When the Sun Goes Down: Spain’s Blackout Exposes the Fragile Reality of Solar Power, and the Continual Need for Fossil Fuels, By Richard Miller (Londonistan)
Spain recently suffered widespread blackouts—not because of natural disaster or sabotage, but due to a renewable energy failure. According to Spain's national grid operator, a sudden drop in solar energy production caused massive instability across the country's power network. The incident triggered a wave of emergency measures and brought to the fore a question too often ignored in the climate debate:
Are solar farms actually reliable enough to serve as the backbone of a modern energy grid?
The answer, once again, appears to be a firm no.
The April 2025 blackout in Spain, which left major urban centres and industrial zones in the dark, was triggered by solar generation plummeting in a matter of minutes as clouds rolled in across the Iberian Peninsula. As grid operators scrambled to balance load, the cascading effects led to mass outages. This wasn't a one-off freak event — it's a symptom of a deeper structural weakness baked into the renewable energy model.
Solar panels are inherently intermittent. They produce power only when the sun shines — which means output varies not just by time of day, but by unpredictable weather conditions. This creates massive volatility, forcing traditional energy sources like gas, coal, or nuclear to remain on standby, inefficiently ramping up and down to fill the gaps.
And yet, solar is being aggressively pushed by governments across Europe — including under the EU's "Green Deal" — as if it were a plug-and-play substitute for dispatchable energy. It is not.
Defenders of solar often respond with a hopeful refrain: "Just build more batteries."
This is fantasy economics. Industrial-scale battery storage — whether lithium-ion, flow batteries, or otherwise — is prohibitively expensive, technologically immature, and woefully inadequate for national-scale storage. Even the most optimistic projections admit batteries cannot store enough power to bridge more than a few hours of solar downtime — let alone days or weeks of overcast skies.
Spain's blackout didn't just expose solar's fragility; it demonstrated the systemic vulnerability introduced when grid reliability is subordinated to Net Zero ideology.
In the rush to decarbonise, solar and wind have been championed as saviours of the planet. But when these technologies are deployed at massive scale without adequate backup by fossil fuels, or reform of grid infrastructure, they threaten to destabilise the very societies they aim to save.
The EU's reliance on these sources is beginning to look like an act of self-sabotage. Ironically, while "green" policy is marketed as humanitarian and forward-thinking, its real-world impact is disproportionately borne by the working class and vulnerable — the people who cannot afford private generators, backup batteries, or the sudden spikes in electricity prices that follow such instability.
Even former climate hawks are beginning to admit the truth. Tony Blair — hardly a Right-wing contrarian — recently turned on the Net Zero agenda, warning it's economically unviable without serious re-evaluation.
A rational energy policy is not one that blindly worships the sun or wind. It's one that:
Prioritises grid stability and energy security above ideology.
Recognises the limitations of renewables, especially without adequate storage.
Keeps reliable baseload power sources — like nuclear, natural gas, and advanced coal — in the mix.
Emphasises technological neutrality, allowing innovation without political coercion.
There's nothing wrong with using solar as a complementary source of power. But turning it into the cornerstone of national energy policy, without accounting for its volatile and unpredictable nature, is not green — it's reckless.
Spain's blackout was not a fluke. It was a preview of the energy future awaiting nations that overcommit to unreliable renewables without proper contingency planning. As solar farms spread across the world's landscapes, it's time for an honest reckoning.
The sun may be free — but grid collapse is very, very expensive.
https://www.naturalnews.com/2025-04-30-spain-renewable-blackout-grid.html
https://www.rt.com/news/616558-eu-blackout-green-energy/l
https://europeanconservative.com/articles/commentary/power-failure-the-cost-of-green-dogma/
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