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
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This looks very much like a lack of inertia in the system. A bloody cloud crashed the system?
My suspicion is that negative prices due to overproduction caused some solar operators to turn off their connection unannounced to save money.
I hope that possibility gets investigated!
When I think of lack of inertia I think of laziness. So, green energy is lazy when there’s more than a small amount of it.
Re “a lack of inertia“— keyword inertia
Please check this (from yesterday evening):
Excerpt:
Authors: Messrs. Calzada and Fernández Ordóñez are senior fellows at the University of the Hesperides’ Peter Huber Center
Source: https://www.wsj.com/opinion/how-the-lights-went-out-in-spain-solar-power-electric-grid-0096bbc7
P.S. Can see Walter Sobchak has already posted this link (an hour ago) but excerpted a much longer passage (not including the above concluding paragraph). Of course it’s behind the WSJ.com paywall, right?
Yes it’s paywalled. Roger Pielke’s excellent analysis is also very informative and is available to all if you click no I don’t want to subscribe.
“The Iberian Blackout: What happened and early lessons by Roger Pielke Jr. on May 01, 2025
Everything’s in the cloud these days
Mad Ed Miliband and Teresa Ribera thought they would be world leaders
They are towards our demise
The claim has been made going back two decades or more that synthetic inertia is fully capable of replacing all of the spinning inertia supplied by the rotating mass of conventional large power generation units.
Why didn’t the synthetic inertia so often claimed to be the solution to a lack of rotational inertia in a wind & solar grid system prevent this blackout? Where was it when it was needed?
On the drawing board at most
Many claims have been made about renewables over the last 20 years or so, what we’re starting to discover is that most of them were untrue.
Just another Unicorn Fart.
“Synthetic inertia” just doesn’t sound real- to me who knows little about energy production. Seems impossible. I know this has been discussed in previous stories but I don’t recall how it’s done or pretends to be done.
My suspicion is simply money, you could perhaps create a grid supported by SI, but at the end of the day it’ll just be too expensive, so corners will be cut.
There’s likely a huge difference between synthetic inertia and real inertia. A generator with high rotational inertia can absorb or deliver a short-term reaction to a “power oscillation” at higher current than its rated capacity. It likely can even dampen the “oscillation. A battery and its associated electronics can only absorb or deliver power at its rated capacity. Any damping would not be a reaction to present conditions; it would only follow its programmed action. That may or may not be what the grid needs to stabilize.
Synthetic inertia could only be applied if you could measure the “entire network” in real-time and then somehow quickly decide where to apply or remove energy. It’s a pipe dream that only a stupid activist would believe.
“synthetic” inertia can absolutely replace, but it has to be of a similar rotational inertia as the dispatchable plants it is replacing.
So let’s consider this for a second: if you require even just 50% or 25% of the rotational inertia from coal/gas plants, replaced by say gigantic cruise engine modules – is this economically effective? Because you are now adding cruise ship engine module costs on top of the solar PV and wind costs – both investment and operating. And note that gigantic cruise ship engine modules don’t run on electricity…
Leon de Boer: ‘Synthetic inertia could only be applied if you could measure the “entire network” in real-time and then somehow quickly decide where to apply or remove energy.’
I await an explanation from Nick Stokes of Ozonia and/or from Tim the Tool Man of Wherever as to how, technically, a combination of grid-scale battery packs and electronic grid-stabilization control systems can handle a continent-size, highly-interdependent power grid.
To wit, how much of this kind of non-rotating synthetic inertia technology do you need, and where specifically do you need it?
Once again, we see that from a project management standpoint, the ongoing Net Zero transition of the power grid has no credibility of success whatsoever, especially in the absence of a highly-coordinated plan of action among all parties to the transition. Something which the green politicians and the climate activists absolutely refuse to provide, and for the obvious reasons.
The cost of the blackout is estimated at $3 to $5 billion
The real cost of the wind/solar foolishness in Iberia is at least ONE $TRILLION OVER 30 years
That W/S quackery in UK and Germany, etc., has finally resulted in the EU having a near-zero, real-growth GDP, and decreasing real wages, and major social/political unrest, and censorship
All that, without have NO effect on the weather or climate
CO2 is a wonderful gas. It is an absolutely essential ingredient for growing abundant flora to support abundant fauna, and increase crop yields to feed 8 billion people.
