2025 European Power Outage

On Monday, 28April 2025, at 12:33 CEST (11:33WEST; 10:33UTC), a major power blackout occurred across the Iberian Peninsula affecting mainland Portugal and peninsular Spain, where electric power was interrupted for about ten hours in most of the Peninsula and longer in some areas. The power cut caused severe difficulties in telecommunications, transportation systems, and essential sectors such as emergency services. At least seven people in Spain and one in Portugal may have died due to outage-related circumstances like candle fires or generator exhaust fumes. The total disconnected load can be estimated at 30 GW.

Minor power cuts lasting seconds or minutes occurred in adjacent regions of Andorra and parts of southwestern France. Reports indicated problems with the European synchronous electricity grid. Traffic lights in many places stopped working, and metro lines had to be evacuated.

Grid conditions in Spain

According to the website of the Spanish electrical operator Red Eléctrica de España (REE) that documents the power grid, Only the data before 12:33 are reliable on the graph shown here. there was sufficient power supplied to the grid leading up to the outage. At 12:30 on 28 April, the grid was supplied with 32 gigawatts (GW) of power to meet 25 GW of demand, and was exporting 2.6 GW to Portugal, 0.87 GW to France and 0.78 GW to Morocco. The remainder was used for hydropumping (3 GW). More than half of the power supply was from solar, and electricity price was slightly negative.

Most of the power drop occurred within five seconds,. when a substation in Granada failed, followed by grid failures in Badajoz and Sevilla, and the France connection decoupled at 12:33. There was a sharp drop at around 12:33 on the automatic system that monitors electricity production in Spain, and data after the event are no longer reliable, because communication systems failed as well.

The European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSO-e) and RTVE (national television) later stated "total zero in the electricity system of the Iberian Peninsula".

the reason for this outage is still not publicly known. On 9 May 2025, ENTSO-e published a rough timeline of the events leading to the outage, with the cause yet to be determined.
ENTSO-e established an expert panel that will investigate the issue, and in the future publish two reports about the event; one about the causes, and one about recommendations.

Timeline

Source:
* 12:03 – 12:07 CEST – first period of oscillations in the grid detected and mitigated.
* 12:19 – 12:21 CEST – second period of oscillations in the grid detected and mitigated. Since then the grid appeared stable, with no oscillations detected.
* 12:32:57 – 12:33:17 CEST – a series of generation trips in southern Spain, the first near Granada, the second near Badajoz and the third near Seville causes a loss of 2200 MW in generation capacity. Frequency decreased and voltage increased.
* 12:33:18 – 12:33:21 CEST – grid frequency of the Iberian Peninsula drops below 48.0 Hz. Automatic load shedding is activated.
* 12:33:21 CEST – AC lines between France and Spain tripped.
* 12:33:24 CEST – grid collapsed completely, the HVDC between France and Spain tripped.
* 12:44 CEST – first 400 kV Spain–France AC line is re-energized.
* 13:04 CEST – Spain–Morocco interconnect re-energized
* ?? – 13:30 CEST – Spanish hydro power stations capable of black start begin their black start procedures.
* 13:35 CEST – AC line between Spain and France on the eastern coast is re-energized.
* 16:11 CEST – first black start capable power plant in Portugal manages to start.
* 17:26 CEST – second black start capable power plant in Portugal manages to start.
* 18:36 CEST – 220 kV line between Spain and Portugal is re-energized.
* 21:35 CEST – 400 kV line between Spain and southern Portugal is re-energized.
* 00:22 CEST – grid fully restored in Portugal.
* 04:00 CEST – grid fully restored in Spain.

Effects

Spain

Spanish train operator Renfe said that all trains had stopped due to the outage. Around 35,000 passengers were rescued after being stranded across the rail and underground systems. Madrid's Barajas International Airport was left without power. Later in the day, airports were back to operation with 20% reduced capacity, and the Minister of Transport Óscar Puente stated that long and medium distance train services would not resume until the next day.

Telecommunications and internet services were also affected, with Netblocks saying that network traffic plunged to just 17 percent of normal usage, while satellite communications increased. Hospitals activated their backup generators and stayed mostly functional.

Spanish authorities reported that the country's nuclear power plants were taken off the grid automatically due to the loss of grid power – four reactors were generating power (3.3 GW) at the time, while three were conducting scheduled maintenance during spring when demand and prices are low. Backup generators automatically supplied cooling to keep all seven reactors safe, while some reactors prepared for re-activation.

The city of Madrid activated its emergency plan PEMAM (). Most businesses and shops had to close, train and metro lines stopped, and banking was non-functional. Police had to intervene to control traffic and bring security. Confusion and fear spread in episodes reminiscent of the Coronavirus pandemic of 2020, whilst at the same time, some streets and terraces had a cheerful ambience and near-festive mood.

