Spanish Grid Operator Warned of Nation’s Heavy Reliance on Renewable Energy in February – Watts Up With That?

From Legal Insurrection

February report warned grid a risk of “disconnections due to the high penetration of renewables without the technical capacities necessary for an adequate response in the face of disturbances”.

Posted by Leslie Eastman

There is some good news for Spain and Portugal, as their electricity providers managed to resolve the issues that created this historic blackout and restore power to 60 million people.

A day after Spain and Portugal were hit by extensive blackouts, electricity had returned to most areas of both countries on Tuesday, leaving many relieved but also sharply critical about what exactly had caused the power failure.

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of Spain said his country had recovered more than 95 percent of the total supply by 6.30 a.m. Tuesday. In Portugal, a spokesperson for the electricity and gas supplier REN said that power had been restored to all the substations of the country’s grid and that everything was “100 percent operational.”

Investigations into the cause of the power outage are continuing. However, a great deal of focus is turning to a pair of solar power plants that appeared to have issues that caused instability in the grid, ultimately costing the region billions. From Fox News:

The massive power outage that wreaked havoc in Europe is being blamed on a pair of likely solar plant breakdowns in southwest Spain, a report said.

By 7 a.m. local time Tuesday, more than 99% of energy demand in Spain had been restored, the country’s electricity operator Red Eléctrica announced. Portuguese grid operator REN said on Tuesday morning that all the 89 power substations had been back online since late last night and power had been restored to all 6.4 million customers.

Red Eléctrica said it identified two power generation loss incidents in southwest Spain – likely involving solar plants – that caused instability in the Spanish power grid and contributed to a breakdown of its interconnection to France, according to Reuters.

The economic cost of Monday’s blackout across the Iberian Peninsula could range between $2.5 billion to more than $5 billion, it cited investment bank RBC as saying.

The massive power outage that wreaked havoc in Europe is being blamed on a pair of likely solar plant breakdowns in southwest Spain, a report said.https://t.co/7TGpP49iFv

— Brynne Kelly (@BrynneKKelly) April 29, 2025

Meanwhile, Spanish grid operator REE has ruled out a cyber attack and had essentially warned in February that their power system relied too much on renewable energy and had no appropriate back-up system in place should there be problems.

While Spanish grid operator REE [Red Eléctrica de España] on Tuesday ruled out a cyber attack as the cause, Spain’s High Court said it would investigate whether the country’s energy infrastructure had suffered a terrorist strike while Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said his government had not ruled out any hypothesis.

…REE said it had identified two incidents of power generation loss, probably from solar plants, in Spain’s southwest that caused instability in the electric system and led to a breakdown of its interconnection with France.

Spain is one of Europe’s biggest producers of renewable energy, and the blackout sparked debate about whether the volatility of supply from solar or wind made its power systems more vulnerable.

Redeia, which owns Red Electrica, warned in February in its annual report that it faced a risk of “disconnections due to the high penetration of renewables without the technical capacities necessary for an adequate response in the face of disturbances”.

This incident has been a valuable warning lesson on green energy realities. I have often warned that only fossil fuels or nuclear power have the energy density and the reliability to be worthy of running a civilization.

Will elite bureaucrats heed the lesson? It’s hard to say, but Hot Air’s Welborne Beege notes that Denmark is revisiting the use of nuclear….40 years after shutting its plants.

Approval of nuclear is now at 55% in Denmark and rising, I would imagine, with every utility bill.

Or with every shocking country-wide outage, much like the Spanish, Portuguese, and some French experienced yesterday, many of whom are still without power today.

It’s bad enough when your juice is expensive. The last thing your country needs is for the grid to be fragile as well, and renewable grids, by their very nature, are.

This could well be yet another reason for a shift in the wind direction towards nuclear in the Danish parliament.

Another Danish government party backs lifting the nuclear ban 🇩🇰

Just one day after @moderaterne_dk declared support for nuclear energy in Denmark, @venstredk joins in, leaving the Social Democrats @Spolitik isolated in their anti-nuclear stance

Momentum is shifting fast!
1/2 pic.twitter.com/hK9EavqV27

— Johan Christian Sollid (@sollidnuclear) April 26, 2025

Time will tell if the course can be reversed before a more prolonged outage occurs among the Net-Zero aspiring nations.

Congratulations to Portugal and Spain on achieving net zero before 2050 pic.twitter.com/F5z7HFsvsE

— David Ravenwolf 🏴‍☠️ (@David5199376829) April 29, 2025