Blackout on April 28, 2025 in Spain and Portugal – causes, effects and does it threaten us in Poland?

Blackout 2025 – what happened?

On Monday, April 28, 2025, around noon, a widespread blackout occurred covering almost all of Spain and Portugal. The failure also affected parts of southern France. Within a few seconds, Spain lost about 15 gigawatts of power, which led to a complete loss of supply in the region.

Effects of the blackout – chaos and a threat to safety

The effects were immediate: transport paralysis, power outages to public institutions and homes, chaos in cities and serious disruptions to infrastructure operations. Hospitals and many institutions and plants switched to emergency power from generator sets, which helped avoid tragedy.

Causes of the failure – renewable energy sources and system inertia

Although the full causes are not yet known, several key factors are indicated. One of them was the high share of renewable energy sources, especially photovoltaics. Their unstable nature and the lack of natural system inertia could have contributed to a sudden frequency drop and a cascading shutdown of the grid.

Operators’ actions – how was the power restored?

Experts emphasize that renewables should not be blamed, but rather the focus should be on adapting transmission infrastructure and implementing stabilizing technologies such as energy storage or black-start systems. Thanks to cooperation between operators in Spain, Portugal and France, power was restored in most regions within several hours.

Is a blackout possible in Poland?

Poland, although it is also increasing the share of renewables in its energy mix, still relies on coal and gas power plants, which provides the system with high inertia. In addition, Poland has a favorable location with multiple cross-border connections, which facilitates importing energy in crisis situations.

Moreover, Poland’s transmission system operator (Polskie Sieci Elektroenergetyczne) has tools to prevent blackouts, such as capacity reserves, demand reduction mechanisms and systems for automatic start-up of power plants. Although a total blackout is unlikely, it is possible. However, local power outages may and will occur more often. There are several key reasons that affect local power shutdowns. At present, the most likely cause of a potential blackout in Poland would be a cascading failure of the power grid caused by a power shortage at peak demand, combined with a failure of one or several critical elements of the system. Cyber-attacks are also not ruled out, although the probability of such a scenario is currently low, and the national power system has defensive mechanisms that significantly reduce the risk.

In Poland, large-scale power failures most often occur due to increasingly frequent extreme weather conditions: Summer heatwaves – increased demand for air conditioning and lower power plant efficiency. Severe winter frosts – increased demand for electric heating. Droughts – limited cooling in coal-fired power plants. Strong storms or icing – damage to high-voltage lines.

How to protect yourself against a blackout? Emergency solutions

The best protection against the effects of a blackout – both for households and for companies and businesses – is having backup power. Professional generator sets can provide energy where the grid fails. 

Agregaty24.pl is a trusted source of professional generator sets for homes, companies and institutions. Regardless of the scale of your needs, we offer devices that can operate automatically in the event of a power outage, ensuring safety and continuity of operation and power supply.

It’s not worth waiting for a failure – take care of your own energy security today with Agregaty24.pl.