King Felipe VI's meeting with the president of Cyprus, Nikos Christodoulides, was unaffected because the blackout only partially affected the Palacio de la Zarzuela, and the King was able to maintain the institutional agenda for the day. The Congress of Deputies, the Bolsa de Madrid, the Parliament of Catalonia and the Palacio de la Moncloa were left without power. The Senate suspended its parliamentary activity for 29 April.

Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez convened an emergency meeting of the National Security Council about the power cut.

NASA satellite images show partial lighting in the middle of the night on Tuesday 29 April, as some areas remained offline.

The employers' organization CEOE estimated that the outage resulted in economic losses valued at €1.6 billion.

Certain institutions, such as the Ministry of Defence and the Navy headquarters, still suffered power outages on 29 April despite the general restoration of the electricity supply.

At least seven people died as a result of the blackout in Spain. Six deaths were recorded in Galicia, including three members of the same family who died of carbon monoxide poisoning believed to have been caused by a faulty gasoline generator in a home in Taboadela. The seventh death was recorded in a fire at a house in Madrid that left 13 others injured.

A small rural village in Cantabria stayed online due to its backup-battery of 160 kW / 250 kWh.

The Canary Islands, Balearic Islands, Ceuta, and Melilla were unaffected. Travellers entering Gibraltar by land from Spain reported delays due to the unavailability of IT services at the Spanish border post. Gibraltar itself was not affected, as it is not connected to the European grid.

Portugal

In Portugal, the blackout made most basic services inoperational, including stores, supermarkets, pharmacies and electronic payment systems. Hospitals resorted to generators to maintain operations. Traffic lights and transit systems were brought to a halt, causing road accidents. Additional police officers were deployed to deal with traffic problems caused by the failure of traffic lights. Mobile networks also experienced severe limitations, particularly voice calls and data services.

The commuter rail and rapid transit services were stopped due to signaling problems, and trains were evacuated. Nonetheless, rail transport was not particularly affected since Comboios de Portugal were on strike that day. Electric buses, boats, ridesharing bicycles and trams were unable to depart their stations. Lisbon Airport operated with limitations and closed at around 13:00 WEST (14:00 CEST), although flights were allowed to take off from around 21:38 WEST. Meanwhile, airports in Porto and Faro switched to generator power.

During the blackout, there was a scramble to stock up on essential items such as food and water, as well as batteries, lighting devices, and radios. The state-owned water company Águas de Portugal asked consumers to moderate their water usage to prevent system failures during the power cut. Even after the blackout, certain services such as the Portuguese Tax Portal remained offline until service could be restored on Wednesday.

The cabinet of Prime Minister Luís Montenegro held an emergency meeting over the power cut, and declared an energy crisis on 28April. The Prime Minister planned to ask the European Union for an audit of the affected electrical systems. He also took the decision to keep ''Tapada do Outeiro'' black start capability available until at least 2030 and expand that capability to at least two more locations, Alqueva Dam and .

At least one person died as a result of the blackout in Portugal. The 77-year-old victim was connected to a mechanical ventilator at home 24 hours a day. According to state-owned TV channel RTP, the breathing aid ran out of battery, and the National Emergency Medical Service did not arrive in time to help her.

The island regions of Madeira and the Azores, disconnected from the European grid, remained unaffected.

Andorra

Andorran electricity supplier Forces Elèctriques d'Andorra said that the power outage from Spain affected the principality for a few seconds. An automatic recovery system connected Andorra's power grid to France's. Phone and internet operator Andorra Telecom reported a similar outage for internet connections.

France

Electricity transmission system operator Réseau de Transport d'Électricité (RTE) reported a power outage that lasted only a few minutes in the French Basque Country. Reactor 1 at the Golfech Nuclear Power Plant disconnected around 12:33, and restarted the next day.

Secondary effects

Morocco

Internet providers such as Orange experienced problems in Morocco due to servers in Spain being offline.

Greenland

Telecommunications in the villages of Qaanaaq, Ittoqqortoormiit, and Tasiilaq in Greenland were disrupted from 18:30 to 00:36 WGST (19:30–01:36UTC) because Tusass and other telecommunications companies lost connection with equipment in Maspalomas Station on Gran Canaria island. Although the antenna is on Gran Canaria, the cable goes through mainland Spain before transmission to the antenna and then satellite.

