Power outage in Cannes: 160,000 households affected on festival weekend!

Power outage in Cannes: 160,000 households affected on festival weekend!

On May 24, 2025, the closing weekend of the prestigious Cannes Film Festival, the French city experienced a significant power outage. According to reports from Stuttgart News Around 160,000 households in Cannes and surrounding communities were affected. While operations in the festival palace continued largely as normal, film screenings in the “Cineum”, a multiplex cinema outside the city center, were interrupted. The festival's press office confirmed the power outage, the cause of which is currently unknown. Restoration work has already begun, but the awards ceremony was able to take place on Saturday evening as planned.

The question arises as to whether this power outage could be related to other recent events in the European power grid. An equally serious incident took place on April 28, 2025 on the Iberian Peninsula. On that day, at 12:33 p.m., there was a widespread power outage that affected both Spain and Portugal for several hours Wikipedia reported. As a result, the public electrical energy supply failed completely.

Causes and effects of the Iberian blackout

The origin of this power outage was probably in a substation near Granada and led to the failure of other substations in Badajoz and Seville. Between 12:03 and 12:21 p.m., network frequency oscillations occurred, which were dampened by the network operators in Spain and France, REE and RTE. At 12:32:57 p.m., 2.2 GW of power was lost due to protective shutdowns, resulting in a decrease in grid frequency.

As a result, there were significant disruptions in Portugal: public transport, including the Lisbon subway, largely stopped operating, traffic lights failed and Lisbon Airport had to be closed at around 1 p.m. Spanish rail operator Renfe also shut down its national rail network. Additional police forces have been deployed to ensure road safety. Transport systems, such as the nuclear reactors, had to be quickly shut down and switched to emergency generators.

The Portuguese government held an emergency meeting as full normalization of power supplies could take up to a week. While the autonomous regions of Madeira and the Azores were unaffected by the blackout, the impact on the food industry was significant, with losses estimated at 190 million euros.

Conclusions and further developments

By analyzing these incidents, it becomes clear that the stability of the European electricity grid is facing challenges. Experts question the robustness of the system, particularly given the high proportion of renewable energy that has been identified as a potential risk. To better understand the causes of the blackout on the Iberian Peninsula, ENTSO-E announced the formation of an expert panel on May 1, 2025.

The restoration of power following the incident in Spain began in the afternoon and up to 51% of Spaniards had power restored before midnight. But the circumstances of these disruptions, both in Cannes and on the Iberian Peninsula, raise questions about the safety and viability of existing energy infrastructure. The Cannes incident could serve as a warning about the vulnerability of the power grid and will certainly be the subject of extensive investigation.