Redesigning electricity grids for the age of complexity

The grid goes down. Trains and lifts come to a halt, stranding passengers. Planes cannot take off. Phone signals fail, preventing people from checking in on loved ones.

This isn’t a disaster movie, it was reality in Spain and Portugal on April 28, 2025. For nearly 12 hours, large parts of the Iberian Peninsula experienced a massive blackout. The cause? A voltage surge in southern Spain triggered a cascading failure across the grid. Protective systems shut down parts of the network, and insufficient voltage control capacity, compounded by programming errors and planning gaps, led to a chain reaction of shutdowns.

And it’s a wake-up call.

Events like this are becoming more likely – not because of negligence, but because of complexity. And electricity grids are becoming more complex by the day. A deluge of changes is reshaping the landscape: intermittent and distributed energy sources like solar and wind, rising electricity demand, rising cyber threats, and dramatically shifting energy consumption patterns driven by EVs, rooftop solar, and heat pumps.

Utilities and grid operators understand that the only way to manage this complexity is to make their grids smarter. Smarter grids are not just about preventing rare catastrophic events, they’re about managing new energy systems, optimizing distribution, and building sustainability into the very fabric of the grid.

But there’s a problem: most grids were designed many decades ago. They were built for a simpler time, and they’re not fit for the demands of modern energy distribution. To deliver the smart grids of the future, network operators must shift their mindsets, from maintaining infrastructure to orchestrating complex energy ecosystems powered by advanced digital technologies.

Another critical challenge is cost optimization and affordability. As grids integrate a wider mix of energy sources, operators must balance generation based on the Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCoE) while ensuring real-time alignment between supply and demand. This requires smart systems that can prioritize the most cost-effective and sustainable energy sources, while responding to fluctuations in demand with precision and speed.

The smart grid operator of the future

Until recently, the role of network operators was relatively straightforward: managing a predictable, one-directional flow of electricity from centralized plants to consumers, maintaining physical infrastructure, and ensuring reliability and safety through routine maintenance and problem response.

That world is gone.

Future operators will oversee dynamic, intelligent systems that respond in real time to shifting energy flows, emerging threats, and evolving consumer demands. This calls for a new mindset – one that embraces digital technologies, cybersecurity, and system-level thinking.

Grids are no longer one-way highways of electricity. They are multi-node, data-driven platforms. Effective supply and demand optimization will depend on digital technologies that coordinate a non-uniform ecosystem of generation sources in real time, balancing variable inputs to ensure electrons keep flowing to the right places.

Resilience will hinge on real-time situational awareness and advanced automation tools that can respond swiftly to unexpected events, from extreme weather to cyberattacks. Operators must also enhance safety and efficiency by tracking asset health, digitally optimizing reliability, and using workforce management tools to allocate resources quickly.

Asset availability will become a strategic priority. Digital and field technologies, such as digital twins, drones, and intelligent vegetation management, will reduce manual interventions, while predictive maintenance will help resolve issues before they escalate.

Right tools for smart grid transformation

The key to building smarter grids lies in selecting, integrating, and deploying a new generation of technologies. But this is no small task.

Understanding what’s available, how mature each technology is, and how to integrate them into legacy infrastructure is a challenge. To complicate matters, every grid (utility) transformation journey is uniquely shaped by its energy mix, regulatory environment, customer behavior, climate, and future ambitions.

Upgrading a grid in a region rapidly adopting EVs will require a different approach than one in a country with no EV infrastructure plans. And the technology landscape is vast. SCADA systems, which digitally control the physical grid, are well established. Outage management and predictive maintenance have matured through years of deployment.

Other technologies – like Advanced Distribution Management Systems (ADMS) and Distributed Energy Resource Management Systems (DERMS) – are still evolving, but hold transformative potential. Newer tools, such as dynamic line rating and edge computing, are unfamiliar to many operators, but offer powerful capabilities.

Then there’s the foundational tech of any digital transformation: cloud platforms, digital dashboards, and cybersecurity. These must be carefully configured to meet the specific operational and security needs of energy grids.

In short, there’s a lot to consider. Success depends on making informed, strategic choices that align with each grid’s unique journey.

Mapping technology to grid needs

Understanding the ecosystem of technologies and innovations is just the beginning. The next step is mapping it to your specific situation and creating a realistic path to a smart grid.

Utilities must assess where each technology sits on the maturity curve and evaluate not only what it can do, but how ready it is for integration at scale. The success of technologies like DERMS and digital twins will depend on foundational investments in data infrastructure and IT/OT convergence.

This requires a careful assessment of current capabilities, priorities, regulations, and expectations for how grid demands will evolve. Planning should be driven by business value, but also by technology’s potential to reduce risk, meet response time targets, and lower operational costs.

Armed with this insight, utilities can build a roadmap that identifies the right technologies for their needs. That roadmap must include not just technology selection, but a plan for integration, ensuring new and legacy systems can communicate effectively. Many digitalization projects have failed because systems couldn’t talk to each other.

Taking the next steps

This transformation isn’t small. It blends strategy, change management, technology planning, and deep integration across IT and OT.

It’s complex. It’s challenging. But it’s worth it.

The payoff is a grid that’s resilient, responsive, and ready for the future. One that can handle growing demand, support sustainability, and deliver reliable power – day in, day out.

How we can help

Capgemini brings deep experience in energy grids, IT/OT integration, and proven frameworks for grid transformation. To help address the challenges outlined in this article, we’ve developed a comprehensive smart grid framework that guides utilities through every stage of the transformation journey.

Our methodology spans strategic planning, core operations transformation, and deployment of digital capabilities such as digital twins, advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), and real-time automation systems. It’s built around critical enablers like robust data platforms, cybersecurity, cloud, and communications technologies – all designed to enable a data-driven, responsive, and secure grid.

We have supported large-scale engineering transformations in other industries for years, most notably in telecommunications. The cross-fertilization of ideas and approaches from other sectors is a powerful asset that can help reshape the future of energy infrastructure.