Power restoration

Spain

About 16:00 CEST on 28 April, Spanish electrical operator Red Eléctrica de España (REE) estimated it would take "between six and ten hours" to restore service calling the outage "exceptional and totally extraordinary". The international power lines from France first restarted the regions Aragón-Cataluña and Galicia-León, which then repowered the main grid. Hydropower and gas turbines increased the power. The international power lines from Morocco also contributed; to alleviate the power cut, Morocco delivered 900MW of electricity through the Spain-Morocco interconnection that crosses the Strait of Gibraltar from to Tarifa, while France sent up to 2 GW of electricity through power lines supplying Catalonia and the Basque Country, and in turn Germany sent power to France. The supply reactivation after the "zero energy" in Spain was accomplished by the Aldeadávila hydroelectric power plant in Salamanca, operated by Iberdrola. This hydroelectric power plant has an autonomous start, which differentiates it from most power plants that need energy to keep producing. Thus, it was possible to reactivate other power plants and substations gradually. By evening, most of the Peninsula had power, and Luis Atienza (former REE president and member of Spain's ruling PSOE) noted the relatively quick repowering of such a large area, in comparison to the days of rotating outages during the 2021 Texas power crisis. In the following days, gas turbines were delivering more power than usual, as their inertia and voltage stability was demanded by the grid operator, but increasing the cost by about 1 eurocent per kWh.

By 07:00CEST (05:00UTC) on 29April, electricity had been restored to 99% of energy demand, and full restoration was achieved by 11:00CEST (09:00UTC) that same day. Exports to France also resumed.

Portugal

Electricity was gradually restored around 17:00WEST (16:00UTC) using the two systems that had black start capabilities, the 138 MW Castelo do Bode hydropower dam and the 990 MW natural gas power station Tapada do Outeiro. Around 22:30WEST (21:30 UTC), power had been restored to half of the population, increasing to 80% by around 00:00WEST (23:00UTC). The grid was fully restored in Portugal by early 29April.

However, Portugal did not allow the resumption of electricity imports from Spain until 8 May, setting a limit of 1 GW to the transmission capacity until 12 May.

Causes

The power failure was caused by a "surge in voltage that the grid was unable to absorb". A combination of technical, structural, and managerial factors contributed. There were two major fluctuations in the electrical grid, the second of which caused Spain's power system to disconnect from the European system and collapse the Iberian electricity network itself. On 17 June 2025, the Spanish government released its report pinning the proximate cause of the outage to small outages concentrated in southern Spain setting off a complicated chain reaction. REE did not have sufficient natural gas power plants on-line at the time. They "made their calculations and estimated that (switching on more thermal plants) was not necessary at this time. They only set it for the early hours of the day, not the central hours."

Inter-area oscillations

In the 30minutes before the blackout at 12:33:18CEST, low-frequency oscillations of the frequency were measured (with phasor measurement units) and damped out. The 0.2 Hz oscillations appear to have been between the Iberian Peninsula and the rest of the European wide grid, as they were in opposite grid phase. Two inter-area oscillations appeared from 12:03:15 to 12:07:40 and from 12:19:01 to 12:22:03. The disconnection from the Central European system occurred at 12:33:19 CEST right after the Spanish system lagged more than 90°, causing instability on the transmission lines.

There were also low frequency voltage oscillations and, after the blackout started, continued frequency oscillations were detected. Along with these, systems could have disconnected due to fast ROCOF (rate of change of frequency) above 1.5 Hz/s, which can be stressful on spinning turbines.

Similar oscillations and disconnection happened in December2016 and July2021, though with less severe adverse effects. Then, the North-South "ambient" frequency was 0.25Hz, while now it appears to be lower at 0.217Hz, likely due to the recent addition of the Baltic states and Ukraine to the Continental Europe Synchronous Area (CESA).

Variable renewable energy

At the time of the incident, solar energy accounted for approximately 59% of Spain's electricity supply, with wind providing around 12%, nuclear 11%, and gas 5%. The initial fault is believed to have originated in Extremadura, a region that hosts a large proportion of Spain's solar farms, hydroelectric facilities, and the 2 GW Almaraz Nuclear Power Plant, Spain's most powerful nuclear power plant.

The exact cause of the blackout remains under investigation, but it has prompted discussion about the stability of electricity systems with high shares of variable renewable energy.

In power systems, mechanical inertia is used to provide stability. In hydropower and thermal power stations, (the latter including fossil-fueled, nuclear and solar thermal) the inertia typically comes from spinning turbines. A major aspect of transitioning to renewable electricity systems is the reduction in inertia on the grid. Solar, which accounted for the majority of Spain's electricity at the time, uses grid-following inverters for 80% of the supply and provides little rotating mass to the grid. An energy consultant also pointed to the small amount of controllable inertia, comparing the blackout to the 2016 South Australian blackout, and suggesting the same solutions for Spain as Australia did; synchronous condensers and large batteries. REE and Experts at Montel Analytics pointed to the relative isolation of the Iberian grid as a contributing factor to the blackout, as neighbouring grids were less able to provide stability.

