Ó Muirí warns of power grid vulnerabilities

Fine Gael TD Naoise Ó Muirí has warned that Ireland could see scenes similar to the major blackout which hit Spain and Portugal last week.

On April 28, Spain, Portugal, and parts of Southern France were hit by an unexpected blackout, with authorities still attempting to determine the cause. 

Speaking in the Dáil, the Dublin Bay North TD noted that Ireland’s electrical grid was uniquely exposed during Storm Éowyn in January, and lessons need to be learned so that a similar incident doesn’t affect Ireland.

He said the incident “was a jarring but very real reminder of the vulnerability of our energy systems; in five seconds, the Iberian power network lost 15 GW. That is about 60% of normal consumer demand there.”

“By way of comparison, the peak that has been recorded in Ireland is 6 GW, so two and a half times the full consumption of Ireland went off that grid in five seconds. It is incredible that that happened.”

“Rail and metro services stopped, traffic systems stopped, lights were not working and many other things went. Some 60 million people on that peninsula were impacted, directly or indirectly.”

Ó Muirí warned, “we are not immune to extreme events. We saw what happened with Storm Éowyn, particularly in the west of Ireland, and the challenges getting power back. Communities were left off air for two weeks-plus as the ESB worked hard to get them back on stream.”

“The European Commission is saying there are lessons to be learned by the European Union from the blackout; because it was an international impact, Spain has to give a detail report to the Commission within three months, setting out what happened, the impact and what steps Spain will take to ensure it does not happen again. We need to plug into that and see what changes we need to make, if any, on the Irish side to minimise the risk of this happening to us.”

“We will have to do this again and again to build resilience into the network,” he said.

Fellow Fine Gael TD and Minister of State Jerry Buttimer said that  Ó Muirí was “bang on” and pointed to historical blackouts such as the New York blackout of 2003 or the Chilean blackout in early 2025 which saw tens of people lose power.

He said those incidents, along with the incident in Spain and Portugal, highlights the need to protect ageing infrastructure in the face of a changing world.

To that end, Buttimer said that four new temporary emergency generation capacity units have been built across Ireland (two of them are on the Northside; one in North Wall and one in Huntstown) and that EirGrid, who looks after Ireland’s electrical grid, is already taking action to secure the Irish grid system and are examining how to best protect Ireland’s grid from major events.

Buttimer also said that a new 500 megawatt interconnected generator has begun operation between Ireland and Great Britain.

In March, the government conducted an exercise which tested how the Irish state would perform in the event of a cyber attack.

Members of the defence forces, gardaí and various government departments took part in the exercise, with the intent of making sure Ireland is prepared for an unlikely – but possible – loss of power.