https://blackmon.substack.com/p/mass-blackouts-hit-spain-portugal?utm_medium=ios
Spain and Portugal, both of which generate a majority of their electricity with renewables, were simultaneously hit by widespread power outages on Monday, with no explanation immediately forthcoming about the cause. Some reports said the outages also hit some parts of France.
Cellular service and Internet were reported down throughout both countries, and airports lost power as well, according to sky news:
The extensive rail service in both countries was also impacted, and the metros in major cities like Madrid and Barcelona had to be evacuated:
Here’s an excerpt from a report at Sky News:
Large parts of Spain and Portugal – including Madrid and Lisbon – have been hit by a power outage.
Spanish power grid operator Red Electrica says it is working with energy companies to restore power.
The Spanish government has convened a crisis meeting at the offices of Red Electrica due to the outage, according to the El Pais newspaper in the country.
It comes as France briefly lost power following the outages in Spain and Portugal, French grid operator RTE said.
Parts of Madrid underground have been evacuated and traffic lights in the city are not working, according to local media.
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Play has been suspended at the Madrid Open tennis tournament due to the outage – with Britain’s Jacob Fearnley forced off court in a critical moment during his third-round tie with Grigor Dimitrov.
The loss of power affected scoreboards and the camera above the court.
Maddie Sephton, who is from west London, was on the Madrid Metro when the power outage occurred.
“We got on the train and everything was fine,” she told Sky News. “But then everything went dark.”
She was stuck on the train for 20 minutes until a staff member opened the doors manually.
Mrs Sephton says she was on her way to the airport at the time – and had to exit the station by hiking up 15 flights of stairs with her luggage.
“No lifts are operating – making it difficult for elderly people with limited mobility,” she added.
Above ground, she said that “everyone is just standing around and waiting”.
Bars are unable to take card payments, cash machines are down, and traffic lights aren’t working either.
“I currently don’t have any internet service and just €15 in my wallet – I can’t withdraw any money from the ATM,” she added.
“A couple have offered to let us get a ride in their taxi to the airport. Their flight is at 4.30pm so they’re pretty relaxed – but my flight back to London is at 3pm and I’m nervous.”
I’ll probably have more on this later today as more information is made public.
That is all for now.
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Oh no! If only someone would have warned them that this would happen.
Move along, nothing to see here folks. It was a mere coincidence. /sarc
Looks like the key Iberian grid inertia was being supplied ‘externally’ by the HV line from France nuclear. If that went out due to a fire, then frequency control was lost, as neither wind nor solar provide any grid inertia. if I recall correctly, just 0.4HZ of a 50 HZ phase sag, equivalent to about a 0.5V voltage sag at 220V will cause everything on that grid to automatically trip off by design.
In the infamous 2003 NE US blackout, it was the loss of one Ohio HV line from overload/heat sagging from improperly monitored reactive power that triggered the rolling blackout that within an hour shut down almost 1/3 of the US grid. Took a week to get it black started.
Yeah, but the event resulted in Great Lakes Brewing creating their Blackout Stout, one of the best (IMO) American stouts ever. And the barrel-aged version- OMG.
So there’s that.
According to article Massive power outage in Spain, Portugal leaves millions in dark – Ars Technica
“Bloomberg energy reporter Akshat Rathi posted on Bluesky that Spanish grid operator Red Electrica claims the outage is due to “grid oscillation,” a phenomenon that occurs when the system is unable to suppress oscillations that normally happen as sources and load enter and leave the system.”
That’s why you need grid inertia !!
1save,
You know that, I know that.
Simple, elementary knowledge required for an AC grid.
But why, oh why, do some people at the top of operating these systems continue to deny, to obfuscate, to approve operations that they must know will have inadequate inertia?
It is like they manage in the same way as they manage their own purchase of lottery tickets. They know the low, low probability of a big lottery win, yet some inner greed drives them to buy another ticket each pay day.
They manage the grid knowing about the low probability of a low inertia blackout, yet they continue to approve new operations with inadequate inertia.
Nobody gave them permission to play lotto with electricity supplies.
Sack them. They have shown they are not good enough to hold their jobs.
Geoff S
They have been force fed green politics at uni then they have politicians who demand the change. they are just too young and stupid to realize what is going to happen until about yesterday 🙂
Sometimes one just salutes and follows orders.
It is possible they knew but did not speak up fearing loss of employment and the fiscal hardship that would follow affecting not just themselves but their families.
