The Rise of Renewables and the Pressure on Grid Infrastructure
Across the globe, energy systems are undergoing a dramatic transformation. Nations are racing to increase their share of clean energy, and the numbers reflect this momentum. In 2024, Spain generated nearly 57 percent of its electricity from renewable sources, driven largely by solar and wind. This was a substantial leap from around 44 percent just a few years earlier, as reported by Red Eléctrica de España. Portugal outpaced its neighbor by generating 71 percent of its electricity through renewables in the same year, according to REN’s national data.
These achievements are significant, but they also highlight a growing challenge, keeping the grid stable while integrating highly variable and decentralized sources of power. Traditional power systems were built around centralized fossil fuel plants that offered consistent output. In contrast, renewable sources like solar and wind are intermittent. Their production can fluctuate dramatically within hours due to weather conditions, which introduces volatility into the grid. As more decentralized assets come online, coordinating them becomes more complex. Without corresponding upgrades to infrastructure and digital systems, high renewable penetration can compromise rather than enhance energy reliability.
The Iberian Blackout Wasn’t an Anomaly. It Was a Forecast.
On April 28, 2025, the Iberian grid suffered a cascading outage that disrupted power supply to millions across Spain and Portugal. The disturbance was triggered by a trip event at a high-voltage substation in southern Spain, likely involving a protection mis-operation or transformer failure under stress conditions. Due to insufficient grid-forming capacity and declining system inertia, a common consequence of high non-synchronous renewable penetration, the system lacked adequate frequency containment reserves to arrest the disturbance. Within seconds, frequency and voltage oscillations propagated across interconnected nodes, overwhelming the existing under-frequency load shedding (UFLS) schemes.
Post-event diagnostics highlighted the absence of wide-area monitoring systems (WAMS) and delayed SCADA visibility from multiple distributed energy resources (DERs), particularly inverter-based solar PV systems. Investigations also revealed that several DERs were not compliant with dynamic ride-through capabilities or grid code specifications, leading to mass disconnection during the initial transient. Compounding this was the insufficient interconnection transfer capacity (NTC) between Portugal and France, which limited the ability to draw balancing support from the continental grid.
Cybersecurity assessments further uncovered critical vulnerabilities in the control layers of smaller IPP-operated solar assets, exposing gaps in NERC-CIP-like compliance and automated dispatch controls. This blackout was not a singular event caused by equipment failure, it was the result of cumulative issues: poor grid flexibility, inadequate synthetic inertia deployment, weak DER integration strategies, and lack of real-time resilience orchestration. It serves as a cautionary case for any power system undergoing rapid decarbonization without parallel investments in grid-edge intelligence, ancillary services provisioning, and resilience planning.
The Blueprint for a Resilient Grid
Creating a resilient grid is not just about adding more wires or substations. It requires a complete rethinking of how we plan, operate, and secure modern energy systems. Grid resilience today must be built on data-driven decision-making, real-time responsiveness, and intelligent coordination.
The first pillar is digitalization. Traditional supervisory systems alone are no longer enough. Grid operators need advanced analytics and real-time monitoring tools that can track energy flow, identify anomalies, and adapt quickly to changing load conditions. Regions with higher digital maturity have been shown to experience fewer outages and recover more rapidly from system disturbances.
The second pillar involves large-scale energy storage deployment. Technologies like battery energy storage systems (BESS) can absorb excess generation during low-demand periods and discharge it when demand rises or renewable output drops. According to the International Energy Agency, global storage capacity must grow by over 500 percent by the end of the decade to support the scale of renewables coming online.
Third, cyber resilience must be prioritized. As energy systems become increasingly connected and cloud-based, they are also more exposed to cyber threats. All market participants, including smaller independent power producers and distributed asset owners, must be required to meet minimum cybersecurity standards. Security protocols should include intrusion detection systems, access controls, and regular audits.
Finally, regional coordination is essential. The Iberian blackout highlighted the consequences of limited grid interconnection. When Spain and Portugal struggled to recover from the outage, lack of cross-border energy flow options slowed restoration. This reinforces the need for regional grid operators to work together, not just technically but also through shared policies and contingency planning.
How Apollo Energy Analytics Is Strengthening Grid Resilience
At Apollo Energy Analytics, we believe that the future of grid resilience will be built on intelligence rather than brute force. Our platform is designed to bring predictive precision and systemic coordination to energy portfolios, particularly those rich in renewables.
We utilize digital twin technology to create real-time simulations of renewable asset performance. These simulations enable anomaly detection, yield prediction, and stress-testing under multiple operational scenarios. In practice, this means that asset owners receive early warnings about potential faults or imbalances, often before they manifest into performance issues. Our clients have seen a 2 to 3 percent increase in average energy yield and a 40 percent reduction in unplanned downtime through proactive interventions informed by our models.
Apollo also enables centralized operations and maintenance intelligence. For companies managing diverse portfolios of solar, wind, and storage across multiple locations, siloed data can be a serious bottleneck. Our platform unifies asset performance data, turning it into actionable insights that improve dispatch coordination, maintenance scheduling, and grid participation. One of our clients, a major renewable IPP in India, reduced its operations and maintenance costs by 18 percent after integrating our system. In addition, mean time to recovery during voltage drops and system faults improved by nearly 10 percent.
Security is another key pillar of our value proposition. Apollo’s architecture is built with multi-layered encryption and active intrusion monitoring and complies with international cybersecurity frameworks. Our system logs every action, flags anomalies in control patterns, and allows for hierarchical access control across teams, ensuring resilience against both internal errors and external threats.
What sets Apollo apart is our ability to support not only the plant operators but also the larger ecosystem. From feeding dispatch signals to distribution companies to generating compliance-ready reports for SLDCs, our tools are purpose-built to fit the operational realities of high-growth renewable markets. Grid resilience isn’t a feature; it’s the outcome of everything we do.
Resilience is Now a Metric for Maturity
The journey toward a low-carbon future cannot succeed without grid resilience at its core. The Spain-Portugal blackout was not an isolated failure but an early indicator of what happens when renewable ambitions are not matched with operational intelligence. As nations like India aim to scale up to 500 GW of renewable capacity by 2030, the lesson is clear: we must evolve our grids in parallel with our generation capacity.
Apollo Energy Analytics is playing a critical role in enabling this shift. By helping energy stakeholders monitor smarter, respond faster, and operate safer, we’re not just managing energy better, we’re redefining what performance means in a renewable-first world. Let Apollo show you how predictive, portfolio-wide intelligence can transform your asset operations. Reach out to us via contact@apolloenergyanalytics.com or connect through our official LinkedIn page. We’d love to hear from you!
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