Blackout: Government to present energy security reinforcement plan on July 28

The Government will present, on July 28, a package of measures to reinforce the security of the national electricity system, following the blackout on April 28 that affected millions of people in Portugal and Spain.

The date marks precisely three months since the incident and, according to the Minister of Environment and Energy, Maria da Graça Carvalho, the objective is to “act now” based on the first technical conclusions and prepare the country to avoid or minimize future impacts.

“The final conclusions of the independent report are not yet available, but there are already enough technical recommendations for us to start taking action. And that is what we will do,” the minister said after a meeting in Brussels with the European Energy Regulatory Agency (ACER), which is conducting the European audit of the incident.

The planned actions include strengthening energy storage, increasing the system's emergency response capacity ('black start') — doubling to 4 the number of plants prepared to autonomously restart the electricity grid — and measures to accelerate the licensing of energy communities and self-consumption projects.

Solutions are also being studied to improve the resilience of critical infrastructures, such as health centers or communications systems, through the installation of renewable generation systems with batteries. “We have to better prepare society to react to these types of situations,” said the minister.

The package, which was also discussed today at the same meeting, will also include legislative proposals to facilitate the implementation of these solutions, as well as strengthening voltage control in renewable power plants, in line with what was recently adopted in Spain.

The minister also assured that the report being prepared by ACER will be “truly independent” and that the presentation of the conclusion is scheduled for the end of 2025, after the last technical meeting scheduled for October.

Nevertheless, the minister confirmed that some preliminary conclusions have already been validated: the blackout originated in southwest Spain, was caused by several combined factors, including voltage control failures, and there is no evidence of a cyberattack. The same conclusions were recently presented by the Spanish government.

When asked about possible compensation requests from Spain, the minister stated that this is not the government's current focus. “We want, above all, to understand in depth what happened, identify the real causes and take measures to prevent it from happening again,” she stressed.

Maria da Graça Carvalho also argued that the incident that left Portugal and Spain without electricity for almost 12 hours also accelerated European cooperation.

The minister announced that an agreement was recently signed between the governments of France and Spain and the European Investment Bank, to finance with around 1.6 billion euros the reinforcement of one of the electrical interconnections with the Iberian Peninsula — a long-standing demand of Portugal.

As for energy prices, and fuel prices in particular, the minister was cautiously optimistic, despite the instability in the Middle East.

“Portugal is relatively protected due to the diversity of suppliers and routes. Our imports come mainly from the Atlantic [and not the Strait of Hormuz], originating in Brazil, Algeria, the United States and Nigeria,” he explained, stressing that the Government will continue to monitor the situation in coordination with sector entities.