Firms scramble for battery power in Spain and Portugal
A catastrophic power cut across Spain and Portugal in April 2025 left both countries in darkness for hours, causing widespread disruption and heavy financial losses for businesses. The blackout exposed how vulnerable firms have become after switching from fossil fuels to electricity for industrial processes, and it has since pushed many companies to invest heavily in battery storage systems to protect against future outages, with a further storm in January 2026 adding urgency to the shift.
Spanish meat processor Fribin lost hundreds of thousands of euros in wasted stock during the blackout and has since spent around €1.5m on battery modules, partly funded by EU Next Generation funds. More broadly, Spain's battery storage capacity has grown almost sevenfold since the blackout, from about 28MW to 193MW by April 2026, while the IDAE has awarded €827m to 133 storage projects totalling 2,400MW, roughly 80% of it batteries. Suppliers such as Sungrow report rising demand and customers increasingly seeking "seamless" instant backup, particularly for sensitive sites like hospitals and data centres.
- Iberian blackout in April 2025 spurred a rush into battery backup systems
- Spain's battery storage capacity nearly septupled to 193MW by April 2026
- €827m in EU funds awarded to 133 Spanish storage projects
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Spain and Portugal were hit by a huge power cut in April 2025 that left both countries without electricity for hours, disrupting businesses and costing many of them large sums of money. Investigators found it exposed a growing weakness: as more industries move away from oil and gas towards running on electricity, they become far more dependent on the grid staying up, and far more exposed when it fails.
Since then, companies across the two countries have been investing in battery storage systems, which store electricity so it can be used instantly if the main supply cuts out. This trend has been reinforced by a further storm in January 2026 that caused fresh disruption, pushing more firms and public bodies, such as hospitals and data centres, to see backup power as essential rather than optional.
Spanish and Portuguese authorities have also stepped in, with government agencies and EU recovery funds helping to pay for storage projects, while battery suppliers report a sharp rise in demand. The shift matters because it points to a wider question facing countries as they electrify: how to keep businesses and essential services running when the grid itself is not always reliable.
Both sides, in good faith
The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.
The case for
Advocates of this shift see it as a rational, market-led response to a genuine vulnerability: as industry electrifies, firms have a legitimate interest in insuring themselves against grid failures, much as they would insure against fire or theft. Investing in batteries protects jobs, stock and continuity for sectors like food processing, healthcare and data storage, and public co-funding through EU Next Generation grants is a sensible use of resilience money that also builds domestic battery-storage capacity and expertise. Far from undermining the shift away from fossil fuels, this build-out of storage is precisely the complementary infrastructure that a renewables-heavy grid needs, and the speed of uptake shows business adapting sensibly to a changed energy landscape.
The case against
Others would argue that the surge in corporate battery spending is really a symptom of a deeper policy failure: grid operators and regulators pressed ahead with electrification and renewables integration without ensuring the backup, interconnection and system-stability investment needed to prevent a cascading blackout in the first place. On this view, it should not fall to individual meat processors or hospitals to shoulder six- and seven-figure bills, nor should scarce public subsidy be diverted to compensate firms for a systemic shortfall rather than fixing the grid itself. There is also a fair concern that framing this as a resilience success story understates the risk that further storms or grid stress could expose the same fragility again, meaning the underlying problem remains unresolved even as batteries proliferate.