That same hypothesis applies to many scientists that put on blinders and do the grant work.
That is the easiest way to stop it 🙂
Restoring the system will be nightmare. It’s bad enough when most of the generation assets on the system are dispatchable. This is a scenario that I have thought about often. How in the world to you restore the system where the majority of the generation is weather dependent and the weather isn’t cooperating and you don’t have 100% dispatchable backup. Outages could last for days or even weeks. And just about the time you get everything back up and running, the wind quits blowing again!
Get segment one working. Move on to segment 2. Segment one crashes due to weather. Rinse, spin, repeat.
Before i jump on the blame renewables bandwagon i will wait until there is more info available. This might get me some negative feedback but i have learned it is best to wait a few days, whatever the subject is. It might of course be due to renewables and if i were a betting man that’s where i would go.
However, i do get more than a little weary with all the quick firing nowadays. It’s exhausting at times. Teactings stacjed on reactions, revisions upon deviations etc..
On the other hand, some truths that become apparent during the initial chaos get scrubbed later.
Also true..🙂
It was just a boring old grid pscillation that could not be contained because they had insufficient baseload. Happens even with FF generation if you are stupid enough to run your baseload too low.
Agreed. However, in this blog a number of alternatives have been suggested and it is likely that it is not one fault, but multiple factors that combined.
That said, I do not believe we will be told the truth.
There was NO WAY to convince Europeans of the incapability of IREs (Intermittent Renewable Energy) to produce a stable electrical power supply without a full demonstration. Now, Portugal (71%) and Spain (56%) are providing a full demonstration. Even parts of France with 70% nuclear base power are affected, as the grid is dragged down by phase and voltage fluctuations.
Finally, all can “reimagine” the price spikes!
The good (bad) part is that this is a gift that keeps in giving. People will be reminded frequently that IREs are IREs, chaotic and erratic. There will not be time to forget between outages. Spreading prices hikes to other countries will breed resentment.
PV, wind, hydro, and biomass are the contributors to the morass.
Spain and Portugal will learn clearly
I agree with 99% of your comment, but hydro and biomass are not contributing to the morass. Hydro and biomass also provide grid stabilizing inertia via it’s turbines, which PV and wind don’t have.
Yeb but Spain is a place where drought is a normal fenomen so spend your drinking water supply for electricity is not the best cost efficient solution. They already have to desalinate seawater into drinking water at a high cost .
Maybe use solar and sun to pump the water back up and desalinate seawater but keep it out of the grid.
Contrary to caloric power plants which evaporate water to generate steam and some for cooling purpose, a hydropowerplant isn’t taking away a single drop of water, it’s just flowing over a turbine. Additionally river water normally also needs to be treated/cleaned and can’t be used directly as drinking water.
I agree with your concept that it is a demonstration project.
What is difficult is to imagine what people will learn from it and more importantly how they will address the identified weaknesses.
I wonder if this is a “Broken Hill” scenario, but on a trans-national scale?
Ample amounts of wind and solar available to Spain, but they’re reliant on French nukes for “grid support”, i.e. inverter based technology needs rotating generators as well to maintain voltage, frequency, etc, if the connection to France fails then the grid collapses, even if they are generating more than enough electricity from their wind/solar.
Essentially, the exact problem that Russ Schussler has been warning about for years, as follows:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/12/06/wind-and-solar-cant-support-the-grid/
Idle Eric,
Russ Schussler has provided clear warning based on his experience.
Yet, his words seem to attract critics who broadly claim his words should be ignored. They do not use reasons like showing Russ had a calculation error or made an invalid assumption by showing the correct one. They argue that they have a set of beliefs that Russ does not share, so they try to cancel him on quasi-religious grounds.
What a sad state our national education systems have become, when numerous purveyors of beliefs are given publicity platforms to outweigh competent, experienced electrical engineering people.
Geoff S
Of course, the massive blackouts could just be a huge coincidence, having nothing to do with Ruinables.
And pigs might fly.
I’ve seen at least one article so far claiming it was a cyberattack.
Soon, it will be Russians caused it.
Geoff S
Or the Houthis have expanded their footprint beyond the Red Sea.
Had a 2.5hr power outage here yesterday.. it was a bit of a nuisance..
Persisting it down outside too, so didn’t feel like going outside.
Local shops all had to close.
Turned out to be a power line down, small town, no redundancy.
Came back on in time for evening meal 🙂
Last week Spain became El Pais de las Maravillas.
