Spain’s power outage

[Ken Fabian]

English translation of the report here.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/17/europe/spain-april-blackout-not-cyberattack-intl-hnk?cid=ios_app

In case you missed it…. This is what happens when politics builds power systems.

Is that a backhanded way of saying commitment to emissions reductions is to blame? Or that commitment to emissions reductions using RE is to blame? Lack of spinning inertia? Explicit no to that. The recommendations don't include any abandonment of RE and what is recommended will work to make RE work better, at increasing penetration.

Given a 'reliable' fossil fuel plant contracted to provide voltage regulation failing to do so was the initial trigger and they didn't inform operators in a timely manner so alternatives could be brought online I don't see it is a consequence of commitment to RE. Wind and solar farms went offline to protect equipment and in retrospect some did not have to (similar has happened in Australia) and that made it worse - but that is fixable and will result in better protocols (as has been done in Australia). Wind and solar capacity also appears to have aided getting power back online sooner.

Don't see how politics cannot be involved myself - it sounds like a generalised gratuitous 'truism' that absence of government energy policy leads to better outcomes, one that doesn't look true to me.

 

[DOGE3500]

Politics and Government are inherently Bias.
Bias has no place in Science. Science builds power sources.
You’re right though, some things just can’t be done without politics.
Shall we get into how unsustainable solar panels and wind turbines actually are?

https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/can-solar-panels-be-recycled
https://astswmo.org/files/Resources/Hazardous_Waste/2022-11-Wind-Turbine-Blades-Fact-Sheet.pdf

It just doesn’t pencil out - if you know what I mean. When fusion becomes relevant- all this nonsense will go away. There will not be a turbine or a panel in sight.

 

[Ken Fabian]

Shall we get into how unsustainable solar panels and wind turbines actually are?

We are wandering off topic and edging into the political - not a problem for me but arguably worth a different thread. As long as moderators allow I will respond - not like doing so is derailing this thread. I don't expect to change your mind but your alarmist (exaggerated) fears of being overwhelmed by renewables wastes invites and deserves a response.

Governments, businesses, engineers are all in this; science can help inform and get better outcomes but our energy choices and investments aren't decided by science. Most investment in solar and wind and batteries is now being driven by electricity companies seeking more supply at least cost - it is a relatively recent development that market economics is the primary driver of RE growth.

The conclusion of the first of the linked articles you provided supports my views on this -

Of course, the fossil fuel energy sources that solar is replacing are plenty wasteful. So while renewable energies such as solar and wind create some waste, they also relieve us of gas leaks, oil spills, coal ash and other byproducts of the fossil fuels that are dangerously warming the climate. Besides, recyclability is a problem that can be solved—and the world’s rapid transition to clean energy gives us a rare chance to address our waste problems from the ground up.

Not the intractable problem you suggest.

The second link includes this -

if decommissioned blades continue to be buried, 2.2 million tons could end up in U.S. landfills by 2050.

(I'm presuming that is 2.2 million tons per year, rather than cumulative totals.)

Compared to 300 million tons per year of US municipal waste and more than 100 million tons per year of US coal ash it looks like a much smaller problem than RE waste, RE that can make those stop. Far less toxic (not considered toxic waste) as well as much less in quantities. We could bury all the waste from large scale solar and wind in existing coal ash pits (some already are) and we would need a map to ever find them again. The long term enviromental problems will still primarily come from the vast quantities of coal ash, which leaches nasty chemicals into groundwater.

Landfillers don't like wind turbine blades for being bulky, but the wind power industry overall is far more supportive of safe and appropriate disposal than fossil fuel interests that have far more problematic and intractable wastes and persistently oppose strong regulation. Especially the potential classification of coal ash as toxic waste.

Even a very cursory look at attempts to quantify wastes and potential wastes shows that a shift to wind and solar from fossil fuels greatly reduces total waste compared to fossil fuels - compared to what the dominant ways electricity has been and is still being made (but changing thanks to RE) - with estimates of large scale use of solar producing around 1/60th of what municipal waste does and 1/50th of the coal ash waste relying on coal power produces.


Waiting for fusion to provide a near magical fix isn't an actual option; when it is an available option we can re-assess our options in light of it. I'm doubtful of fusion; if it is so hard to do at all doing it reliably at low cost and scaling up looks unlikely, even where the bulk of development costs are borne by taxpayers rather than whoever commercialises it - but I do strongly support having ongoing taxpayer funded R&D, even for some long shots. I just expect we'll get more from R&D to make RE work better than from fusion - and get it sooner. But there are always 'opportunity costs' to consider (other things we could spend those resources on).

And we haven't even taken account of the CO2 waste from fossil fuels, which is staggeringly enormous, vastly more than even coal ash alone - more than all wastes added together, several times over and very nearly more by weight than everything else our economies make.

 

[tech99]

On the other hand, if two generators are feeding in with slightly different frequencies, are beat frequencies relevant, or too slow to matter?

The beat frequency causes the destruction of the generators.

 

[Guineafowl]

English translation of the report here.

Thanks. Scanning through that, what strikes me is the amount of redaction, which suggests some political or security-related intervention. Would this be normal in an engineering report?

The report talks of frequency/voltage oscillations (interchangeably), possibly at low levels centrally, then becoming worse at the periphery of the country - the ‘whip effect’. Shutdowns at these outer installations then rolled across the country because of a lack of contingency plants ready to respond.

Now, trying to keep the thread away from renewables good/bad, but weren’t we talking earlier about steam turbines being big and heavy*, and better able to damp these oscillations in the first place?


