The Sun Went Out…
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Critical chronicle of a country cast into darkness and of the fragility of the great energy transition…
By Germán & Co.
Karlstad, Sweden | April 28, 2025
________________________________________
I. The daylight stopped being a tacit right
At 17:43 on Monday, 28 April 2025, the Iberian Peninsula plunged—as if someone had flipped a giant switch—into a gloom unimaginable for the second decade of the 21st century. The hum of civilisation—server fans, the syncopated heartbeat of traffic lights, the thrum of commuter trains—collapsed into a thick silence, torn only by sirens and by the swelling murmur of worries that spread faster than the absent electrical waves themselves. For nearly four hours, with intermittent after‑shocks throughout the night, Spain’s 47 million inhabitants and Portugal’s 10 million discovered that electricity is no everyday miracle but a fragile pact between cables, algorithms and political balances.
The magnitude of the failure—two sudden, almost simultaneous losses of photovoltaic generation that kicked the system out of frequency—laid bare an uncomfortable truth: the green epic advancing as a horizon of prosperity can also trip over its own shadow when political haste outruns engineering detail.
II. Chronicle of a collapse foretold
Veteran engineers at Red Eléctrica Española (REE) call it a dark start when the system, deprived of its pulse, must be rebooted like an archaic computer. This time, it took thirteen seconds of multiplying instabilities for the blackout to travel from the Manchegan solar inverters north of Lisbon. The operator ordered the preventive decoupling of hydro plants and combined‑cycle turbines, contained the cascade on the Pyrenean mesh, and, from that moment, everything depended on the delicate symphony of start‑up ramps, spinning reserves and operator overtime that turned the night into a chessboard without clocks.
However, it was no unforeseen cataclysm. Three internal reports—never published—had warned since 2022 of “the risk of massive disconnection events of distributed generation at twilight hours.” The perfect storm was created by the combination of solar overbuild, tariff incentives for daytime exports, and a battery pipeline delayed by post‑pandemic inflation.
III. Politics in real time: the choreography of power
At 19:02 the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, appeared in an institutional broadcast flanked by the Deputy Prime Minister for Ecological Transition. He ruled out a cyber‑attack without conclusive data and pointed to “successive disconnections” in solar plants. He also argued that “greater nuclear capacity would have slowed the recovery,” feeding the thesis that renewable flexibility—not atomic rigidity—is the resilient future. The conservative opposition spotted a crack: Alberto Núñez Feijóo branded the Cabinet “overwhelmed” and demanded an independent audit.
What followed was a dialogue of the deaf typical of an age of permanent polarisation. The PSOE reproached the PP for its lack of “sense of state,” while regional governments—some led by the opposition’s colour—declared states of alert and requested military generators. The blackout activated safety protocols and the full competitive choreography of Spanish politics: whoever wins the narrative first also wins a slice of the regulatory future.
IV. When infrastructure wounds the territory
Half a thousand passengers in Madrid bedded down in Atocha’s main concourse. In Valencia, the Sagunto refinery burned extra gas to maintain process safety, and the reddish glow along the coast evoked a petroleum dystopia thought to be long gone. In the villages of the Alto Tajo, accustomed to shaky mobile signals, the night was a return to oil lamps. In Benidorm’s hotels, diesel gensets remind everyone that mass tourism hangs on a copper umbilical cord, and no one photographs it for Instagram.
Interconnected and sympathetic, Portugal paid a similar price: hospitals limping, traffic lights turned into St Andrew’s crosses, and emergency calls waited 40 minutes. The blackout exposed the fragility of two countries that share sun, wind, and cutting‑edge rhetoric but still lack the backup network that such vanguard demands.
V. The invisible engineering behind the transition
Beyond the dialectical duel, the key lies in the elementary physics of the grid: an electrical system is a 50‑hertz organism that dies when its frequency drops below 49. The vanishing solar surplus created a hole equivalent to simultaneously unplugging every factory in Bilbao. The HVDC lines to France—saturated by cheap exports since mid—afternoon—could not quickly reverse the flow. Hydroelectric plants, the lungs of the system, need minutes, and combined‑cycle units more than a quarter-hour, to supply firm power.
Experts speak of the inertia cliff: as we replace heavy synchronous generators with light power electronics, the system becomes faster but less damped. If digitalisation does not accelerate the response—batteries, flywheels, hydrogen—every passing cloud over a solar park can morph into a perfect storm.
VI. The political economy of the kilowatt
It is not just about wires and transformers; it is about incentives. In 2024, Spain broke the European record for new photovoltaic capacity, but storage deployment ran 60% below the roadmap. Merchant markets pay for electricity when the price is zero or negative, and a battery’s profitability depends on hourly spreads that regulation today does not guarantee. Paradoxically, the State subsidises green generation without demanding real storage synergies, trusting the market to perform magic.
The blackout changes the equation. Firms will soon see a new tariff concept: “mandatory firm capacity.” Retailers fear the regulatory storm may cost more than the direct damages of the outage. As in banking crises, taxpayers will pay twice: with the living penumbra and the future bill for reputational rescue.
VII. Anatomy of the media narrative
Information, like electricity, propagated in jolts: tweeters broadcasting from phones at 12% battery, radio stations back on air via diesel gensets, and an ocean of fake news ranging from the Russian hand to the explosion of a secret nuclear transistor. El País offered its coverage “for free,” Okdiario blamed Greta Thunberg, and La Vanguardia focussed on civic resilience. Each masthead confirmed its bias and its audience witnessed history forged in real time.
