The Iberian Nightmare Forecasts a Future Using Only Renewable Energy

Originally published at RealClearEnergy (May 12, 2025)

On April 16, Spain announced to the world it had reached a grand achievement: 100% renewable energy on its electrical grid. By April 28, that achievement had turned to catastrophe, when the entire grid collapsed and plunged Spain and Portugal—which imports some electricity from Spain—into chaos. A total grid failure created a blackout that lasted most of the day, affecting tens of millions of people—and threatening to spread to other parts of Europe.

The timeline reveals the future of western nations should they continue to rely on "renewable" energy instead of reliable baseline electricity produced by established, continuous sources.

The Renewable Contagion Infects the Grid

So, what happened to Spain's renewable dream come true?

At midday on Monday, April 28, two sudden fluctuations in the electricity supply, the second of which lasting one and a half seconds, destabilized the grid and caused the entire system to collapse. Total time to two nations going completely dark: Five seconds.

When Spain and Portugal went dark, the activities of tens of millions of people came to a standstill. CNN reported that flights across the Iberian Peninsula were canceled for hours—a remarkable crippling effect for two of the five busiest airports in Europe, along with dozens of others. Traffic signals went out; so did subway systems. Electronic payment terminals and gas pumps became inoperable. Computers and networks across the two nations went completely dark. Commerce and transportation ground to a complete halt.

Thankfully, hospitals continued to run on backup generators—unlike the recent outage at Heathrow Airport, which completely shut down after it its Net Zero-approved biomass generators proved unable to handle the full load after a fire at an electrical substation.

Three elderly people in Spain died from suspected carbon monoxide poisoning when they used their own diesel generators during the blackout.

Energy expert David Blackmon explains the likely culprit: A surge in solar and wind power caused the entire grid to fail. He cited an internal report from Spain that zeroed in on 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 . . . suddenly and abnormally, the power that flowed through those lines began to vary violently, rising and falling in a very short time. 

This fluctuation may have originated from two likely sources: a wind farm that had low output for most of the morning followed by a sudden burst of wind activity that overloaded the system; and a sudden drop in output by a solar farm.

Output dropped to 60% of normal rates. A cascading effect then took place during that five second shock to the grid, as large industrial consumers automatically went to backup power and disconnected from the grid. Importantly, because Spain and Portugal went to 100% renewable power generation, it lacked baseload to keep the power flowing. Again, from David Blackmon:

This fully supports information I’ve included in my prior pieces about the fact that Spain’s system was dangerously short of system inertia provided by baseload, spinning generation which maintains inertia. Again, at the time the lights went out, 78% of active generation on the Spanish grid was solar and wind, with 61% strictly solar. Meanwhile, inertia-stabilizing gas and nuclear were providing just 15% combined.

When a system loses inertia, it starts to collapse, and other generation sources are programs to immediately drop off the grid to avoid permanent damage.

Backup systems that normally supply emergency energy from nuclear-exporting France automatically shut off to prevent system overload spreading to other parts of the continent.

Spain's problems were compounded by scheduled maintenance on two of its five large hydroelectric plants that took them offline on that day. Then, on top of that, automatic systems were unable to take the highly variable power generated by solar and wind and synchronize it to the standard 50 Hz frequency that the grid runs on. This caused the outage to extend well into the evening, when a grid reliant on traditional baseline power sources could have reacted hours sooner. Even after ten hours, only 35 to 40% of the national power supply had been restored.

Most European nations have adopted a significant level of renewable energy on their way to their utopian climate goals. Germany has created a complete mess of its energy production by relying so heavily on renewables—over 50% as of 2024. Prices there have skyrocketed, but the failing reliability of their energy production has caused its economy to falter.

Spain and Portugal, along with Germany and the U.K. before them, offer a clear warning of things to come if the world continues to expand renewable energy production.

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It Wasn't a Cyberattack—But It Could Have Been

The investigation is still unfolding, and there continues to be lots of speculation. Given the precarious state of geopolitics today, many immediately thought hackers could have taken down the grid. That appears unlikely at this point. But it's worth examining what could happen if someone were to successfully conduct a cyberattack on the Iberian grid.

Modern society needs energy. When that energy gets interrupted, chaos erupts. Were a rogue nation to decide to breach the networks in control of the grid, they could theoretically take everything down—and make it very difficult to turn the lights back on.

One report calls Spain "one of the most targeted by cyberattacks considered critical due to their severity," due to their strong support for Ukraine in its defense against the Russian invasion. If Vladimir Putin wanted to send more than a strongly worded letter to NATO, what would stop him from taking out the grid for a day—or longer—especially with his knowledge of their reliance on unreliable green energy?

And therein lies the problem. The outage on the Iberian peninsula showed that nations that rely heavily upon green energy face stronger challenges to restore power when the grid goes down, because of its inability to provide the inertial energy inherent in traditional power sources like fossil fuels and nuclear. The variable resonance caused extra delays in restoring power to the two nations, leaving them vulnerable much longer than anyone should like. And even if they choose to import baseload energy as a backup from nations like France, they can't rely on that backup if France has automatic disconnects in place when the grid fluctuates.

Any nation's security cannot afford heavy reliance on renewable energy.

We Cannot Rely on Renewables

Ironically, war correspondent Michael Yon happened to be at the Panama Canal during the Iberian blackout, and witnessed more wind turbine blades on their way to Europe. So the greening of Europe continues apace, despite the fatal flaw of renewable energy on full display.

Roy Spencer, who helped develop the global satellite temperature monitoring system for NASA, weighed in:

As suspected, the power blackout in Spain and Portugal was caused by reliance on solar and wind energy for close to 100% of generation when it is incompatible with alternating current systems. The cost is estimated to be $2 Billion in lost production. Politicians pushing for 100% renewables cannot be allowed to control what should be left up to engineers. 

Recent failures of renewable energy don't just reveal inconvenience. No amount of government subsidies will make these technologies competitive with existing power generation. Large national grids cannot just simply flip a switch and recover from a drop in production. Power sources like petroleum, natural gas, coal, nuclear, and even biomass provide continual, reliable, uninterrupted power generation that won't blink out when the wind doesn't blow or the sun doesn't shine.

The fatal flaw in renewable energy cannot be solved. It is time to stop throwing good money after bad, and end the "investments" in these failed technologies.

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