Renewable energy to blame for Spain's blackouts, official investigation finds

Telegraph

18-06-2025

Spain's disastrous national blackout was triggered by solar farms switching off in response to plummeting power prices, an official investigation has found.
A government report into Europe's biggest power cut found that Spain's solar farms were generating so much power on April 28, a particularly sunny day, that prices became 'negative' – meaning there were no profits to be made in operating them.
Plunging prices triggered a mass switch-off, which sent voltage and frequency fluctuations cascading across the national grids of both Spain and Portugal. Back-up systems meant to guard against such fluctuations were not in effect.
This caused blackouts that left more than 60m people across the Iberian peninsula without power, the Spanish government report concluded.
The power cut caused massive gridlock in cities and left thousands stranded on trains and in elevators across the Iberian peninsula. Several deaths were also linked to the incident.
Experts said in the immediate aftermath of the power cut that a reliance on net zero energy had left Spain and Portugal vulnerable to the blackouts because of the way renewable power is generated. However, Spain's Left-wing government has repeatedly insisted that green energy was not to blame.
Alberto Núñez Feijóo, leader of the opposition People's Party (PP), said ministers were 'so intent on being the greenest in the world that you have led Spaniards into the dark ', the BBC reported.
The investigation's findings will fuel concerns about Britain's race to net zero, led by Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary. Mr Miliband wants to make Britain's energy system carbon free by 2030, a shift that will see the country rely almost entirely on renewable energy, such as wind, solar and nuclear to keep the lights on.
Critics say more time is needed to ensure the grid is resilient and prepared for the huge shift.
The Spanish report, made public on Tuesday, described how the power cut, which occurred shortly after midday, had been preceded by unusual voltage fluctuations across the Spanish grid from roughly 10am onwards.
Those fluctuations correlated with abrupt reductions in solar generation which were probably driven by solar farms switching off as wholesale power prices fell. This coincided with other wider changes such as an abrupt drop in the amount of power being exported to France.
While the solar switch-off appears to be the immediate trigger for the blackouts, investigators blamed the country's grid operator Redeia for failing to calculate the correct mix of energy generation needed to prevent a blackout. Redeia disputed that finding, saying voltages had always been within set limits.
Investigators also attributed a portion of blame to power plant operators. Some had been paid to keep nuclear and gas-fired power stations in operation to stabilise the system but had turned down those plants too in order to save money.
Sara Aagesen, Spain's energy minister, said power plants 'should have controlled voltage and, moreover, many of them were economically remunerated to do so. They did not absorb all the reactive power that was expected.'
Redeia rejected any blame and said it was the fault of power plants. Concha Sanchez, operations chief, told a news briefing: 'Had conventional power plants done their job in controlling the voltage there would have been no blackout.'
Beatriz Corredor, the company's chairman, said Redeia will release its own full report on the causes of the outage.