The 2025 Iberian Blackout: Anatomy of a Grid Collapse
This talk provides a data-informed timeline of the April 28 Iberian blackout, examining how system conditions and possible instabilities may have shaped the cascade of events.
Overview
On April 28, 2025, the Iberian Peninsula experienced one of the most significant blackouts in recent European history, with widespread power outages lasting up to ten hours across mainland Portugal and Spain. While full investigations are still ongoing, publicly released data and early technical interpretations offer important insights into the progression of events, from initial disturbances and interconnection issues to large-scale generation loss and system separation. This talk presents a timeline-driven analysis grounded in confirmed reports and available grid data, exploring plausible mechanisms, including oscillatory behavior, dynamic instability, and protection system responses, that may have contributed to the unfolding of the blackout.
Presenters
Brief Biography
Charalambos (Harrys) Konstantinou is currently an Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) with the Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Science and Engineering Division (CEMSE), King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thuwal, Saudi Arabia. He is the Principal Investigator (PI) of the Secure Next Generation Resilient Systems Laboratory (SENTRY), a co-PI of the Advanced Grid Laboratory for Cyber-Physical Energy System Applications (ANGLE) Group at KAUST, and also affiliated to the Center for Renewable Energy & Storage Technologies (CREST), KAUST. He received the M.Eng. degree in ECE from the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), Greece, and the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from New York University (NYU), NY, USA. Before joining KAUST, he was an Assistant Professor with the Center for Advanced Power Systems (CAPS), Florida State University (FSU). His research interests include critical infrastructures security and resilience with special focus on smart grid technologies, renewable energy integration, and real-time simulation. He is a Senior Member of IEEE, and currently serving as Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid (TSG), IEEE Transactions on Power Systems (TPWRS), and IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics (TII).
