On April 28, a massive power outage swept across Spain and Portugal, affecting over 30 million people and revealing serious weaknesses in Europe’s electricity infrastructure. The blackout, which lasted several hours in many regions, was caused by a sudden drop of nearly 15 gigawatts in power supply—equivalent to 60% of Spain’s energy demand at that moment. The event disrupted airports, hospitals, metro systems, and even mobile networks. While a cyberattack has been ruled out, grid experts say the failure was likely linked to instability caused by the heavy reliance on intermittent renewable sources like wind and solar, which now make up close to 60% of Spain’s electricity mix. Grid frequency dropped below the critical 49.5 Hz level, forcing emergency disconnections across the Iberian Peninsula and beyond.
The outage had cascading effects, briefly affecting parts of France and even creating signal delays on transatlantic telecom cables. It highlighted the growing pains of Europe’s transition to clean energy—particularly the need for modern grids capable of balancing variable inputs. The European Commission has already flagged this issue, noting that €584 billion must be invested by 2030 to upgrade Europe’s grid infrastructure to handle the demands of electrification, electric vehicles, decentralized solar, and heat pumps. Spain’s blackout now stands as a case study for other developed nations: unless energy systems are made more flexible, resilient, and digitally managed, the clean energy transition could expose countries to growing risks of grid failures—even in the world’s most advanced economies. More