{"id":58299,"date":"2025-04-28T19:57:15","date_gmt":"2025-04-28T19:57:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/58299\/"},"modified":"2025-04-28T19:57:15","modified_gmt":"2025-04-28T19:57:15","slug":"why-did-the-lights-go-out-in-spain-and-portugal-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/58299\/","title":{"rendered":"Why did the lights go out in Spain and Portugal?\u00a0 \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Why are the power systems linked?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Spain and Portugal have tightly linked power systems with few cross-border links to France and the rest of the EU.<\/p>\n<p>The European Commission, the EU\u2019s executive, has long wanted to change that fact, strongly encouraging EU countries to build more interconnections. Officials argue the move would improve energy security and ease electricity flows across borders. Madrid, Lisbon and Paris have <a href=\"https:\/\/energy.ec.europa.eu\/system\/files\/2015-03\/Madrid%2520declaration_0.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">repeatedly<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/commission.europa.eu\/news\/second-energy-interconnection-summit-lisbon-declaration-signed-2018-07-27_en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> signaled<\/a> a willingness to move forward with that plan, but advances have been slow.<\/p>\n<p>Although Spain and France are now <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/energy-eu-france-power-grids-climate-economy-cash-local-support\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">finally forging ahead<\/a> with a new link in the Basque country, the EU\u2019s energy regulator association <a href=\"https:\/\/www.acer.europa.eu\/sites\/default\/files\/documents\/Publications\/ACER_2024_MMR_Crosszonal_electricity_trade_capacities.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">warned last year<\/a> that not enough electricity transmission capacity has been freed up, despite legal requirements to do so.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>It remains unclear whether more connections to Europe would have ameliorated the blackout.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>On one hand, more cross-border links could have strengthened Spain\u2019s ability to balance supply and demand and import electricity, said Pratheeksha Ramdas, a senior power analyst at the Rystad consultancy. Madrid\u2019s current limited trading capacity with France \u201cconstrains rapid response capabilities during large-scale disturbances,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>Conversely, \u201cincreased connectivity might risk propagating frequency instability into neighboring systems,\u201d she added, creating a domino effect of cascading blackouts across other EU countries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Why are the power systems linked? Spain and Portugal have tightly linked power systems with few cross-border links&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":58300,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[767,30560,1789,768,3835,7694,1312,30561,35,25799,3975,1112,2000,299,5187,36,475,806,6084,30562,3046,2822,332,811,104,7162,657],"class_list":{"0":"post-58299","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-baltics","9":"tag-basque-country","10":"tag-belgium","11":"tag-borders","12":"tag-connectivity","13":"tag-critical-infrastructure","14":"tag-electricity","15":"tag-electricity-grid","16":"tag-energy","17":"tag-energy-infrastructure","18":"tag-energy-security","19":"tag-estonia","20":"tag-eu","21":"tag-europe","22":"tag-european","23":"tag-france","24":"tag-imports","25":"tag-industry","26":"tag-infrastructure","27":"tag-leonardo-meeus","28":"tag-portugal","29":"tag-regions-cohesion","30":"tag-russia","31":"tag-security","32":"tag-spain","33":"tag-teresa-ribera","34":"tag-ukraine"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114417358826309059","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58299\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}