Today reality struck.
I wonder who the lefties and greenies will blame for this. Trump? Elon? Coal miners?
Where I live power just came back at 23:30 hours
Does anyone feel sorry for these guys?
Stupid is as stupid does.
I’m sure the hospitals have reliable diesel backup. Once again petroleum saving lives.
It seems to me that Spain tried to increase its electrical generation capacity a few years ago by utilizing more renewables, only to find that these couldn’t fill the bill. So in the end it made up the shortfall by importing liquefied natural gas from Algeria or one of the other North African countries.
Well we’re back online in Spain. Power must have been restored somewhen around midnight (I fell asleep around 22:00), internet works since 4:00 roughly.
It was sheer fun to see all those cashless idiots scambling for a random coin to pay for a beer or cup of coffee. For the future they should be maybe wearing a hat, so in case of blackout they can sit on the sidewalk and beg for a dollar, pardon euro.
I consider myself lucky, blackout hit around 12:30, roughly half an hour earlier my car was lowered from the elevator so I had it at my disposal to take a trip.
Many bars and restaurants closed closed due to the fact that they run 100% electric and couldn’t cook, so those who stuck with traditional propane where somewhat better off.. except the ventilation. Poor kitchen stuff.
Also hardly any candles lit as they have run out of fashion, batteries for flashlights as well. Peoples main concern all over was: my phone is running out of battery and I can’t charge it.
Well today we’ll be back to “normal” again and I can only speculate that instead of calling it a day on all the renewable BS the proposed solution will be to have even more BS.
Power restored at midnight? Must have been one of those nocturnal solar farms that some clever Spaniards invented a few years back kicking in.
No..the answer is fairly simple: nighttime demand is sufficiently low so that it can be covered by the remaining conventional powerplants. Spain covers roughly 53% of it’s daytime demand with solar power, wind adds 1%. Well the recipy for desaster which we just experienced. At least people didn’t hoard this time toilet paper lol.
Lot’s of insufficiently refrigerated food went today in the garbage.
We came back the night before from Valencia to Barcelona with a Tesla Taxi. In that short trip we had to stop 2x to charge the battery (fast tesla chargers) losing at least one hour. So imagine this happens during our trip back home. We would have been stuck on a tesla charging station for more than 10 hours . And no phone to call for a diesel taxi.
Seems we both had luck on our side 😁
I have the solution — BUILD MORE RENEWABLES AND BATTERIES! — FOOLS….
Haha good one 🤣🤣🤣
The big question, here in the UK is, will other politicians recognise this and start smacking Milibland around the head with his nut-zero agenda?
I’m in Albuferia Portugal, we lost power about 12:30 and it was restored 22:20 hours . Most of the internet went down as did mobile phones , WhatsApp. It was warm windy and sunny , temperature was 21C so I doubt any one was using air conditioners , so extreme temperatures cannot be used as an excuse , today it’s warmer in the UK
Think I will coin the phrase “New Ohm’s Law”
The longer it takes the authorities to announce the reason for a massive power outage, the more likely it was because of the grid instability introduced with thousands of “green” intermittent sources and the lack of sufficient inertia from traditional rotating generators.
Welcome to the Brave New World where everyone will need their own generator but owning one will be illegal.
Sad but true, the “new normal”
Useful site that shows, I think, exactly what has happened: https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/ES/72h/hourly
Midday yesterday, approximately 60% of generation was solar, another 10% wind, the grid just can’t cope with that level of penetration without external support, which I suspect is what failed.
Thanks for that fine detail. I assumed that too , midday and high solar usage and renewables strutting their stuff and ‘reliables’ shut down for duration of the siesta
They refuse to listen in Canberra so with Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber on the hustings it appears we’ll have to endure a similar crash of the NEM grid before they get it-
‘A lesson for Australia’: ‘Ideology-driven’ energy policies caused the Spain black out
Pretty rare in my metro Adelaide suburb to lose power but we had advance notification over a week ago that power would be off from 8:30am to 3:15 pm for some poles and wires upgrade with the street blocked off. As it transpired they were done in about 4 hours but I had the opportunity to prepare run the portable petrol genny for the basics but if the clowns look like turning us into third world power consumers I’ll get a decent automatic crossover unit like the BIL in the Adelaide Hills (they get trees downing wires). Do your worst with struggletown and the mortgage belt as usual lefties.
Success! NYC is next.