Spring not only heralds the transition between winter and summer - it is also a time of transition for the energy sector. Mild temperatures reduce the need for heating and air conditioning, while many industrial activities slow down during the Easter holidays and the long holiday weekends in April and May. Household electricity consumption also tends to decline on weekends as people spend more time outdoors and take short trips. At the same time, photovoltaic generation reaches increasingly high levels thanks to longer days, growing solar irradiation, and mild temperatures that improve the efficiency of the technology. It is precisely this meeting between two factors - low demand on one side, and the abundant availability of renewable energy on the other - that presents one of the major challenges of the energy transition. In fact, during the spring there are some days when the Italian electricity system already resembles the one envisaged by the European decarbonisation targets. Easter Sunday, Easter Monday, weekends and the long bank holiday weekends now represent serious operational tests.
In 2025, according to Terna's data, Italy’s domestic electricity demand fell to 19 GW in certain periods, while production from renewables reached over 30 GW. In technical terms, this is known as overgeneration. It refers to situations where non-programmable renewable generation (wind and solar in particular) exceeds electricity demand: a situation that, with the gradual expansion of these sources, will become increasingly common in the future.
Flexibility enters the market. The growth in renewables has changed the traditional model: over 23 GW of capacity from new wind and photovoltaic plants was added to the Italian system between 2022 and 2025, and the energy system has to adapt to accommodate it. This change represents an opportunity to reduce electricity generation costs, increase the country's energy independence and improve environmental sustainability, yet it also introduces a series of new operational challenges and complexities for TSOs and the general management of the electricity system.
For grid operators, this means predicting meteorological shifts with more precision, estimating consumption trends, maintaining the instantaneous balance between production and demand, and guaranteeing frequency and voltage stability in highly variable conditions. To confront this challenge, predictive models, digitalization, operational planning and resource allocation, as well as the usual real-time monitoring are playing an even more decisive role.
The answer does not lie solely in building new infrastructure; in fact, the system’s ability to adapt instantly is becoming increasingly important. In this regard, Terna has developed a series of new tools that allow large industrial consumers to play an active part in balancing the grid. The new withdrawal modulation service allows energy intensive businesses to temporarily increase their consumption in periods of surplus renewable production. The scheme, approved by ARERA for 2026–2027, represents a development of existing services used to manage the opposite scenario, when consumption had to be reduced.
The first results are in: in April 2026, several industries continued to operate during the holidays, contributing to greater system flexibility and recording increases in consumption of more than 60% compared with the same period in the previous year.
