What Caused the Recent Power Outage in Spain, Portugal, and Southern France?

[Guineafowl]

It's more useful (for me, anyway) to think in terms of phase errors. Being at the same frequency is necessary, but not sufficient.

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

 

[Rive]

What makes the whole thing so annoying is, that you can't get phase changes without frequency changes.

Complaints should be forwarded towards daddy Fourier.

are beat frequencies relevant, or too slow to matter?

If things went that far to have them something is already burning, most likely.
Phase angles must be kept within limits, so no 180 degree difference (protection is supposed to kick in far before that).

 

[Guineafowl]

Power engineer Dr Capell Aris, writing in the Daily Telegraph, seems to back the inertia argument:

“Iberia is part of the Continental Europe Synchronous Area which stretches to 32 countries. It is interconnected as a phase-locked, 50 Hz grid with a generation capacity of 700 GW. To improve the stability of this grid, the EU aim is that all partners will extract 10 per cent of their power consumption from synchronous interconnectors – ones which transmit grid inertia – helping to make the whole system more resilient. France is at 10 per cent, but peninsula grids and those at the geographical fringe are the least interconnected. Spain has just 2 per cent from synchronous interconnectors.”
[Source: telegraph.co.uk]

The initial failure is still to be determined, but in some sense it doesn’t matter, since these things will happen from time to time. The resilience problem needs to be addressed, as we can’t have a couple of solar farms (or whatever) taking out entire countries.

He goes on to mention the UK’s vulnerability to this, being a smaller grid. Our interconnects with Europe won’t help much, since they “transmit no grid inertia”, being asynchronous DC links.

 

[Guineafowl]

A couple of quotes from a late forum member which seem prescient. I’m sure most could guess who it is:

2016 re: traditional steam turbines:
“… And that's why i think the "Kill Coal" movement is ill advised dilettante tinkering. It adversely affects system inertia.
"Forgive them, Father, they know not what they do."”

2017 re: if I were in charge of energy policy:
“I think i’d rescind mandates on utilities to acquire “X%” of energy from renewables. The grid is a machine and when politicians mess with machinery they generally do it harm.”

 

[DOGE3500]

A couple of quotes from a late forum member which seem prescient. I’m sure most could guess who it is:

2016 re: traditional steam turbines:
“… And that's why i think the "Kill Coal" movement is ill advised dilettante tinkering. It adversely affects system inertia.
"Forgive them, Father, they know not what they do."”

2017 re: if I were in charge of energy policy:
“I think i’d rescind mandates on utilities to acquire “X%” of energy from renewables. The grid is a machine and when politicians mess with machinery they generally do it harm.”

Spot on…

 

[Ken Fabian]

A couple of quotes from a late forum member which seem prescient. I’m sure most could guess who it is:

2016 re: traditional steam turbines:
“… And that's why i think the "Kill Coal" movement is ill advised dilettante tinkering. It adversely affects system inertia.
"Forgive them, Father, they know not what they do."”

2017 re: if I were in charge of energy policy:
“I think i’d rescind mandates on utilities to acquire “X%” of energy from renewables. The grid is a machine and when politicians mess with machinery they generally do it harm.”

Ignore climate change and all that expert advice about reducing emissions? I find that very dismaying.

I don't think it is reasonable to expect zero teething problems in the transition to zero emissions and a good idea badly implemented doesn't make it a bad idea - and so much energy policy that reduces emissions is half hearted, inadequately funded and compromised by vested interests and partisan climate politics (empty gesturing as well as fierce opposition) overriding the expert advice. It is not like FF heavy grids have never had major unexpected outages. Those didn't result in decisions to cease to use FF's, they resulted in fixes to the problems.

There are solutions to keeping RE reliable (doing it better) that don't require keeping the coal (and gas and oil) and not having more renewables.

Australian experience suggests "spinning machines" that are not generators can take up that 'inertia' role - eg synchronous condensers that are not generators and potentially 'clutch fitted' gas turbines that use the generators independently without making power in a similar way. And increasingly (and possibly displacing the spinning machines) the use of 'grid forming' inverter fitted batteries with fast and precise frequency and voltage controls - ie virtual inertia.

It was only 8 years ago that South Australia got it's 'Big Battery' - whole battery megafactories have been built and are already in mass production since then. There were no grid forming inverters then. This sector is progressing at astonishing rates, battery chemistries and architecture as well as inverters. Who knew that trying harder - R&D -could deliver results?

 

[Rive]

I don't think it is reasonable to expect zero teething problems

There are just two main issues.

One is, that these are no 'teething problems' but problems long predicted - and swept under the rug by overly optimistic guys who were blinded by their zeal.

Other is, that replies like 'Ignore climate change and all that expert advice about reducing emissions? I find that very dismaying.' has become a programmed response for mentioning any relevant problems by now, even if it's nothing about ignoring climate change.

 

[Guineafowl]

Don’t worry, he's not saying ignore climate change. I’ve seen the tendency before, under such an existential threat, to apply reductio ad absurdum to any cautionary note about green technologies. “Careful with that new tech” becomes “climate change denial”.

