Grid Resilience in Action: Lessons Learnt from Real-World Challenges
This webinar, organised by the NGN communities in Belgium and the United Kingdom, takes place on Friday 25th July between 09:30 and 11:00 (BST). Click on the button below to register.
Abstract
Grid resilience refers to the ability of electrical grids to withstand, adapt to, and recover from disruptions, ensuring the continuous delivery of power. As the world faces increasing challenges from climate change, cyber threats, and aging infrastructure, the importance of resilient grids has become paramount. This webinar explores real-world cases of grid failures, and the lessons learned, with a particular focus on the 2025 Iberian Peninsula blackout in Spain and the widespread outage at Heathrow Airport, UK in March 2025. The Iberian blackout highlights the vulnerabilities in cross-border grid operations and the need for improved coordination and communication. Similarly, the Heathrow Airport outage, caused by a technical failure in the airport’s power supply system, underscores the critical role of infrastructure resilience in high-stakes environments. By analyzing these events, we can better understand the challenges in maintaining grid reliability and explore strategies for building more resilient energy networks to mitigate future disruptions.
Speakers
Dr. Yutian Zhou is a Principal Consultant at Arup, UK with strong innovation background and analytical skills. Yutian received the BEng (Hons) degree and the PhD degree both in Electrical Engineering from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, and the University of Manchester, UK respectively. Prior to Arup, Yutian was postdoctoral researcher at The University of Manchester focusing on the risk, resilience, and reliability of power and energy systems. Yutian has produced over 20 publications over the years. Yutian’s focusses are on whole energy system design, net-zero transitions, cross-infrastructure resilience etc. He is a Chartered Engineer and has led a few SIF & NIA innovation projects with utility companies. Yutian is active in CIGRE activities, and he is a member of the CIGRE Working Group C4.47 about Power System Resilience.
Prof. Ramon Blasco-Gimenez obtained his BEng. degree from the Technical University of Valencia, Spain, in 1992, and his Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University of Nottingham, U.K., in 1996. He is currently a Professor at the Dept. of Systems Engineering and Control of the Technical University of Valencia (Spain) and Director of the Research Institute of Automatics and Industrial Informatics (Ai2), with more than 120 full time researchers. Prof. Blasco-Gimenez is an expert member of the International Electrotechnical Commission IEC Standard Committee 8A “Grid Integration of Renewable Energy Generation”.
