From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c62d8k8edgxo
So that’s alright then! Nothing to worry about.
Nothing to do with the Spanish government’s obsession with renewable energy! Just blame it all on bureaucrats and capitalism.
Except, of course, it was solar power which was at front and centre of the blackouts, a fact which even the whitewash report could not disguise.
The catalyst for the blackout was a sudden loss of 2.2GW of electricity at Granada substation in southern Spain. The report does not appear to address why this happened, which you might have thought was crucial! But it is believed that one or two solar farms stopped transmitting because of negative prices – these resulted from too much solar generation for too little demand, and this is exactly how the market is supposed to work; negative prices lead to less generation, thus bringing the system into balance.
However solar power now makes up such a large part of Spain’s electricity (about 60% at the time of the blackouts), that the very system of negative pricing is a threat in itself to the grid.
As soon as that 2.2GW disappeared, voltages in the local grid plummeted, leading to a complicated chain reaction of grid disconnections. Within 30 seconds the entire Iberian peninsula was experiencing a complete blackout.
The Government whitewash tried to put the blame on the grid operator Red Eléctrica not making sure enough gas power was on the system at the time, which might have provided enough inertia to provide the crucial seconds needed to stabilise the system.
The report, by the way. was presented by Sara Aagesen, Spain’s minister of “ecological transition and demographic challenge” – I suggest that in future, the Spanish Government makes sure its energy system is run by an energy expert, rather than a climate activist. According to Grok:
Aagesen graduated from the Complutense University of Madrid with a degree in chemical engineering, specializing in environmental affairs. Since 2002, she has worked extensively in climate action and energy transition, starting at the Spanish Office for Climate Change (OECC)
But it is Spanish government policy to minimise and eventually get rid of gas power. It was only two weeks before the blackouts that they were bragging that Spain’s grid ran entirely on renewable energy for the first time ( a claim, by the way, which was fake!).
You can hardly overload your grid with intermittent renewables and then complain that there was not enough gas power to deal with those problems of intermittency. Neither can you mandate those renewables and then blame the grid operator for failing to deal with the problems created.
Despite the BBC’s distortions, the facts are very, very simple. If Spain had been running their grid with considerably more gas power and considerably less solar power, those blackouts categorically would not have occurred.
What is noticeable is that since the blackout, Spain has kept much more gas power running. Just before the blackouts, only 2GW of gas power was being produced, 7% of the total load.
In the last day or two, gas power has not dropped below 5GW.
Coincidence? I think not!
https://www.energymonitor.ai/power/live-eu-electricity-generation-map
Engineering & Technology have a much more factual review of the report than the BBC’s propaganda here.
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