*Earlier in the thread, I stated:

@Ken Fabian I’m aware of synchronous condensers for VAR compensation. How does their inertia compare with a steam turbine, which I’m told weighs 350kg or so?

Of course, I meant 350 tonnes. I’m surprised no-one picked me up on that.

 

[OmCheeto]

...
*Earlier in the thread, I stated: '... 350 kg ...'
...
Of course, I meant 350 tonnes. I’m surprised no-one picked me up on that.

Well, I did laugh at the comment most heartily. I've avoided actual commenting in the thread as much of what people are saying strikes me as nonsensical. But since my experience is with US navy vessel electrical distribution, I decided there might be something strangely peculiar about civilian grid scale distribution that I'm not familiar with. In particular, peoples assertions that different parts of the system can operate at different frequencies while connected to each other. tech99 mentioned something to this effect quite a while ago and it appeared that the comment was completely ignored.

The alternators in a network must all be at the same frequency, not close but the same. The changes that occur during load variations in normal operation are slow changes in the position of one alternator rotor relative to the others in the network. As the network demands more energy, we have to supply more steam to get into exact step again. If we cannot do this quickly enough, an alternator will lose sync and be destroyed.

I gave it a thumbs up.

------
My background: Electrical operator on both aircraft carriers and submarines.
It's also been 42 years since I did that kind of stuff.

 

[gmax137]

I found this document, may be interesting to some.
https://docs.nrel.gov/docs/fy20osti/73856.pdf

They give inertia in terms of the stored energy; for a 1000 MW unit they say about 4 GW-sec.

Of course, I meant 350 tonnes.

I think that's a low value. In these large generating plants, typically there is the high pressure turbine, two low pressure turbines, the main generator, and its exciter, all on a single rotating shaft. If I had to guess, I'd say at least 1000 tons combined weight, probably more.

 

[OmCheeto]

I found this document, may be interesting to some.
https://docs.nrel.gov/docs/fy20osti/73856.pdf
...

Your document sounded interesting until page 7;

6. In the United States, the Texas grid (the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, orERCOT) is the smallest of three main grids. ERCOT’s relatively small size, combined with its large wind deployment, has required it to compensate for declining inertiaby adopting several low-cost solutions, including allowing fast-responding noncritical loads to respond to changes in frequency. This has enabled ERCOT to achieve increasingly high instantaneous wind penetrations—reaching a record of 58% in2019—while maintaining reliability.​

(bolding and underlining mine)

At which point I backed up and discovered your document was from 2020. The Texas grid collapsed in 2021, much like in Spain, for what is probably the same reason: hubris

I will read the rest of the document tomorrow, as I have gardening to attend to.

 

[Guineafowl]

Well, I did laugh at the comment most heartily. I've avoided actual commenting in the thread as much of what people are saying strikes me as nonsensical. But since my experience is with US navy vessel electrical distribution, I decided there might be something strangely peculiar about civilian grid scale distribution that I'm not familiar with. In particular, peoples assertions that different parts of the system can operate at different frequencies while connected to each other. tech99 mentioned something to this effect quite a while ago and it appeared that the comment was completely ignored.


I gave it a thumbs up.

------
My background: Electrical operator on both aircraft carriers and submarines.
It's also been 42 years since I did that kind of stuff.

As a politician might say, I ‘mis-spoke’! I thought tonne and wrote kg. 350 kg is ridiculous - I’ve got woodworking machines heavier than that. The real figure was from a newspaper article by a power engineer.

Please don’t hold back from commenting - with your experience, I’m sure you could teach us a lot.

 

[Ken Fabian]

“Hubris” re Texas 2021 is a remarkably non-specific indictment, not unlike “politics” re Spain or, closer to home for me (and more specific), “renewable energy” for Australia that, upon examination, has seen overall average decline in annual outage times per customer over the time RE has been introduced (not all direct result but...), yet with recent massive rise in partisan politician and media blaming of RE when they do happen.)

I had assumed the proximate cause in Texas was extreme cold storms and inadequate preparedness, ie lack of ‘weatherising’ and lack of reserve import/export transmission capacity. As the next to last big outage in Australia was, from storms damaging transmission lines. The more recent big one had coal plant failure in extreme heat as the trigger.

Hubris... to believe gas power plants by their inherent nature (according to industry hype) would provide high levels of reliability? Seems right.

Hubris to believe reduced influence of ‘politics’ – industry deregulation such as Texas got – would see commercial enterprises doing the right thing and not stinting on contingencies like ‘weatherising’ for the known risks from extreme cold weather and storms? Seems credible.

Hubris for believing we can decarbonise electricity with RE and still have reliability? That sounds like bunk to me – belittling to the engineers who are making RE work so well and cost effectively that around 90% of all new build capacity is RE. Yes, some wind farms went offline when they needn’t have but that is a fixable issue with improved protocols. Lessons are learned every time – and the lesson is NOT turning out to be ‘stop adding RE’.

I’ve seen estimates of economic costs of that outage to Texas of US$185 billion; I can’t imagine how a much smaller investments just in some big batteries – that would still expect to earn income - could not have made a big difference. Those too may need weatherising (active temperature regulation) depending on battery chemistry.

Quite normal in most grids to maintain some reserve capacity and for being paid to maintain it. Batteries can now provide voltage and frequency control services and virtual inertia, which appears to involved 'reserving' some capacity. R&D and improvement in those areas and improving control networking to coordinate the elements of a complex electricity grid are ongoing.

Not a like for like comparison but interesting to consider how much virtual inertia batteries can provide weight for weight versus spinning machines (turbines, generators, synchronous condensers).
.