Here’s another quote from the same interview, and a link so you can read the whole thing (my bold text):

“Wind and solar will stay with us so long as there’s a robust grid to support them . Every kwh they make is a pound of coal that can stay in the ground , and that’s a good thing.”
Source: https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/interview-instrument-engineer-jim-hardy/

^^ That’s an engineer stating the way forward, and that it should be done properly, which might include the grid-forming inverters mentioned. What appears to have happened in Spain is, the march of renewables outstripped the control measures needed.

Compare with a politician, perhaps with an arts degree, making sweeping changes to the grid (“dilettante tinkering”)based on arbitrary, populist targets (“Kill Coal”). Democracy is for running a country, not machines.

@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?

 

[Ken Fabian]

Taking the top level science based expert advice that says we need to quit coal (and gas and oil) as soon as possible, by displacement is not a "populist" whim or fad. Calling quitting coal populist sure is suggestive of not taking that advice seriously.

Failures of leadership may have given RE their start - empty gestures of appeasement of 'green' populism that reinforced framing of the climate issue as environmentalist and fringe - but it has progressed enough to have earned the place it has now as our principle means of displacing fossil fuel dependence. Yes there is an element of 'winging it' with RE because of the messy, divided politics, lack of clear leadership and deep reluctance to grasp this nettle firmly.

The alternatives to RE - like nuclear - require levels of planning, investment and commitment that political leadership appears incapable of. We should not stop doing what we are doing - RE - in a misplaced hope that some overarching plan to get to zero emissions faster and better will (or even more unhelpfully, might) replace it.

How does their inertia compare with a steam turbine, which I’m told weighs 350kg or so?

As a free spinning inertial component, with barest minimum fuel burning to maintain it? Take the steam away and a turbine becomes a brake. Or by keeping high levels of FF generation capacity running? Keeping the FF generation for preventing or fixing stability problem fails the fixing emissions requirement.

The proposal for 'clutched' gas plants (inertia from the generator alone) makes some sense - where gas plants are incentivized to spend as much time not burning gas as possible.

We are fully capable of better "solutions" to system stability with high renewables than preventing high levels of renewables.

I think networked batteries with fast and precise voltage and frequency control are going to end up doing this and probably do it better than spinning inertia.

 

[Rive]

The alternatives to RE - like nuclear - require levels of planning, investment and commitment that political leadership appears incapable of.

There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding here. The very operation of the grid itself (!!) requires planning, investment and commitment comparable to nuclear power.

The sheer size and price of the underlying infrastructure: the delicateness of operation: the required safety and reliability: the price of failure - quite comparable.

 

[Guineafowl]

Taking the top level science based expert advice that says we need to quit coal (and gas and oil) as soon as possible, by displacement is not a "populist" whim or fad. Calling quitting coal populist sure is suggestive of not taking that advice seriously.

No-one on here would disagree with the “soon”, I’m sure, but it’s engineers who should dictate the “as possible”, not politicians, that’s all I’m saying. The seriousness of CC is not in dispute here.

Back on track, re: the passive spinning turbines, it wasn’t my idea, it was @tech99 ’s, but I assume they’d flatten or remove the fins to reduce windage, then you’re left with one moving part and a few bearings, or is that oversimplified?

 

[Ken Fabian]

There is no Canuting the RE tide.

Whilst considerable impetus towards RE was through popular and therefore political support a tipping point on cost has been crossed and now power generation companies seeking new electricity supply at least cost drives the uptake now.

There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding here. The very operation of the grid itself (!!) requires planning, investment and commitment comparable to nuclear power.

Even before RE got cheap no governments anywhere were willing to make that level of commitment to nuclear - which would be a commitment to suppress fossil fuels. RE began as being seen as unworkable, unscalable and no threat to FF's - empty gesturing that turned out delivering much more than expected.

As long as nuclear advocacy preferentially presents it as 'saving us from renewables and 'green foolishness'' (aka climate science) - not as fixing emissions except in some vague, far off future (as per recent Australian experience) - I don't see the politics of it changing enough to make nuclear a centrepiece of Net Zero policy.

The economics of it are so poor that market forces will continue to work against it. Those are now working in favour of RE, strongly. But then I think the strong expectation that nuclear will never be as cheap as fossil fuels is part of why pro fossil fuels politics prefers it over RE - it doesn't present as a serious threat.

(Yes I know - edging into the political, sorry. But this will probably be enough on this from me on this).

I would note that the worst of recent major power outages in Australia came from storms taking out transmission line and fossil fuel power plant failures.

 

[Rive]

RE got cheap

I'm afraid that's just another fundamental level misunderstanding here. RE is cheap only at source.
Its contribution to overall electricity costs is typically several times larger than other sources.
And the ratio is climbing by its share in the grid.

The economics of it are so poor

Ad absurdum, by the very same economics the economics of childbirth is even poorer. Are you really confident in that kind of economics?

'saving us from renewables and 'green foolishness'' (aka climate science)

We already see the result of that scandalous mixup of 'green' advocates. Do you really believe that the current backlash is without roots in reality? And by mixing up saving the planet with advocating - enforcing! - the most cost intensive 'solutions', now we got even the climate change brought to question

That likely several decade worth of delay towards any possible real solution that the current 'green' brought upon us by this is a thing really hard to forgive.

