Spain and Portugal faced an unprecedented blackout on Monday, and Montel’s Phil Hewitt highlights a chain reaction that led to the failure.
The crisis likely began with two generation failures in rapid succession—an N-2 event. Most European grids are only prepared for one failure (N-1), and the impact was immediate. Spain became disconnected from France, cutting off interconnector support and causing grid instability.
Compounding the issue, many renewable plants—particularly wind and solar—switched off automatically to protect themselves from rapid frequency drops. This safety mechanism, combined with insufficient synchronous generation from gas and nuclear plants, caused the system frequency to plummet even further.
Montel data shows that just before the collapse, wind and solar provided a combined 22.7 GW out of 25.2 GW total demand. Gas and nuclear contributed only 5.6 GW—not enough to stabilise the system.
“This chain of events made system collapse inevitable,” said Hewitt, referencing Montel News’ January prediction that Spain’s growing renewable share could threaten stability.
