Fact check: Could an ‘experiment' have caused the Iberian blackout?
An article published last week in British newspaper The Telegraph alleges that the massive electricity outage that left the Iberian Peninsula in darkness on 28 April was triggered by a Spanish government 'experiment' with renewable energies.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, The Telegraph's World Economy Editor, wrote that according to 'sources in Brussels', Spanish authorities were 'probing how far they could push reliance on renewables' in preparation for Spain's phase-out of nuclear reactors.
He gave no further details regarding his sources and provided no evidence to back up the claims.
The accusations were picked up by major Spanish and international media, such as El Periódico, El Mundo and Antena 3, as well as The Daily Mail and CNN, and amplified by social media users.
But a closer look at the article finds that it was in fact published as an opinion-editorial rather than a news article and Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is a regular Telegraph columnist.
He uses the 28 April outage to criticise the energy policies of Spain's socialist government led by prime minister Pedro Sánchez. Under a plan agreed in 2019 under Sánchez, Spain will phase out its nuclear power plants over the next decade to focus instead on green energy sources, a move Evans-Pritchard describes as reckless.
In his commentary Evans-Pritchard cites 'Brussels sources' as having confirmed that Spain conducted an experiment in the run-up to the blackout.
But he then says: 'If it is established that the blackout was a controlled experiment that went wrong, and if this information has been withheld from the public (...) the Spanish Left faces electoral oblivion for a political generation.'
Euroverify reached out to the Telegraph to request clarification on the number of sources consulted as well as their function in relation to ongoing investigations into the incident, but have yet to receive a reply.
We also asked the European Commission whether they could refute or corroborate the claims. A spokesperson said that the executive would not comment until it had seen the investigation into the causes of the blackout.
The Commission has given Spain three months since the date of the outage to present a technical report outlining the incident, a requirement under EU law. An expert European panel is also leading its own probe to be presented to the Commission.
Meanwhile, the Spanish government has 'categorically denied" the claims made in the Telegraph.
Spain's deputy prime minister María Jesús Montero claimed that there were 'corporate interests' behind the article, adding that the British newspaper is 'known for spreading fake news, lies and trying to distort public opinion.'
A spokesperson for Red Eléctrica, the partly state-owned company responsible for managing the Spanish grid, told Euroverify that it 'categorically denied' the claims, adding that it was an example of 'fake news.'
To establish whether such a government-led 'experiment' on the grid could, in principle, be feasible, Euroverify spoke to three electrical engineering experts.
They explained that while no hypothesis can be completely disregarded, the prospect of such an experiment is highly unlikely.
'Anything could be possible, but this (theory) doesn't seem reasonable,' Manuel Alcázar-Ortega, deputy director of the Department of Electrical Engineering at the Polytechnic University of Valencia, told Euroverify.
'From a technical point of view, Red Eléctrica has had a simulator that replicates the entire transmission grid. So these simulations do not need to be done in real life. They can be done in this simulator.'
The simulator is used to test the grid's capacity and foresee the evolution of the grid in order to develop its infrastructure and adapt to its future needs, Alcázar-Ortega explained.
Professor Dirk Van Hertem, researcher at the EnergyVille research centre in Belgium, confirmed that such computer simulations are used to analyse the grid.
He added that while real-life tests can be done in practice, there was 'no evidence that they were done at that moment' in Spain.
Van Herteam added that the time in question would not have been conducive to test the grid's capacity to absorb renewables as it was 'not the moment with the highest renewable penetration in Spain.'
One month since the blackout, investigations have failed to draw firm conclusions, despite the first analyses pointing to a strong 'oscillation' in the electrical network half an hour before the outage as well as consecutive failures in substations in the south-west of Spain.
The lack of answers has fuelled speculation over the impact of an increasing share of renewable energy in the grid.
Asked whether renewable energy could have played some part in the outage, Alcázar-Ortega said: 'Everything seems to indicate that it did, with the caveat that the culprit is not renewable energy itself, but probably how this resource has been managed.'
Spain has seen an exponential growth in the share of renewable energy in its mix in recent years, with wind, solar, and hydro generating a record 56.8% of Spain's electricity in 2024.
'This has not been accompanied by systems that would allow us to compensate for the inertia that the system was losing due to it not having a replacement of the real inertia that traditional electric generators provide,' Alcázar-Ortega said.
System inertia in the grid helps keep frequency within an acceptable range. Renewable energy sources such as wind and solar are considered 'inertia-less', making the power grid more unstable and susceptible to outages.
'It is not the fault of renewables, but rather of not having the storage systems or other types of 'grid-forming' inverters (...) capable of providing this frequency control,' Alcázar-Ortega added.
The Spanish prime minister has said that there is 'no empirical evidence that the incident was provoked by an excess in renewables,' accusing pro-nuclear groups of capitalising on the incident to campaign against the phase-out of nuclear plants.
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