Spanish power distributor Red Eléctrica announced on X early Tuesday that 99% of the country’s power capacity had been restored following a daylong, unprecedented blackout that plunged much of Europe’s Iberian Peninsula into chaos and darkness.
The Iberian Peninsula… wiped off the map of lights. This is how it looked from orbit last night after a massive blackout hit Spain and Portugal. Cosmic silence over the region.”#Blackout #IberianPeninsula #Spain #Portugal #PowerOutage #SatelliteView #EarthAtNight… pic.twitter.com/0HyA7tN8m0
— David Sobolewski (@buzzyrobot) April 29, 2025
As of 0700 local time, Red Eléctrica stated:
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99.95% of the demand recovered (25,794MW).
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We continue working from the Electrical Control Center for the complete normalization of the system.
The outage paralyzed digital payment systems, disrupted communications, and brought various modes of transportation networks to an apocalyptic standstill. While a Spanish judge has launched an investigation into whether a cyberattack was responsible, early indications suggest the culprit is likely net zero.
Here’s an excerpt from Michael Shellenberger at PUBLIC, who provided an uncomfortable truth about the unhinged liberals in Europe who have been hellbent on retiring fossil fuel power and nuclear generation plants, swapping for unreliable solar and wind:
Despite all these warnings, political and regulatory energy in Europe remained focused on accelerating renewable deployment, not upgrading the grid’s basic stability. In Spain, solar generation continued to climb rapidly through 2023 and early 2024.
Coal plants closed. Nuclear units retired.
On many spring days by 2025, Spain’s midday solar generation exceeded its total afternoon demand, leading to frequent negative electricity prices.
The system was being pushed to the limit.
And today, at 12:35 pm, it broke.
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Spain’s blackout wasn’t just a technical failure. It was a political and strategic failure.
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Unless Spain rapidly invests in synthetic inertia, maintains and expands its nuclear fleet, or adds some other new form of heavy rotating generation, the risk of future blackouts will only grow worse.
Red Eléctrica has refused to speculate on the cause of the worst blackout in Spain’s history. However, REN, the Portuguese grid operator, said Monday that a rare atmospheric phenomenon in Spain caused by extreme temperature variations was the most likely cause.
Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez told reporters that the power blackout was caused by an issue in the European grid. He described it as a “strong oscillation” but did not provide further details.
Sánchez noted that power was pulled from Morocco and France to restore power in southern and northern parts of Spain. Local grids were adding the production of hydroelectric and combined cycle thermal power plants to stabilize the grid.
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Spain’s green energy revolution actually achieved net zero yesterday: blackout.
Congratulations to Portugal and Spain for achieving Net Zero today –
Zero emissions, Zero electricity, Zero explanations! ⚡🌎#NetZero #Blackout pic.twitter.com/JP6k5Q4jcl— Paul Hennessy (@PPHennessy) April 28, 2025
An inconvenient truth for some. “Net zero blamed for blackout chaos in Spain and Portugal.”
It’s time to end the nonsense of net zero – which is a threat to economic and energy security. pic.twitter.com/qymXSArQgt
— James Melville 🚜 (@JamesMelville) April 29, 2025
Net Zero blamed for blackout chaos
Spain, Portugal & part of France
Net Zero is damaging & dangerous
Stop it pic.twitter.com/ViQ5BeQwii
— Alan D Miller (@alanvibe) April 29, 2025
‘Critics of Net Zero are now questioning whether renewables were to blame’.@benleo444 reports from Madrid on the nationwide power outage that Spain experienced yesterday. pic.twitter.com/6RkGKkvsB4
— GB News (@GBNEWS) April 29, 2025
So what the fuck actually happened?
Mark Nelson (@EnergyBants) posted the most detailed breakdown (and conclusion) on X:
SPAIN BLACKOUTS: AN ANONYMOUS EXPERT VIEW
From a deep groupchat, last night, translated from Spanish, written by an expert in transmission and distribution of power. Not my words.
