The power outage across Spain and Portugal earlier this year — Europe’s largest in more than two decades — raised urgent questions about the stability and resilience of our electricity systems. The incident underscored a critical reality: as our world becomes more electrified, the demands on our power grids are growing all the time.  

The challenge is two-fold. First, we must integrate vast amounts of mostly intermittent renewable energy — wind, solar, and other clean sources — to combat climate change. Second, we must ensure that our grids remain stable even as they become more complex, interconnected, and exposed to extreme weather, cyber threats, and unforeseen disruptions.

The good news? Solutions already exist. The key lies in international standards — the invisible frameworks that ensure our technologies work safely and seamlessly together.

Why are grids under pressure?

Electricity grids were designed for a different era. Traditionally, power flowed in one direction: from large coal, gas, or nuclear plants to homes and businesses. These plants provided not only electricity but also stability. Their spinning turbines acted like shock absorbers, smoothing out fluctuations in supply and demand.  

Today, that model is being upended. Wind and solar farms, while essential for decarbonization, don’t provide the same inherent stability. A sudden cloud cover or drop in wind can lead to rapid shifts in power supply. At the same time, demand is increasing due to our new electrical needs, including electric vehicles (EVs), heat pumps, and data centers, to name but a few.

Electricity grids need to be able to cope with these changes, yet many are what experts call legacy systems, which are far from recent. Smart grid technology is used to modernize vast areas of the electricity network, and this new technology needs to interoperate with the existing legacy systems.

How international standards keep the lights on

Standards are the rulebooks that ensure technologies from different manufacturers and countries can work together safely. Think of them as the DNA of the grid. They define how power plants, wind turbines, EV chargers, and home batteries communicate and operate.  

The IEC develops these global standards, helping grids adapt to a host of new challenges, such as:

Reinventing grid stability

With new independent actors, such as solar panels or wind turbines — what experts call distributed energy resources (DERs) — playing an increasingly important role in supplying electricity to the grid, we need new ways to maintain stability. One solution is synthetic inertia, a technology that lets wind turbines mimic the stabilizing effect of spinning turbines. The IEC 61400-27-2 standard ensures these systems respond quickly to fluctuations, preventing cascading failures.  

Similarly, battery storage and smart inverters (devices that manage how solar panels feed power into the grid) are being standardized to act as shock absorbers. The IEC is working on a new standard that will specify safety test methods and procedures for lithium-ion battery-based systems for energy storage. IEC 62933-5-1 specifies safety considerations for electrical energy storage systems integrated with the electrical grid

The IEC 61850 series is widely seen as the standard for the smart grid. They deal with substation automation, two-way information exchange, global control functions, and renewable energy and battery integration, to name but a few. They enable legacy grids to interoperate with more recent digital technology.

In the case of disasters and extreme weather, standards can help ensure resilient infrastructure. For example, the IEC 61400 series of standards addresses external conditions for offshore wind turbine designs, which include the ability to withstand 70 m/s (155 mph, nearly 250 km/h) winds, which is greater than most hurricanes. A dedicated team of experts for microgrid disaster preparedness and recovery at the IEC, has also worked extensively on preparation for and recovery from major electricity outages. The project also evaluates how disaster preparedness and post-disaster recovery may benefit from standards and the design of plans for coordinated activity. There are other examples too.

Microgrids can be a way of ensuring resilience in the face of weather-related disasters, and the standards for integrating microgrids in the electricity network include IEC 62898-1, which provides guidelines for microgrid project planning and specification.

Turning electric vehicles into grid assets

Millions of EVs are hitting the roads, and their batteries could serve as an energy reserve. Instead of just drawing power, EVs can feed electricity back into the grid during peak demand, a concept called vehicle-to-grid (V2G).  

New standards like IEC 63584 (based on the Open Charge Point Protocol) enable this two-way flow, while ISO 15118-20 ensures secure communication between cars, chargers, and the grid. The goal? EVs should charge when electricity is cheap and abundant — like midday solar surpluses — and supply power at high demand times or during emergencies.

Cybersecurity: protecting the grid from digital threats

As grids become more digital, they also become more vulnerable. Cyber-attacks on power systems — like the strikes on Ukraine’s grid — are no longer theoretical.  

The IEC 62351 and IEC 62443 standards provide the blueprint for securing grid communications, from power plants to home solar systems. The challenge? Unlike traditional infrastructure, where utilities have full control, many distributed energy resources (DERs), like rooftop solar and EVs, are owned by consumers. Ensuring cybersecurity across millions of devices requires new approaches, including AI-driven threat detection.

Smart meters and the “orchestra conductor” grid 

Future grids won’t be controlled top-down but will operate like an orchestra, with millions of devices responding in real time to balance supply and demand.  

Smart meters (covered by IEC 62056 standards) are the backbone of this system, enabling dynamic pricing and automated load-shifting. For example, your EV could charge overnight when wind power is plentiful. Also, your home battery could sell power back to the grid during a shortage, while factories could adjust energy use to avoid blackouts.  

This requires seamless communication between utilities, grid operators, and consumer devices, all governed by interoperable standards.

The road ahead: a smarter, more resilient grid

The Iberian outage was a wake-up call, but it also demonstrated that blackouts are not inevitable. With the right standards and technologies, we ensure our grids are:

• More flexible, adapting to renewable energy fluctuations  
• Using digital technologies to improve performance
• More resilient, withstanding cyberattacks and extreme weather  
• More decentralized, allowing consumers to participate in energy markets.  Not sure about this?

Building resilience

Accelerate grid modernization

Governments and utilities must invest in digital grid management, storage, and synthetic inertia technologies, which are all supported by IEC standards.  

Strengthen cross-border coordination

Electricity doesn’t stop at borders. Harmonized standards ensure that when one country faces a crisis, neighbors can provide backup power seamlessly.

Empower consumers

Smart meters, dynamic pricing, and V2G capabilities turn households into active grid participants, improving efficiency and reliability.  

Prioritize cyber security

As DERs proliferate, regulators must enforce robust security protocols to prevent grid-wide disruptions from hacked devices.  

A shared responsibility

The transition to a clean energy future is not just about building more wind farms and solar panels — it’s about reinventing the grid itself. Standards are the unsung heroes of this transformation, ensuring that every component, from EV chargers to hydropower plants, works in harmony.  

The role of the IEC is to provide these frameworks, but success depends on collaboration. In order to achieve this, governments must create policies that incentivize modernization. Utilities must adopt standards-driven technologies and reinvent their role in this distributed energy future, while consumers must embrace flexibility in energy use.  

The lights may have flickered in Spain and Portugal, but the path forward is clear. We can build an energy system that is not just cleaner but also more reliable than ever before by embracing innovation and global cooperation.