Planned effort

During a hearing before the Environment and Energy Committee's working group on the 28 April 2025 blackout, Maria da Graça Carvalho explained that the amount reflects the Government’s planned effort to strengthen the national electricity system’s resilience and reduce the likelihood of another large-scale failure.

"We will authorise, which is on the table but is not yet a final decision, around €4 billion for the grid—that is, both the transmission network, which carries electricity over long distances at high voltage, and the distribution network, which delivers electricity to homes and businesses," she added.

Money distribution

According to her details, of this total: €3.04 billion relates to distribution; €497 million to core projects in the transmission network; €775 million to complementary projects; and €133 million to an extraordinary approval already authorised.

Response to the blackout

The Minister framed this financial effort within the response to the blackout, arguing that the objective is to strengthen the electrical system's robustness and accelerate recovery capacity in the event of a new failure.

Ensuring a faster recovery

The Minister added that, if a new incident occurs, the priority is to ensure a faster recovery of the system and greater autonomy for critical infrastructures, pointing to the reinforcement of planned power outages ('blackouts') and the conduct of more system resilience tests.

She said that no country can eliminate all risk of such events, but it is possible to lower the probability and improve response.

She pointed out that, as seen in the United States and Italy, countries can be better prepared, but none are completely prepared.

Measures after the blackout

Among the measures adopted after the blackout, the Minister recalled that the Government announced on 28 June “31 measures”, including an investment of €137 million to “improve the operation and control of the electricity grid capacity”.

Another line of action involves battery storage. According to the Minister, the current tender has been extended after an increase in funding from the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR), bringing the total amount available to €180 million.

“We currently have €180 million from the PRR for batteries,” she said, adding that the tender is open until 23 April.

Future projects

The Minister also mentioned that the Government plans to allocate €25 million, financed by the Sustainable 2030 program, to pilot projects using batteries and renewable energy for self-consumption in critical infrastructure, such as health units, nursing homes, fire departments, and other essential services.

Furthermore, she explained that it was decided to maintain four power plants with 'blackstart' capacity – the autonomous start-up of power plants without external grid support – instead of just two, as initially planned in the REN process.

She explained that before the blackout, REN had already launched a tender to replace the two existing 'blackstarts' with two new ones.

However, after the incident, the Government decided to maintain all four infrastructures simultaneously. In addition to Tapada do Outeiro and Castelo de Bode, there was reinforcement with Baixo Sabor and Alqueva.

The Minister argued that reinforcing 'blackstarts', expanding storage, and investing in the network should be seen as resilience insurance, but admitted that all these options have economic and tariff impacts.

Maria da Graça Carvalho also stressed that one of the priorities is to ensure greater autonomy for critical infrastructure during future incidents, namely hospitals, health centres, nursing homes, fire departments, and emergency and rescue services.