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The recent power outage in Spain and Portugal, which impacted millions, highlights the urgent need for greater investment in resilient, flexible, and modern power systems across Europe and globally. GWEC emphasizes the crucial role of wind energy in building resilient power systems, following the outage.
Wind energy, along with other key renewables like solar and hydropower, supported by energy storage, forms the backbone of modern energy systems. When integrated effectively with the right technology and controls, wind farms can stabilize the grid, balance supply and demand, and provide inertia, black start capabilities, and faster recovery after faults.
In Spain and Portugal, wind turbines continued to operate throughout the week, providing power for critical services and aiding in the recovery of the energy network. Scaling up wind power must go hand-in-hand with developing flexible, modern grids.
The disruption experienced serves as a reminder of the challenges in modernizing grids but also points to the solution. The Iberian outage should be a wake-up call to prioritize resilience and flexibility. Achieving this at scale is possible by strengthening distributed cross-border interconnections, deploying technologies like grid-forming inverters that support renewables, and increasing energy storage. These actions will ensure the clean, secure, and abundant electricity from wind turbines is readily accessible to homes, businesses, and essential infrastructure.