 

[Ken Fabian]

Whereas I see climate science denial by nuclear's 'besties' (captains of commerce, industry, media and politics) as the single worst thing that happened to climate action in general and to nuclear-as climate-solution in particular. No climate problem, no need for nuclear.

Without comparing to the costs of unmitigated global warming from inaction (and that inverts the reality from emissions as a too strong action to no emissions as the 'too strong' action) - without the biggest subsidy of all, the perpetual amnesty for climate harms by FF's - I think we cannot readily judge the relative costs of RE or nuclear energy with FF's.

I think the alarmist fear of RE - fears of economic ruination - are greatly exaggerated. Maintaining grid reliability with high rates of solar and wind is well within modern technological capabilities - and those abilities keep getting better.

We have RE that works because of scientist, engineers and (capitalist) entrepreneurs - credit where due, even if 'green' activism helped them get their start. Giving 'green' energy some empty gesture funding (or perhaps enough rope) in the expectation they would amount to nothing (reinforcing climate change as a green fringe issue - not mainstream - and leaving 'greens' looking foolish) was one of the best misjudgements so far.

Portraying RE as the greater and more immediate danger - not global warming - is clever politics, granted.

 

[Gheed]

https://www.entsoe.eu/news/2025/05/...tigation-into-the-causes-of-iberian-blackout/
ENTSOE started the investigation in the outage, here is the info up until now.

IMO the real 'problems' with renewables have never been about the grid. Yes grid capacity is a know issue for years (in my country) and so is stability, but both are solvable. The main problem is the usage and storage of the energy, once the grid has a high penetration of renewables. Which is about now for some countries. Fortunately at ~50 degrees latitude we have >15 hours of sunlight during the summer which helps a lot in using this energy. During winter we have too little though. It is a problem of the ages; Too cold during winter, and too hot in the summer. Should we all migrate to a lower latitude, and use more batteries? Keep on using fossils? I hope to move forward instead. We have never gone back in tech.

Anyways, looking at the current info posted by ENTSOE, it could still be anything. Up until now known, the first event is ~2200 MW of generation that decoupled from the grid in <30s in southern Spain. Why this has happened, what the grid situation was back then, and how the peninsular grid failed is unknown. Even a 'race' condition could be possible (tinfoil/teething) where multiple generating plants shut off at the same time accidentally. It could take up to 6 months for a full analysis from what I see in the links on the page above. But since it is a full blackout, we should know by then the full cause.

Maybe we should discuss the general energy situation in a different thread like here https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/you-fix-the-us-energy-crisis.42564 if that was not a closed topic..

 

[Rive]

Portraying RE as the greater and more immediate danger - not global warming - is clever politics, granted.

You have cooked up enough strawmans already to feed a biomass PP. It would be better to stop.

 

[Guineafowl]

Maybe we should discuss the general energy situation in a different thread […]

Yes, quite right - let’s steer the thread back to engineering. Thanks for the pointer to the initial report.

My only comment would be that 2200 MW seems quite a small amount to lose, even unexpectedly. These things are bound to happen, so what’s more interesting is the propagation, rather than the initial cause.

 

[Ken Fabian]

My view is we are better placed than ever before to achieve significant emissions reductions because of RE and this major outage will lead to doing it better.

I expect the solutions to grid stability including in the Iberian Peninsula will increasingly turn to 'virtual inertia' - with maintaining minimum levels fossil fuel plant operations as an interim measure only, not as a 'reversal' on RE. Medium term (maybe 5 years) could, maybe will see installation and use of synchronous condensers to keep that minimum down - but unlike batteries have quite narrow utility and limited earning potential.

First use of virtual inertia using grid batteries - https://arena.gov.au/assets/2024/02/Neoen-Hornsdale-Power-Reserve-Upgrade-Project-Summary-Report.pdf

So we've seen a good start on use of Virtual Machine Mode inverters to use batteries to provide system inertia and it was achieved by firmware and software upgrades to a working grid battery inverter controller. That means other existing batteries can be upgraded at relatively low cost - and probably a lot faster than adding dedicated synchronous condensers, even if those are deemed essential.

It has already moved beyond a maybe test case into a working part of South Australia's grid management. Grid managers aren't betting all on that, not yet; they currently like SC's, a known thing.

 

[DOGE3500]

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.

 

[Filip Larsen]

Arstechnica also has a piece on this:
https://arstechnica.com/science/202...ower-plants-meant-to-stabilize-voltage-didnt/

The blackout that took down the Iberian grid serving Spain and Portugal in April was the result of a number of smaller interacting problems, according to an investigation by the Spanish government. The report concludes that several steps meant to address a small instability made matters worse, eventually leading to a self-reinforcing cascade where high voltages caused power plants to drop off the grid, thereby increasing the voltage further. Critically, the report suggests that the Spanish grid operator had an unusually low number of plants on call to stabilize matters, and some of the ones it did have responded poorly.

 

[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).
.