According to Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in the Telegraph, Spain’s catastrophic blackout (apagón) which stopped most of the country in its tracks may have been the result of a disastrous experiment to test how far the nation’s renewable energy sources can be pushed. But it wasn’t the renewables that were at fault, apparently. It was the ruling Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party fixation with rushing renewables in, without investing in the grid:
Sources in Brussels have told the Telegraph that the authorities were conducting an experiment before the system crashed, probing how far they could push reliance on renewables in preparation for Spain’s rushed phase-out of nuclear reactors from 2027.
The Government seems to have pushed the pace recklessly, before making the necessary investments in a sophisticated 21st-century smart grid capable of handling it.
One is reminded of the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986, which began as a test to simulate what happens to a cooling reactor in blackout conditions. Operators ignored warnings that the Number Four reactor had too little power. It set off a cascading failure.
If it is established that the blackout was a controlled experiment that went wrong, and if this information has been withheld from the public for almost four weeks, the Spanish Left faces electoral oblivion for a political generation.
The Government has de facto control over Red Eléctrica through a golden share (in breach of EU norms). It put a socialist politician and party loyalist in charge even though she had no experience in the field and faced withering criticism at the time. Her salary in this plum job is six times higher than the Spanish Prime Minister.
Renewable energy has been blamed for the failures, but the Spanish Association of Electrical Energy Companies (AELEC) claims renewables are being scapegoated by a government whose own mismanagement is chiefly to blame:
AELEC, which includes Endesa, IBM, Iberdrola and Schneider Electric, said the authorities had inverted the likely chain of causality. It was not the generators that failed to deliver stable power to the grid: it was the grid that failed to manage it and then automatically shut down the generators, whether solar, wind, nuclear or gas.
The solar companies in the southern belt of Badajoz, Granada and Sevilla are indignant at the finger-pointing after the blackout, which insinuated that they had supplied too much power or too little power – the story keeps changing – without ever seeing any evidence for either.
AELEC said the authorities had essentially confined the inquiry to a 20-second span on April 28th, wilfully ignoring the elephant in the room: a series of wild oscillations in tension that began days earlier and surpassed ’emergency’ levels across the peninsula for two hours leading up to the blackout.
The voltage spiked from the normal 220 kilovolts (kV) to extremes of 250kV. This triggered safety shutdowns.
Claims have been aired – and denied – that there was a lack of inertia in the grid just before the blackout, causing the frequency to fall below 50 hertz.
But:
Modern systems replicate the inertia through other means, such as ‘grid-forming’ inverters at wind and solar plants. You can install synchronous condensers at substations. Britain has a fleet of flywheels that come to the rescue.
Foes of green energy like to mix up the inertia problem with the separate issue of what happens when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing. The short-term answer is batteries, cryogenic compressed air and interconnectors. Spain lacks enough of any of them.
Ah yes, renewable energy would all work fine, if only everyone had enough batteries and interconnectors. We’ve heard that one before. Just don’t mention how much it would cost to build and maintain enough batteries to power a whole country, the shortage of the necessary raw materials, the fire risk and the problem that interconnectors can’t help much when a whole region is suffering under the same winter dunkelflaute.
Evans-Pritchard’s conclusion is that it’s the fixation with ‘absolutism’ that’s at fault, the obsessive belief that all other sources of power must be eliminated in the pursuit of 100% renewables:
Mr Sánchez might do better to stop waging guerrilla war against his nuclear industry. Foro Nuclear said Spain’s seven reactors have an average age of 47 years and could safely be extended to 60 years or longer.
It is the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party that ought to be on political trial in this fiasco. Green energy is the collateral casualty.
I’m pretty sure it’s both that ought to be on trial.
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Let’s have some solid facts and details, rather than Ambrose Evans Pritchard.
This seems like part of the finger pointing, blame shifting since the event.
The Spanish government rushed a few days after the event to blame the private companies for mismanagement.
So this is probably the push back from the private companies.
That’s how I read this
Yes, AEP is a noted purveyor of complete rubbish with everything he writes. While true to blame the government for following the stupidity of Net Zero, it was a problem of lack of inertia on the grid that brought it down as it could not cope with a sudden loss of generation.
Can you point out some non solid facts?
