- In April, Spain announced to the world that it had achieved a daytime grid running 100 percent on renewables — and days later suffered Europe’s worst peacetime blackout
- The Spanish grid’s lack of inertia, which would have been provided by traditional power generation spinning large turbines, such as natural gas power plants, made it extremely fragile and vulnerable to disruption
- North Carolina policymakers should heed this lesson and make sure our electricity policy features affordable, reliable electricity from baseload, dispatchable generation sources, such as natural gas and nuclear
Shortly after Spain announced it had finally achieved 100 percent renewable power on the grid, the world got a reminder of the importance of baseload, dispatchable power. On April 22, 2025, Spain boasted of finally hitting its “first weekday of 100% renewable power” on its national grid. An article in pv magazine announced that “Spain’s grid ran entirely on renewable energy for the first time on April 16, with wind, solar, and hydro meeting all peninsular electricity demand during a weekday.”
In other words, Spain had achieved the vision that former Gov. Roy Cooper and the 166 environmentalist and other “stakeholder” groups had for North Carolina in putting out a “Clean Energy Plan” that would result in carbon neutral energy generation by 2050. That plan led to House Bill 951 and the Carbon Plan, which kept the goal but added guardrails intending to protect affordability and reliability — guardrails that apparently have been compromised.
The glaring lesson from Spain is that the grid cannot be dependent upon fickle, weather-affected renewables.
Mere days later, the Spanish power grid inexplicably lost 60 percent of its generation capacity in mere seconds, taking the interconnected grids of Portugal and southern France down with it and plunging the region into darkness and chaos. Michael Shellenberger noted that it was “one of the largest peacetime blackouts Europe has ever seen.”
Here is what a blackout does to modern life in a major economy:
In an instant, the electric hum of modern life — trains, hospitals, airports, phones, traffic lights, cash registers — fell silent. Tens of millions of people instantly plunged into chaos, confusion, and darkness. People got stuck in elevators. Subways stopped between stations. Gas stations couldn’t pump fuel. Grocery stores couldn’t process payments. Air traffic controllers scrambled as systems failed and planes were diverted. In hospitals, backup generators sputtered on, but in many cases could not meet full demand. Cell towers collapsed under surges and outages.
Furthermore, Reuters reported, “Investment bank RBC said the economic cost of the blackout could range between 2.25 billion and 4.5 billion euros.”
Grid instability in Spain due to “high penetration of renewables”
At first, officials blamed an unspecified “rare atmospheric phenomenon” for causing “anomalous oscillations in the very high voltage lines,” though no unusual weather was actually reported. Portuguese officials laid the blame on Spain’s power transmission.
It’s still too early to state definitively what brought the grid down, but the Spanish grid operator Red Eléctrica de España called it is “muy posible” (very likely) that “solar generation” was the initial event of power generation loss. Two months ago, in fact, the grid operator had warned of the possibility of “disconnections due to the high penetration of renewables.”
What is clear is that Spain’s overreliance on renewables is what rendered its grid so fragile, vulnerable to disruption, and unable to recover quickly. As reported by the Daily Mail (UK),
Traditional generators, like coal and hydroelectric plants or gas turbines, are connected directly to the grid via heavy spinning machines.
When turned on, these massive machines are in constant motion and the inertia created by their weight and momentum acts like a shock absorber, helping to insulate the grid against a sudden disturbance — for example, in the event of a transmission failure.
Solar and wind power do not provide the natural inertia generated by these so-called ‘spinning machines’, leaving the grid more vulnerable to disruptions and subsequent oscillations in the electrical frequency.
Ability to provide “instantly matching balancing power” to a disrupted grid — thereby averting a blackout and all the ensuing societal mayhem — is another strength of natural gas–fired power plants. They’re also highly efficient, require relatively very little land, and are one of only two generation sources able to replace the reliable, baseload production of coal-fired power plants.
In its “2021 Long-Term Energy Assessment,” the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) put it plainly: “Natural gas is the reliability ‘fuel that keeps the lights on,’ and natural gas policy must reflect this reality.”
As the following graph shows, Spain’s grid did not reflect that reality. Bloomberg energy columnist Javier Blas showed that, “Before the outage hit, Spain was running its grid with very little dispatchable spinning generation, and therefore no[t] much inertia.”
Power generation on the Spanish grid just prior to the blackout
Draw the right lesson from Spain
North Carolina policymakers should be paying attention to the Spanish power woes and NERC’s declaration about policy reflecting the reality of needing reliable natural gas to keep the lights on. North Carolina law calls for least-cost and reliable electricity, and filling those requirements requires access to reliable, dispatchable natural gas–fired power plants. Unfortunately, the state has seen an activist executive branch work to stymie natural gas pipeline projects and power plants. Several recent instances are recounted in the new report from the John Locke Foundation’s Center for Food, Power, and Life (CFPL), “Power Plays: How an Activist Bureaucracy Obstructs NC’s Energy Future, and What to Do About It.”
The glaring lesson from Spain is that the grid cannot be dependent upon fickle, weather-affected renewables.
Though advocates might attempt to say otherwise, the lesson isn’t to demand a complete rebuild of transmission lines to accommodate running North Carolina’s grid on solar, wind, and batteries. Such an idea would flunk affordability as well as reliability. As the CFPL’s “Lighting the Path” report showed, the 100 percent renewable scenario would already require “a 58 to 76 percent increase in transmission infrastructure” — more than 12,500 miles of new transmission lines.
The “Power Plays” report concludes with several recommendations to ensure that people come first in North Carolina’s electricity policy. After all, our power grid exists to serve the people, not special interests.