At the epicentre of the digital ecosystem, energy influencers—a new tribe that graphs every REE datapoint—gained thousands of subscribers. Meanwhile, the real engineers did what they do best: work in silence and solder silence.
VIII. Sociology of the penumbra
A blackout is also a darkroom where social hierarchies reveal themselves. In the luxury suburb of Pozuelo, private generators kept fridges and Wi‑Fi alive. In the working‑class district of Orcasitas, neighbours shared candles and lukewarm milk cartons. Prisons fired up generators so electronic locks would not go dead. In paediatric ICUS, nurses counted breaths by hand. The Minister for Equality reminded the public that domestic violence rises 30% in homes without light.
Had the outage lasted twelve hours longer, the pharmaceutical industry's cold chain would have jeopardised more than €800 million in vaccines and antibiotics. Food safety, regulated since 2005 for 48‑hour emergencies, showed that resilience has an expiry date: strategic stocks run short beyond a day.
IX. Lessons from Europe’s periphery
The Iberian Peninsula thought of itself as climatically peripheral yet centrally innovative. The outage has repositioned that pride on the risk map: the farther from Baltic wind and Norwegian gas, the more finely every electron‑volt must be orchestrated. France watches with interested detachment; its 50‑GW nuclear fleet reinvents itself as Europe’s battery pack. Absorbed by the Energiewende, Germany takes note of its solar intermittencies; Italy revisits ghosts of the 2003 blackout that spurred dispatch reform.
If the crisis teaches anything, it is that security of supply will climb back up Europe’s priority pyramid, perhaps to the same level as decarbonisation. Climate summits can no longer cite resilience as a postscript; it must appear on the first slide.
X. Citizen interpellation: from silence to politics
During the hours without light, thousands of people looked at the sky—many for the first time in years—and experienced a view free of light pollution. Some were able to identify the Milky Way, while others appreciated the serene stillness that accompanied the absence of activity. Initially, this event could have served as a valuable lesson on responsible consumption, but it quickly devolved into a search for someone to blame. Discussions about power adjustments, running washing machines at noon, and installing rooftop solar panels seemed insignificant compared to the realization that the idea of individual energy sovereignty is a fantasy when the power grid fails.
XI. What now?
The government has promised a commission of inquiry—staffed mainly by experts who have warned for years without political echo—and an independent report from Brussels. Disciplinary proceedings will open, and perhaps a few executives will retire early. With any luck, the PDF tomes will not sleep in fireproof drawers. Still, they will morph into concrete reforms: aligning the price curve to storage needs, accelerating digitalisation of substations, pand roviding distributed black‑start capability to every region.
But the hardest reform will be cultural: admitting that the energy transition is neither linear nor a green marketing campaign. It requires redundancy, patient investment and the humility to recognise that the sun also goes out when clouds of improvisation roll in.
XII. Epilogue in semi-darkness
At 03:16, the last monitor in REE’s control centre showed that the frequency restored to 50.01 Hz. Operators bumped elbows instead of shaking grease‑stained hands. Outside, streetlights woke in waves, like domestic stars retrieving their routine. The country exhaled in relief, but somewhere in a ministerial office, someone was marking in red the next G20 summit in São Paulo: top agenda item, grid resilience.
At dawn, many Madrilenians queued for trains that had not arrived the previous night. With their phones charged again, they shared memes about the Solar Apocalypse. Perhaps societies digest trauma by turning anguish into jokes and fear into promised reforms.
Yet beneath the laughter lurked a question no battery can dispel: how much do we depend on a circuit so fragile that a single cloud, a mis‑tuned algorithm or an overload of political optimism can unplug us from the century?
The sun will rise again, but the day it went out forced us to look squarely at what we prefer not to see: that modernity is a trapeze without a safety net when the electricity fails. This brief, instructive penumbra reminds us that moving toward a carbon‑free economy is also moving toward a future where complexity multiplies. And that anyone who pretends to govern the transition must assume the responsibility of doing so with the same prudence with which an engineer closes the circuit‑breaker of a 400‑kilovolt transformer: knowing that behind each click beats an entire civilisation.
You can't possibly deny me...
Have a wonderful day filled with good health, happiness, and love…
In December 2023, Energy Central recognized outstanding contributors within the Energy & Sustainability Network during the 'Top Voices' event. The recipients of this honor were highlighted in six articles, showcasing the acknowledgment from the community. The platform facilitates professionals in disseminating their work, engaging with peers, and collaborating with industry influencers. Congratulations are extended to the 2023 Top Voices: David Hunt, Germán Toro Ghio, Schalk Cloete, and Dan Yurman for their exemplary demonstration of expertise. - Matt Chester, Energy Central
Gratitude is our heartbeat.
Inflation bites, platforms shift, and every post now fights for survival. We’re holding the line with premier tools, licensed software, and striking images—but we can’t do it alone.
Help us stay loud:
One click: Like, repost, or share on X, LinkedIn, or Energy Central—free, private, game-changing.
One gift: PayPal gjmtoroghio@germantoroghio.com | IBAN SE18 3000 0000 0058 0511 2611 | Swish 076 423 90 79 | Stripe (donation link).
Each gesture—tiny or titan—powers the words you read.
Thank you for keeping the flame alive.
You can't possibly deny me...
Have a wonderful day filled with good health, happiness, and love…