European Power Outage

Spain, Portugal and parts of France suffer major network failure

On 28 April, there were major blackouts in Spain, Portugal and southern France. This came just a week after Spain announced its first day of full reliance on “renewables”. Spanish authorities are saying that restoring power can take 6-10 hours, meaning that power can easily be out during the night. Portuguese authorities have said restoring power fully may take up to a week!

We are not experts on power. We speculate that the most likely explanation is that the supply of renewables surged above the grid’s ability to handle it. This is our reading of the statement from Spanish authorities: they attributed the blackout to “very strong oscillation in the electrical network”, which led to the Spanish grid being “disconnected from the European system, and the collapse of the Iberian electricity network at 12:38” pm local time. They also blamed a “rare atmospheric phenomenon” - which had no impact on countries like Morocco or Algeria.

Current electricity supply in Spain, in yellow. It fell from the average of 25 GW to slightly over 10GW.

Renewables require significant excess capacity. The output of wind and solar varies considerably depending on the weather, and reliance on them requires much greater capacity than the peak requirement, as they often produce below stated capacity. The corollary is that a sunny and/or windy day can cause excess production that overwhelms the grid. By contrast, hydrocarbons and nuclear provide output that is more predictable and easier to calibrate, simplifying grid management.

Alternatively, and, again, we are speculating, this may well have been a cyberattack from Russia, or China, or Iran. There is, as of yet, no evidence of that, however. Until there is greater clarity from official sources, we can only speculate.

Implications:

• There are obvious commercial impacts:

  • The metro in Spain is down, as are some train services.

  • Airports typically have emergency power supplies, reducing the risk of flight disruptions, but longer outages obviously would lead to that.

  • Further transport and traffic disruption is likely, especially if

• Less obvious impacts are:

  • A realisation that there is a greater need for Russian energy in order to keep the grid stable.

  • Reconsidering renewable energy, especially with the compounding effect of the trade war, given that most renewable energy equipment comes from China.

  • Delays to the deployments of renewables, out of fear that the impact on the grid.

  • Further investment in grid resilience will become more important in Europe.

• The longer the power outage lasts, the greater the security risks from crime, looting, and terrorism.

• Such an environment makes it much easier for organised crime to operate, while state forces are extremely unprepared and unable to operate without technology.

• The more Spain and Portugal fail in handling this crisis, the more evident it is how unprepared Europe is for war.

• If this is a cyberattack, it would mark a major escalation in cyberwarfare. Retaliation, and counter-retaliation, would become very likely.

• In either case, this incident would suggest that decentralised systems with deep redundancies will work much better than centrally managed and coordinated.