Turin blackouts expose Italy's grid limits as heatwave bites

A heatwave cut power to parts of Turin on 28 May, per Reuters, in an outage that lays bare the strain on Italy's urban distribution networks ahead of summer peak. The timing is pointed: the EU Commission on 29 May welcomed an ENTSO-E adequacy report confirming baseline EU grid preparedness for summer, but real-world events in Italy's north illustrate that headline adequacy figures and local grid performance can diverge sharply under thermal stress.

In Germany, Reuters reported on 28 May that RWE is weighing a higher equity stake in Amprion, the TSO covering roughly 29,000 km of high-voltage grid across western and north-western Germany. RWE already holds a minority position. Any increase would raise questions for regulators about generator-TSO ownership boundaries under EU unbundling rules, a tension that German and EU energy officials will have to navigate as grid investment needs accelerate.

Separately, eight European grid operators announced a new Innovation Alliance, per Elia, aimed at coordinating R&D on resilience and operational efficiency across interconnected systems. No investment figure was disclosed in the headline.