Brussels, June 25, 2025 (Lusa) - The Government will present a package of measures on July 28 to strengthen the security of Portugal's national electricity system, following the blackout on April 28 that affected millions of people in Portugal and Spain.
The date marks exactly three months since the incident and, according to the Minister for the Environment and Energy, Maria da Graça Carvalho, the aim is to “act now” based on the initial technical conclusions and prepare the country to avoid or minimise future impacts.
“The final conclusions of the independent report are not yet available, but there are already sufficient technical recommendations for us to start taking action. And that is what we are going to do,” said the minister after a meeting in Brussels with the European Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER), which is conducting the European audit of the incident.
Among the planned actions are strengthening energy storage, increasing the system’s emergency response capacity (‘black start’) – doubling the number of power stations prepared to restart the electricity grid autonomously to four – and measures to speed up the licensing of energy communities and self-consumption projects.
Solutions are also being studied to improve the resilience of critical infrastructure, such as health centres and communications systems, through the installation of renewable production systems with batteries. “We must better prepare society to react to this type of situation,” 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 south-western Spain, was caused by several combined factors, including voltage control failures, and there is no evidence of a cyberattack. These are the same conclusions recently presented by the Spanish government.
Asked about possible claims for compensation from Spain, the minister said that this is not the government’s current focus. “Above all, we want 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 had recently been signed between the French and Spanish governments and the European Investment Bank to provide around €1.6 million to strengthen one of the electricity interconnections with the Iberian Peninsula - a long-standing demand by Portugal.
As for energy prices, particularly fuel prices, 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 from the Strait of Hormuz], originating in Brazil, Algeria, the United States and Nigeria,” she explained, stressing that the government will continue to monitor the situation in coordination with the sector’s authorities.
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