“What has happened on April 28 has a well-located origin: the Aragón-Catalonia corridor, which is one of the most important electric highways in Spain. There is not only the electricity produced by our solar and wind farms in the northeast, but also the electricity that we import from France. This international interconnection, although weak (it can only contribute 3% of our demand, well below the minimum of 10% that marks the EU), in times of stress is essential to balance the network.
At 12:32 p.m., in that Aragón-Catalonia corridor there was an electric shock. What exactly does “shake” mean? It means that suddenly and abnormally, the power that flowed through those lines began to vary violently, rising and falling in a very short time.
Such abrupt variability can be due to three main causes:
That a relay or transformer on that electric highway detects an abnormal flow of current or voltage (higher or lower than expected) and automatically disconnected to avoid burning or destroyed. This is called that “opens” a relay or switch: it jumps and cuts the passage of electricity to protect itself.
That the enormous concentration of renewable energy in that area (mainly solar and wind) has created an electrical resonance: electronic inverters, which synchronize current, can sometimes be amplified between them if a small voltage alteration (for example, due to clouds, strong wind or a slight failure) extends like an echo to all devices, causing widespread oscillations.
That a wrong control order has been sent (by mistake or attack) from the SCADA systems, disconnecting or reducing the generation of multiple hit plants. There is no confirmation of this possibility yet, but it is being investigated.
What is known is that as a consequence of that shake, the interconnection with France jumped: we were isolated just at the worst time, when the peninsula needed external support to stabilize.
Without that French help, the frequency of the peninsular network (which should always be 50 Hz exact) began to drop quickly. The frequency is like the heartbeat of the network: if it falls too much, the systems understand that the patient (the network) is collapsing and automatically disconnected so as not to self-destruct. Thus, in just five seconds, the solar and wind farms were turned off —very sensitive to frequency variations—, 15 GW of power was lost suddenly (60% of all the electricity generated at that time), and the network could not take it anymore: it was It collapsed completely, showing the Redeia Platform (REE) a “0 MW” nationwide. That does not mean that all the turbines were physically turned off, but there was no generator synchronized at the common frequency of 50 Hz. It was, for practical purposes, a country off.
To ignite a completely dead network again, one essential thing is needed: plants that can start in black, that is, without receiving energy from anywhere else. Spain has identified five large hydroelectric jumps capable of doing this. However, and here is one of the great negligences that are coming to light, three of those five groups were stopped in scheduled maintenance, by business decision supervised by the administration. Only two were operational. That made the recovery much slower and weaker than it should be in a normal contingency plan.
The result is that, after almost 10 hours, only 35% to 40% of the national supply has been recovered, and there are still large areas in the dark or under scheduled cuts.
The situation reveals a very serious underlying problem:
Spain is still an energy island: it only has 3% foreign exchange capacity compared to its total demand.
The network depends a lot on variable renewables, which are disconnected quickly in the face of any instability.
The lack of physical inertia reserves (i.e. large rotating masses such as thermal power plants or classic hydraulics) prevents the disturbances from damping.
And poor maintenance planning left without enough hydraulic muscle to respond to a crisis.
The most likely causes, with current data, are:
A combination of technical failure in protection or in synchronization, added to a serious lack of operational forecast and maintenance (probability ≈ 40%).
The possibility of an intentional cyber-physical attack remains in analysis (≈ 25% estimated probability).
Other factors such as human error, punctual atmospheric phenomenon or mixed causes complete the rest.
In short: an initial shake at the most sensitive point of the Spanish network —the Aragón-Catalonia corridor, door to Europe— left the peninsula isolated and vulnerable. The network could not sustain its own demand because it did not have sufficient assistance, nor stable physical reserve, nor enough bootable plants in black. Three of five hydroelectric jumps were out of service when they were most needed.
For this reason, Spain went out in five seconds, and that is why it still continues to light little by little, fragile, slow and exposed.
Great job, Western liberals, on the deranged march to net-zero, culminating in the implosion of part of Europe’s power grid. Meanwhile, China is adding record amounts of coal and nuclear power capacity. It’s almost as if the entire green movement is about de-growth — and, in some cases, seems like sabotage fueled by sheer stupidity.
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