Notable Grid Failures in History

16 notable electricity grid failures, from The 2003 Northeast Blackout to The 2025 Iberian Peninsula Blackout, what caused each one and what changed afterwards. Each page is independently researched from public investigations and reports, not from the site's own Ember, EIA or ENTSO-E data, and cites the report it draws on.

Key Facts

16 notable grid failures are covered, from 2003 to 2025.
The 2025 Iberian Peninsula Blackout (28 April 2025): A sudden loss of about 15 gigawatts of generation, more than half of what the two countries were supplying at the time, cascaded into a near total blackout with no single equipment failure to blame.
The 2025 Chile Blackout (25 February 2025): A fault on a 500 kV line in northern Chile cascaded into a blackout from Arica to Los Lagos, and responsibility is still contested.
The 2025 Sri Lanka Nationwide Blackout (9 February 2025): A fault at one substation took down the whole island in 22 seconds, as falling frequency overwhelmed a grid with little inertia and a lot of rooftop solar.

Every Event, Newest First

Event	Date	Region	Cause
The 2025 Iberian Peninsula Blackout	28 April 2025	Spain and Portugal	Insufficient reactive power margin leading to a voltage instability cascade
The 2025 Chile Blackout	25 February 2025	Chile, from Arica to Los Lagos	Per the grid operator's report: unpermitted work on a 500 kV line's protection system; responsibility is still contested
The 2025 Sri Lanka Nationwide Blackout	9 February 2025	Sri Lanka	A substation fault followed by a frequency collapse in a low inertia grid with a lot of rooftop solar
The 2023 Kenya Nationwide Blackout	25 August 2023	Kenya	Disputed: the loss of a 270 megawatt wind farm, or that wind farm tripping on a grid overvoltage
The 2023 Brazil Blackout	15 August 2023	Brazil	Loss of one line, then wind and solar farms supplying less voltage support than their models predicted
The 2023 Pakistan Nationwide Blackout	23 January 2023	Pakistan	Official explanation: a frequency disturbance in the south as units were restarted after an overnight fuel saving shutdown; technical accounts differ
The 2021 Texas Winter Storm Blackouts	14 February 2021	Texas (ERCOT)	Extreme cold freezing gas supply and power plants that were not winterized
The 9 August 2019 Great Britain Power Cut	9 August 2019	Great Britain	Two generators failing to ride through a lightning strike within minutes of each other
The 2019 Argentina and Uruguay Blackout	16 June 2019	Argentina and Uruguay	A short circuit on a line running in a temporary T configuration, and a generation cutback scheme that did not act as intended
The 2017 Puerto Rico Hurricane Maria Blackout	20 September 2017	Puerto Rico	A hurricane destroying a transmission and distribution system already weakened by underinvestment and poor maintenance
The 2016 South Australia Blackout	28 September 2016	South Australia	Storm damage to transmission towers, followed by generator protection settings and loss of the interconnector
The July 2012 India Blackouts	30 July 2012	Northern, Eastern and Northeastern India	Grid discipline: states overdrawing a shared grid under heatwave and drought demand
The 2011 Japan Power Crisis	11 March 2011	Tokyo and Tohoku areas, Japan	Earthquake and tsunami damage that took nuclear plants in eastern Japan out of service and left supply below demand
The 2006 European Grid Split	4 November 2006	Germany and the interconnected European grid	A planned line shutdown that left the grid short of its single failure safety margin, and too little coordination between operators
The 2003 Italy Blackout	28 September 2003	Italy	A tree flashover on a Swiss line, then a slow response to the overload on its neighbour
The 2003 Northeast Blackout	14 August 2003	Midwest and Northeast United States, and Ontario	Cascading failure after an alarm system fault and a line contacting trees

This is a short, deliberately incomplete list of well documented events with an official or authoritative investigation, not a record of every blackout there has been.

Cite this page

APA 7

World Power Monitor. (2025). Notable Grid Failures in History. https://worldpowermonitor.com/grid-events/

Plain text

World Power Monitor. Notable Grid Failures in History. Data as of 2025-04-28. https://worldpowermonitor.com/grid-events/

BibTeX

@misc{wpm_grid_events_2025,
  title = {{Notable Grid Failures in History}},
  author = {{World Power Monitor}},
  year = {2025},
  note = {Data as of 2025-04-28.},
  url = {https://worldpowermonitor.com/grid-events/}
}

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Notable Grid Failures in History

Key Facts

Every Event, Newest First

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