Operational Security Challenges in the Western Balkans: Lessons Learned from the 2023 and 2024 Regional Grid Incidents

This paper analyses the causes, progression, and consequences of two major incidents in the transmission power system of the Western Balkans: the outage that occurred on May 28, 2023, at the border between Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the regional grid incident in Southeast Europe on June 21, 2024. These events highlighted systemic vulnerabilities in operational planning, revealed insufficient coordination between neighbouring system operators, and emphasised challenges in timely response under conditions of high-power flows and unplanned outages.