One year after Spain’s blackout, its shift to renewables and grid evolution power on

The blackout caused political debate about its cause, with many incorrectly blaming solar power. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty ImagesView image in fullscreenThe blackout caused political debate about its cause, with many incorrectly blaming solar power. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty ImagesSpainAnalysisOne year after Spain’s blackout, its shift to renewables and grid evolution power onKetan JoshiThough solar was initially incorrectly blamed for crisis, renewables have helped insulate Spain from gas price rises caused by war in Middle EastTue 28 Apr 2026 09.47 EDTLast modified on Tue 28 Apr 2026 10.07 EDTShareOne year ago today, all of Spain, and much of Portugal, suffered through a blackout of unprecedented scale and duration. In mere seconds, a cascading sequence of events burst through the grid and created Europe’s first “system black” event in recent memory.Traffic signals failed, mobile networks stopped working entirely, petrol stations could not pump fuel and supermarkets couldn’t process payments. Madrid’s metro came to a halt and people had to be pulled out of carriages. “People were stunned because this had never happened in Spain,” Carlos Condori, a 19-year-old construction sector worker, told AFP at the time. “There’s no [phone] coverage, I can’t call my family, my parents, nothing: I can’t even go to work.”Power was mostly restored in the days after, but the political debate – domestic and global – began just hours after the blackout occurred. Spain’s grid collapsed when solar power generation was high, triggering intense discussions around Spain’s transition away from fossil fuelled power and, controversially, nuclear. The media published headlines such as “Renewable energy triggered Spain’s blackouts”, “Spain at risk of fresh net zero blackouts” and “Spain power cut caused by solar farm failures”.View image in fullscreenGranada on 28 April 2025, when much of Spain and Portugal lost power. Photograph: NurPhoto/Getty ImagesBut despite a widespread theory assigning blame to renewables for a lack of “inertia” – the heartbeat of the grid traditionally provided by large spinning masses in fossil fuel and nuclear plants – subsequent investigations have found conclusively that this was not a factor. The final report published by the pan-European grid operator ENTSO-E ultimately blamed the blackout on a “perfect storm” of several governance failures relating in particular to voltage. This is the pressure of electricity on the grid, and when it is too high or too low, power lines and generators tend to automatically disconnect. This in turn triggers a cascading failure through the grid.And while some might have expected the blackout to lead to a move away from renewables, it is clear the opposite has occurred. A year on, there is no material reduction in Spain’s efforts towards the replacement of its coal and gas-fired power stations with non-fossil alternatives. According to data from global energy thinktank Ember, Spain added 13.8 gigawatts of new solar in 2025, compared with 12.3 gigawatts in 2024, and the country’s highest-ever month of capacity additions was July 2025.Spain installed 13.8 gigawatts of solar capacity in 2025Chris Rosslowe, a senior energy analyst for Europe at Ember, told the Guardian that Spain’s “trajectory towards reducing fossil power and increasing renewables and their enablers has strengthened since the blackout”.There was some increase in the use of gas-fired power generation post-blackout, running in “reinforced…

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