Experimental usage

Spanish authorities were conducting an experiment before the system crashed. This experiment probed how far they could push reliance on renewables in preparation for Spain's rushed phase-out of nuclear reactors from 2027.

Diana Morant, Minister of Science and Innovation, said the reports of an experiment prior to the crash was a hoax. María Jesús Montero, also denied the reports of the experiment and attributed this information to a business interest group.

Political perspectives

Some political groups, including the Spanish far-right Vox party, attributed the blackout to over-reliance on renewables and called for a more diversified energy mix. An energy analyst at Rystad Energy, Pratheeksha Ramdas, said that greater amounts of renewables in the power system may have made the grid susceptible to outages, but that there are multiple possible causes of the disturbance. Henning Gloystein, director for energy at the Eurasia Group research firm, claimed it might have been easier to keep the system functioning if conventional energy sources like oil and gas had a larger presence.

However, several officials and energy experts have rejected the idea that renewables are to blame. EU energy commissioner, Dan Jørgensen, stated that there was "nothing unusual" about the electricity mix at the time of the blackout, and that the outage was not due to a "specific source energy". Daniel Muir, a European power analyst at S&P Global, said the nature and scale of the outage makes renewable energy an unlikely cause. Spain's Environment Minister, Sara Aagesen, emphasised that the system had operated reliably under similar demand and energy mixes in the past, and Beatriz Corredor, president of REE and member of Spain's ruling party, said that it was inaccurate to attribute the blackout to Spain's growing use of renewable energy. At a press conference on 29 April, Sánchez dismissed allegations that renewable energy caused the power cut, calling them "lies" and criticising those who blamed the blackout on Spain's reliance on wind and solar power.

Cyberattack

Spain's National Cybersecurity Institute was reported to be investigating the possibility that a cyberattack caused the incident. Initial reports are mixed on the likelihood of the cause being a cyberattack, with several government officials ruling it out, and ''The Wall Street Journal'' claiming that "the outages bear hallmarks of a sophisticated cyberattack on the region's power grid" that fit a pattern of increased cyberattacks in Europe. A thorough forensic analysis was estimated to take one to three weeks.

On the morning of 29April, REE attributed the outage to a disconnection of the grid in the south-west of Spain. The institution ruled out a cyberattack as the cause of the blackout and announced that it was investigating the cause of the disconnection.

Audiencia Nacional judge initiated preliminary investigations to determine whether the national outage could have been an act of sabotage against critical Spanish infrastructure, which, according to newspaper , would be considered an act of terrorism.

According to '' El Mundo'', Spain's Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Diego Martínez Belío, discarded the possibility that the blackout was the result of a cyberattack during his bilateral meetings with the US administration in Washington, D.C. Meanwhile, this possibility was officially kept open in Spain.

Misinformation

Several false and misleading claims were circulated regarding the origins of the power cut. Messages were spread online (at 12:56, 23 minutes after the blackout) claiming that it was caused by a Russian cyberattack, falsely attributed to CNN International and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen. It was also falsely attributed to the Portuguese electricity company EDP Group.

Some media outlets, including CNN and Reuters, reported that REN claimed it was because of a supposed "rare atmospheric event" called "induced atmospheric vibration", causing "synchronization failures between the electrical systems". REN has denied releasing either of these statements. A claim of solar flare received 1.9 million views, and was rejected by the Space Weather Prediction Center. Several false satellite photos showing a blacked out peninsula at night were also spread.

Human casualties

* In Spain:
** In Alzira, Valencia, a 46-year-old woman who depended on an oxygen machine died.
** In Catalonia, 25 people were harmed by malfunctioning generators or misuse of them.
** In Madrid, at Carabanchel neighbourhood, a woman died in a fire caused by a candle. The fire trapped several people in a building. Several people were harmed in that same event.
** In Taboadela, Ourense, a couple and their son died of carbon monoxide inhalation due to a generator being used indoors. One of the couple required a mechanical ventilator, which prompted the use of the generator.
* In Portugal, a 77-year-old died after a mechanical ventilator stopped working in her home in Agualva-Cacém.

Reactions

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen spoke with Pedro Sánchez and posted a statement on social media platform X (formerly Twitter): "I reaffirmed the European Commission's support in monitoring the situation with national and European authorities and our Electricity Coordination Group. We will coordinate efforts and share information to help restore the electricity system, and agreed to stay in close contact."

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, after speaking with Sánchez, offered his country's assistance based on the experience it has gained throughout the targeting of its electrical infrastructure in the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

See also

* List of largest power outages

References

Sources

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External links

Official brief to the Council of Ministers
(in Spanish)

Electric grid data for Spain on April 28, 2025
from Red Eléctrica de España. Only the data before 12:33 are reliable on the graph shown here.

Video
of the power outage at the WTA Madrid Open during an interview with Coco Gauff.

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