Europe’s aging power grids lack energy storage capacity and need trillions of dollars in investment to cope with the rise in renewable energy production, rising electricity demand and to avoid a blackout like the one in Spain, Reuters reports.

“The blackout was a wake-up call. It showed that there is an urgent and inevitable need to modernize and strengthen Europe’s power grids,” Eurelectric Secretary General Kristian Ruby said, according to Agerpres.

Most of the European Union’s power grids date back to the last century and half of the lines are more than 40 years old. The rise in low-carbon energy production and the explosive demand for energy from data centers and electric vehicles will require a modernization of the networks, which also need digital protection to cope with cyberattacks.

While global investment in renewables has nearly doubled since 2010, investment in grids has barely budged at around $300 billion a year. That needs to double to more than $600 billion a year by 2030 to cover the needed upgrades, according to the International Energy Agency.

Data from think tank Ember shows that the share of renewables in the EU’s power mix rose to 47% last year, from 34% in 2019, while the share of fossil fuels fell to 29% from 39%.

Wind and solar projects are relatively quick to build, compared with grids, which take more than a decade.

Part of the problem is the large sums and complexity of upgrading grids over long distances.

The European Commission has estimated that Europe needs to invest between $2 trillion and $2.3 trillion in grids by 2050.

Last year, European companies invested €80 billion in grids, up from €50 billion to €70 billion in previous years, say analysts at the Bruegel think tank, who added that investment could need to rise to €100 billion.

Another problem is that the energy systems of Spain and Portugal are among those in Europe that do not have enough connections to other grids to provide them with a back-up.

Spain needs more links with France and Morocco, says Jose Luis Dominguez Garcia of the Spanish research center IREC. According to him, Spain has only 5% of its connections outside the Iberian Peninsula.

With other countries lagging behind in this regard, the European Commission aims to increase the degree of interconnection to 15% by 2030, from 10% as previously targeted, which means that each EU member state will have to be able to import at least 15% of its electricity needs from neighboring countries.

In addition, as photovoltaic and wind energy production increases, the challenges go beyond modernizing the grids to the need for back-up generation.

Photovoltaic and wind power plants generate direct current, while traditional gas or nuclear power plants produce alternating current. The direct current must be converted to alternating current in inverters at a frequency of 50 Hertz for European networks and for use by households and businesses. If energy production decreases, the grid needs back-up facilities to produce alternating current, to avoid a drop in frequency.

If the frequency drops, automatic mechanisms disconnect certain generation facilities to avoid overloading transformers and transmission lines. If too many plants are disconnected at the same time, the system can go into blackout.

Europe also currently has 10.8 gigawatts of battery storage capacity and this capacity is set to reach 50 GW by 2030, well below the required level of 200 GW, according to the European Association for Energy Storage (EASE).