failure in a substation in the province of Granada. This caused a loss of 2.2GW of electricity from the Spanish grid and started a chain of grid disconnections that eventually less to a loss of 15GW of power supply, which included solar, wind, nuclear, coal and other sources.
The result is Spain, Portugal and a small area of southwest France had no power for around 16 hours, and it took almost 23 hours to bring the Spanish grid back to full operation. However, we are not yet sure exactly why the Granada substation failed.
Aagesen said the government is carrying out an “extremely complex” investigation and it will work “relentlessly” to “identify the causes” of the failure.
In the immediate aftermath of the blackout, the Spanish Government was quick to establish that the high penetrations of wind and solar power in the electricity system were not to blame for the blackout. Indeed, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said on 29th April that such suggestions were “lies”.
The European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity has also sought to clarify what happened. It said the blackout came around half an hour after two periods of power and frequency swings in the European grid – the so-called Continental European Synchronous Area – and is carrying out further investigations.
It also noted that Spain was exporting 1GW of power to France, 2GW to Portugal and 800MW to Morocco immediately shortly before the collapse.
In addition, Spanish grid operator Red Eléctrica de España said there were unusual low-frequency oscillations between Iberia and the main European grid before the blackouts. Other possible explanations for the blackout that have been so far ruled out include an imbalance between power supply and demand, a cyberattack, and grid capacity issues.
Wind energy criticism
This matters for the wind sector because renewable energy found itself in the crosshairs of critics shortly after the blackouts.
Solar farms were generating around 55% of all power on the Spanish grid shortly before the outage, followed by wind (10%), nuclear (10%) and hydro (10%). Solar production was high as it was the middle of the day.
On average, wind farms provide around 25% of Spain’s electricity needs and solar farms 21%. Critics argued that high penetrations of renewables in the energy mix undermine grid stability. Specifically, some onlookers said the blackouts were due to the lack of grid inertia, which is used to keep the electrical frequency stable but is not inherently offered by wind and solar farms, unlike traditional power plants.
Organisations including WindEurope argued there was no evidence to link the blackout to low levels of inertia, and added that Spain has recently operated on 100% renewables with no problem. This challenge can be managed with energy storage, grid management technology and strong connections to neighbouring regions, but was not a feature here.
WindEurope highlighted that renewables quickly rebounded once grid conditions were more stable, whereas coal and nuclear plants had completely shut down so took longer to restore.
If anything, the Iberian blackout is an argument to invest more in the technology that can stabilise grids and support renewables. This includes investing in battery storage systems that can smooth the intermittency of solar and wind projects while providing vital back-up power that boosts resilience, and other approaches including the use of synthetic inertia.
This won’t stop the criticism of wind. Those of us who have been in the sector long enough know that nothing does.
Spain’s conservative People’s Party called the country’s energy policy “fundamentalist and irresponsible” because of its reliance on renewables, and debate now rages about whether Spain is right to phase out nuclear power. Shutdowns of nuclear plants in Spain are due from 2027.
It might make sense for the Spanish Government to revisit plans to shut down nuclear in the name of grid resilience and being able to meet growing power demand. But wind and solar should be protected as stable contributors to the country’s energy mix too.
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