Madrid’s transport system ground to a halt after the Spanish energy grid suffer mass outages - Adri Salido/Getty Images
A reliance on net zero energy left Spain and Portugal vulnerable to the mass blackouts engulfing the region, experts said on Monday night.
In what is believed to be Europe’s largest power cut, tens of millions of people were left without electricity, while flights were grounded, trains halted and whole cities left without power, internet access or other vital services.
The cause of the initial fault in the region’s electricity grid is still being investigated, and the EU has insisted that there were no indications that it was a cyber attack.
However, energy experts have blamed a heavy reliance on solar and wind farms in Spain for leaving the region’s power grid vulnerable to such a crisis.
A state of emergency was declared in Spain, while in Portugal, water company EPAL said supplies could also be disrupted.
Queues formed at shops of people seeking to purchase emergency supplies like gaslights, generators and batteries.
Energy operators are fighting to restore power in Spain, Portugal and parts of France, and residents are being urged to avoid travel and use mobile phones sparingly.
Tens of thousands of British travellers could potentially be affected by airport disruption in the region.
Spain has seen a massive increase in renewable and low carbon electricity generation in recent years. Two decades ago more than 80pc of its power came from burning fossil fuels such as coal and gas, as well as nuclear. Solar and wind provided less than 5pc.
By 2023 renewable energy provided 50.3pc of power. On Monday, the proportion of renewables was far higher. Around noon, just before the crash, solar was providing about 53pc of Spain’s electricity with another 11pc from wind, according to Red Eléctrica’s own data. Gas was providing only about 6pc.
On Monday, Spain was forced to activate emergency measures to restore electricity across parts of northern and southern Spain, including switching hydroelectric plants across the country back on and importing power through giant cables with France and Morocco.
Traditional energy systems have mechanisms which allow them to keep running even if there is a shock, such as a surge or loss of power.
However, solar and wind do not have the same ability.
Electricity grids need what is known as inertia to help balance the network and maintain electricity supplies at a stable frequency. Inertia is created by generators with spinning parts – such as turbines running on gas, coal or hydropower – which wind and solar do not have.
Britain’s National Energy Systems Operator (Neso) compares it to “the shock absorbers in your car’s suspension, which dampen the effect of a sudden bump in the road and keep your car stable and moving forward”.
Kathryn Porter, an independent energy analyst, said: “In a low-inertia environment the frequency can change much faster. If you have had a significant grid fault in one area, or a cyber attack, or whatever it may be, the grid operators therefore have less time to react.
“That can lead to cascading failures if you cannot get it under control quickly.”
Duncan Burt, a former British grid operator and strategy chief at Reactive Technologies, said: “If you have got a very high solar day then your grid is less stable, unless you’ve taken actions to mitigate that. So you would expect things to be less stable than normal.”
Richard Tice, the Reform party’s deputy leader and energy spokesman, said the events in Spain should be a warning to Britain and showed the risks of net zero.
He said: “We need to know the exact causes but this should be seen as a wake-up call to the eco-zealots.
“Power grids need to operate within tight parameters to remain stable. Wind and solar outputs by contrast, vary hugely over long and short periods so they add risk to the system. The UK’s grid operators and our Government should take heed.”
There have long been warnings about this kind of vulnerability in net zero systems.
The European Court of Auditors, an arms-length body that oversees EU spending, warned earlier this month that the growth of renewables was making it harder to balance the grids of different countries.
It said in a report: “Renewable energy sources have higher intermittency and variability because their output depends on weather conditions, unlike traditional power plants that can adjust output to meet demand. This, in turn, makes balancing the system more challenging.
“Consequently, grid reinforcement, the installation of specific equipment, and more modern, smart and innovative technologies may be required to accommodate these energy sources.”
Under plans drawn up by Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, Britain is hoping to decarbonise Britain’s energy system by 2030. The plan requires a huge shift to renewable energy and will make the UK one of the fastest adopters of net zero in the world.
Craig Dyke at Neso said: “We are monitoring the situation closely and are liaising with our counterparts in neighbouring European countries to offer any assistance that may be required.”
A government spokesman said: “Our electricity network continues to operate as normal and there are no expected impacts on the UK.”
On Monday night, Spain’s energy operator Red Eléctrica estimated it could take between six to 10 hours to restore power, while REN in Portugal said it could take up to a week for normal service to resume.
Hospitals were forced to switch to emergency generators and traffic lights in the region were knocked out after blackouts swept the Iberian peninsula around midday on Monday. Mobile networks were also hit, leaving people relying on the battery-powered radios to get updates and news.
Passengers were also forced to flee through dark tunnels on underground networks in Spain and Portugal, and emergency services workers carried out 286 rescue operations to free people trapped inside elevators across Madrid.
Spanish commuters were plunged into darkness when the blackout hit Madrid’s underground transit system - MARISCAL/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
Elsewhere, British tennis player Jacob Fearnley was forced to leave the clay court at the Madrid Open after scoreboards and a camera above the court were affected.
The Portuguese cabinet convened an emergency meeting at the prime minister’s residence in response to the blackouts and Pedro Sánchez, the Spanish prime minister, visited power distributor Red Eléctrica to follow efforts at restoring grid operations.
About three and a half hours after the blackout began, power had returned to parts of Galicia, the Basque Country and Catalonia, but officials warned it could be days before full normality resumes.
In a televised address, Mr Sanchez called on the public to “cooperate with all authorities, to act with responsibility and civility”.
Portuguese authorities said the blackouts may have been caused by a “very large oscillation in the electrical voltage” in the Spanish system.
The cyber security wing of the European Union suggested a technical or cable fault was responsible for the outage.
Preliminary findings from the the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) suggested it was not an attack and a spokesman told The Telegraph: “For the moment the investigation seems to point to a technical/cable issue.”
Mr Sánchez said in a televised address on Monday: “We still do not have conclusive information about the reasons for this outage ... It’s better not to speculate, we will know the causes, we do not rule out any hypothesis.”
Ongoing issues raise the prospect of significant disruption for British holidaymakers and travellers in the region.
More than 500 flights were scheduled to leave Britain for airports in Portugal and Spain on Monday, equivalent to almost 100,000 seats.
Officials said flights would not take off from Lisbon Airport until at least 10pm local time. Madrid and Barcelona were both operating at reduced capacity until further notice.
The blackout is thought to be Europe’s biggest ever, eclipsing a 2003 outage that saw 56m people in Italy and parts of Switzerland left without electricity for up to 12 hours.
The largest power cut in history was in India in 2012 when 700m people, roughly 10pc of the world’s population at the time, were left without electricity.
