2025 Iberian Peninsula Blackout
After an unprecedented power outage hit Spain, Portugal, and parts of France last week, many in the media speculated that the large amounts of renewable energy in the Iberian system was to blame for the blackout.
The exact cause of the grid collapse is not yet known, but at 12:33 p.m. on April 28, electricity generation in Spain dropped rapidly from around 27 gigawatts to just over 12 gigawatts. The sudden drop in grid load destabilized electricity flows, resulting in a peninsula wide power outage.
At the time of the incident, Spain and Portugal were sourcing about 80 percent of their electricity from wind and solar, leading to the speculation that the grid could have been overloaded with renewable energy.
While renewables are well known for being more intermittent than generation from fossil fuels, the consensus amongst grid experts is that the generation source had nothing to do with this week's blackout.
The Spanish utility, Red Eléctrica de España (REE) issued a statement that emphasized that there is no reliable or verified information suggesting the widespread blackout was caused by any generation technology.
Joao Conceicao, a board member of Portuguese grid operator REN-Redes Energéticas, told reporters the company had not ruled out the possibility of a "very large oscillation in electrical voltage, first in the Spanish system, which then spread to the Portuguese system".
The electrical grid and generating plants are separate elements. The disconnection of renewable plants and other generating systems, such as nuclear plants, was not the cause of the blackout. The cause is yet to be conclusively determined.
New-Build Solar Requirement in UK
Nearly all new constructed homes in the United Kingdom will be required to install rooftop solar panels under the labor government's proposed new net zero regulations.
According to reports in the Guardian newspaper, solar panels will need to be fitted on most new homes within two years of beginning construction. The new policy will add roughly $5,000 to the cost of building a new home but will result in savings over $1,300 annually in that building's energy costs.
California is currently the only state in the U.S. that requires solar panels on all new homes. Other states including Colorado, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Texas are also considering similar requirements.
DOE Leveraging Federal Land and Assets
The US Department of Energy, (DOE) is entertaining the idea of using federal lands for artificial intelligence data centers. The sites are to be developed and co-located with existing power generation facilities.
This month, the DOE's office of policy Request For Information (RFI) sought to learn more about using 16 federal research facilities to support the growing demand for data centers.
Each site would incorporate on-site energy generation that could be facilitated through fast track permitting rules.
The decision to explore federal lands for data center development follows an executive order that was signed in January 2025 by outgoing President Joe Biden to remove hurdles for AI data center expansion within the United States.
The order also encouraged those large load customers to be powered by renewable energy.
President Trump has not only not rescinded this order, but he's actually leaned into it and expanded upon it.
A report released by the DOE last year estimated that the electricity needed by U.S. data centers tripled over the past decade and will double or triple again by 2028.
By 2028, data centers are expected to consume up to 12 percent of all of the electricity used nationwide.
Texan Constituents Support RE Contrary to their Statehouse Representatives
Polling of a thousand likely voters by the organization, Conservative Texans for Energy Innovation, found that 91 percent of Texans strongly supported land owners rights to install wind and solar on their own property and to sell that energy back to utilities.
The poll also found that 75 percent of Republicans and 90 percent of independents favored government action to accelerate the adoption of renewable energy.
This new poll provided similar results to a 2024 poll that was produced by the Solar Energy Industries Association and found that 89 percent of Texans felt property owners should have the right to lease their land for solar projects.
The findings come as the Texas renewable energy industry is under legislative assault.
The Texas Senate recently passed two bills Senate Bill 819 and Senate Bill 388 that restrict land owners ability to put wind and solar on their land and require that for every new watt of a renewable power that's added to the grid, must be matched by a watt of power that comes from coal or natural gas.
