Spain blackout: government calls it unforeseeable

Spain’s blackout of 28 April 2025 remains, in the government’s view, an event that could not have been foreseen. Energy Secretary Joan Groizard repeated that position before a parliamentary inquiry in Madrid on 15 September 2026. He said the grid has since been strengthened to reduce the chances of similarly unlikely failures.

Groizard called the outage a “poltergeist”: an event he said was not documented even in academic literature and did not appear in operating manuals for electricity systems in Spain, Europe or elsewhere.

Tighter checks on grid voltage

He identified voltage control as the critical issue exposed by the blackout. The Ministry for Ecological Transition has stepped up continuous monitoring of how that control works across the network.

The National Commission for Markets and Competition, known as the CNMC, must now produce quarterly reports on compliance with voltage-control rules. Operating Procedure P.O. 7.4 is also intended to monitor obligations in real time, including those already in place.

Groizard said some parties had challenged the procedure or may have had little interest in its approval, citing the technical work needed to adapt systems. Yet he maintained that the regulatory and technical tools needed to prevent what happened already existed on 28 April 2025.

Batteries, data and new equipment

Energy storage is another part of the response. Groizard said the ministry expects a very large expansion of battery storage over the coming year, while pumped-storage hydropower is being promoted for longer-term system management.

Grid planners have also added synchronous compensators and STATCOMs, equipment intended to prepare the system for needs that may not have been expected this decade. Groizard said these measures should allow the grid to run more effectively and rely less often on combined-cycle power plants.

Data-sharing rules are being tightened as well. Before the blackout, Groizard said, each participant had effectively focused on only its own part of the job; the new approach requires clearer protocols for dividing responsibilities and obliges participants to exchange specified data to common standards.

He said the blackout showed that unlikely events do happen. The aim, he added, is to leave as few gaps as possible for them to happen again.

Topics: Social affairs · Politics · Economy

Source: Europa Press / Mallorca.com