Also from the Telegraph article:
“The previous chief resigned in protest over political meddling… The government put a socialist politician and party loyalist in charge of Red Eléctrica even though she had no experience in the field… Her salary in this plum job is six times higher than the Spanish prime minister…”
…Sounds familiar – witness Met Office, Climate Claptrap Committee, Department of Energy Insecurity.
And Ed Miliband!
So they’ve finally come up with a plausible excuse that let’s renewables off the hook and it only took a few weeks to think up!
Better than the immediate and panicked ‘rare weather anomaly’ excuse though! Well done
Ambrose Evan-Pritchard – an unparalleled purveyor of tripe.
“Foes of green energy like to mix up the inertia problem with the separate issue of what happens when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing. The short-term answer is batteries, cryogenic compressed air and interconnectors. Spain lacks enough of any of them.”
No we don’t. We foe, we happy foe, we band of brothers – know that the frequency of the grid is determined by lots of heavy, rotating machinery as found in the steam and gas turbines of coal, gas and nuclear – which are independent of rain, wind or shine. We know frequency must be closely maintained at 50Hz.
We know that wind and solar cannot set grid frequency because they provide no rotational momentum to produce a frequency of current, and they have their own frequency of output set by and to match the grid.
So yes, when wind and solar drop out or fluctuate, Ambrose, this affects their frequency of output which could only be corrected from the grid, or by disconnecting. If the grid lacks inertia, these fluctuations or drop-outs cannot be resisted and corrected, so affect grid frequency and other wind and solar installations will disconnect for safety. This is precisely what happened in Spain.
The spinning generators are governed to spin at a rotational frequency to produce a current of 50Hz, and resist any change to it by spinning a bit faster or slower as required. This way frequency is strictly controlled and preserved. In other words, spinning generators are preventative, not curative.
Batteries, cryogenic compressed air (new on for me), or condensers are reactive – curative – to frequency change, not preventative, and slow to respond – essential when just seconds count. The Spanish failure took 3 second and a drop of only 0.15Hz. Once frequency has changed, it’s too late because everything disconnects and the grid shuts down.
Interconnectors: if they are DC, as is the one between UK and France, they can offer no inertia. If they are AC they will most likely disconnect automatically in the event of frequency anomaly, as did the one between France and Spain. Besides, an AC interconnectors can only offer inertia if the supply grids are served by spinning generation. Lots of renewable grids connected just multiplies potential grid instability by multiple factors.
It’s physics Ambrose, and you cannot change the laws of physics.
You can ignore physics however, but you certainly can’t ignore the consequences of ignoring physics.
Superb, my friend.
Good explanation. And AEPs gridforming inverters are a new one on me. As are UK’s fleet of flywheels.
Why would anyone let “scientists” not grid engineers (with uni degrees) experiment with grid.
A likely answer would be that Scientists do experiments, while Engineers build things, though I expect the Telegraph ‘journalists’ use the term ‘scientist’ generically, without really understanding the process. For example:
“Spanish scientists start trial on inhalable Covid-19 vaccine”
“Scientists look to dim sunlight in fight against climate change”
“British scientists invent treatment for disease suffered by Pope Francis”
Remember those Climate Scientists at the UEA CRU that helped to construct and promote the Hockey Stick Graph? Graham Stringer MP called them Enthusiasts.
The Spanish allowed agenda-led “scientists” access to a grid they didn’t know they didn’t know anything about.
But now they – and hopefully many others – know what happens so one less known unknown has gone but plenty of others along with the unknown unknowns.
If you fight against the laws of physics you will lose.
It is that simple.
AEP lost it shortly after the brexit vote (which he was sound).
His columns nowadays are farcical.
So is the DT.
I also think it was a test ….. to see how the population would react to an extended blackout with no information; an inability to communicate; impossible to get cash from a machine or to buy etc.
If they’d tried it in the UK, there would have been looting and riots in our major cities within hours.
You cannot run Industrial Society on Wind and Sun no matter how much of it you have, and infact the more of it you have the less reliable becomes the grid. The general public are being led to believe that in order to “save the planet” all we need to do is replace fossil fuels with wind and sun and everything will tick along just fine. —-No it Won’t, and it is costing us all astronomical sums of money into the bargain.
He isn’t waging war on the Nuclear Industry, he is waging war on the people.