Power outages in Europe

European power cut causes chaos - 26th May 2025

Spain, Portugal and parts of southern France have been left without power due to a serious network failure. However, no one's accepting the blame for the international outage, which began between 12.30 and 12.35 on 28th April.

South-west Spain was the first area to be affected. Lights went out, the internet went down and mobile networks failed. Shops which depend on digital systems had to close their doors.

The power cut quickly covered entire countries and left passengers stuck aboard trains. Although airports activated emergency generators, flights experienced long delays before take off or were cancelled altogether.

Madrid was one of many cities where people left their houses to play games and chat in the street. Meanwhile, others took the opportunity for a siesta.

The first public reaction was that a cyber-attack must be responsible. However, there's been no evidence of this.

Another early report seemed to come from Portugal's power network. This blamed rapid changes in temperatures, which can affect long-distance cables. However, the company hadn't said this.

A more likely explanation's connected to renewable energy. Spain leads the way in green energy production, which provided 56 percent of the country's power last year. However, renewable energy generation isn't as predictable as power stations. This makes it harder to balance power demand and supply on the power grid.

The process of 'grid balancing' secures the power network, but it's based on traditional power generation. To modernise Europe's grid to balance renewable energy sources, it would cost more than three trillion euros.