29 April 2025
Spain and Portugal experienced wide-scale power outages on Monday, 29 April.
Professor David Brayshaw and Dr Omid Shariati provide expert insights on how power grids operate and why they may have failed in Portugal and Spain.
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Professor David Brayshaw, Professor of Climate Science and Energy Meteorology at the 成人抖阴, said: "Power systems are networks, connecting local disruptions to wider areas. They must balance supply and demand almost instantaneously, and generators need to stay precisely in sync (AC ~50 Hz). If something on the network — a generator, a power line, or even a large electricity user — suddenly disappears, it creates a supply-demand imbalance and the system frequency starts to shift. If that shift becomes too large, other components can trip offline, creating a snowball effect that worsens the imbalance and can trigger a major blackout — sometimes within seconds.
"The European system, including the UK, has become increasingly interconnected in recent years. This is generally positive, helping balance variations in supply and demand, particularly as we decarbonize. But it also means greater interdependence with other countries, and heavier reliance on electricity across sectors like transport, heating, cooling, and datacentres, which leads to new routes in which the power system is exposed to weather risk. Meanwhile, technical changes mean the system now has less ‘inertia’, so imbalances must be corrected more quickly. Outage events, when they occur, are likely to become more significant and widespread.
"What stands out is that the power system is changing fast — driven by renewables, electrification, and massive investment (over US$2 trillion globally into clean energy in 2024). Yet there’s limited research into how climate change will affect future power systems, or how to design grids that are truly robust. If this event was indeed driven by atmospheric conditions, it underlines the urgent need for much deeper investigation into climate risks for power."
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