We need much higher CO2 ppm, by using fossil fuel power plants with particulate pollution controls.
Down with CO2 sequestering.
Net zero at 2050 to reduce CO2 is a super-expensive suicide pact
Adding 5% “renewables” to a grid is indignificant, 10% can be tolerated, 15% is when the trouble will start.
The discussion of what caused the blackout is nothing more than a smokescreen or let’s call it the desperate search for an excuse.
The lack of willingness to end this stupidity is the real cause and will cause the next blackout.
Mine for unicorn farts, pixie dust and unobtanium or simply go back to where we were 25 years ago: a conventional mix o nuclear, coal, hydro and gas power plants that supplied the grid.
Ditch that eco shit and climate delusion before the damage is measured in human lifes and not just “some pennies”
The discussion of what caused the blackout is nothing more than a smokescreen or let’s call it the desperate search for an excuse.
They wouldn’t do that would they?
Did ‘induced atmospheric vibration’ cause blackouts in Europe? An electrical engineer explains the phenomenon
They wouldn’t get past our super sleuthing without fear or favour budding Woodward and Bernsteins nowadays. No siree sir! No President’s wife could put one over on them.
Oh, now they’re blaming it on bad vibes! Mysterious bad vibes which sometimes haunt wonderful, glorious, dirt cheap planet saving clean and green energy. 🙂
We have all had bad vibes about this for decades.
5%, 10% ,15%? I’d argue that with subsidies, and/or absent a level playing field for dispatch order, ‘renewables’ are parasitic to the grid at any level of participation.
Plus those subsidies and above market rates are parasitic to pocket books of taxpayers, rate payers and worsening the national debt, and make a nation less competitive in world markets!
What is not to hate?
There may already have been a loss of life in Spain: a family may have died from carbon monoxide poisoning from running a generator, and a woman who died in a fire (and others who were injured) possibly caused by a burning candle. I would imagine others, relying on medical equipment at home, will also have been impacted.
vang,
You are right.
The disturbance of the first 5 to 10% of W/S on the grid can be “managed” at reasonable cost, but go to 15% or 30%, or more, as in Germany and the UK and Spain, etc., it becomes an operational challenge, if all goes well, but the slightest disturbance can cause major trouble in an instant, plus the cost of brownouts and blackouts, local or regional, goes through the roof.
HIGH COST/kWh OF W/S SYSTEMS FOISTED ONTO A BRAINWASHED PUBLIC
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/high-cost-kwh-of-w-s-systems-foisted-onto-a-brainwashed-public-1
.
What is generally not known, the more weather-dependent W/S systems, the less efficient the traditional generators, as they inefficiently counteract the increasingly larger ups and downs of W/S output. See URL
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/fuel-and-co2-reductions-due-to-wind-energy-less-than-claimed
.
W/S systems add great cost to the overall delivery of electricity to users; the more W/S systems, the higher the cost/kWh, as proven by the UK and Germany, with the highest electricity rates in Europe, and near-zero, real-growth GDPs
At about 30% W/S, the entire system hits an increasingly thicker concrete wall, operationally and cost wise.
The UK and Germany are hitting the wall, more and more hours each day.
The cost of electricity delivered to users increased with each additional W/S/B system
.
Nuclear, gas, coal and reservoir hydro plants are the only rational way forward.
Increased CO2 ppm is an absolutely essential life gas for increased growth of green flora that supports abundant fauna, and increased crop yields to feed 8 billion people
Net zero by 2050 to reduce CO2 is a super-expensive suicide pact
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/we-are-in-a-co2-famine
.
Owners would have to charge 30 c/kWh for electricity from fixed offshore wind systems, if there were no subsidies, such as:
1) Federal and state tax credits, up to 50% (Community tax credit of up to 10% – Federal tax credit of 30% – State tax credit and other incentives of up to 10%);
2) 5-y Accelerated Depreciation write off of the entire project;
3) Loan interest deduction to reduce any taxable profits from whatever source.
Subsidies shift costs from project Owners to ratepayers, taxpayers, government debt
Utilities pay 15 c/kWh, wholesale, after 50% subsidies, for electricity from fixedoffshore wind systems
Utilities pay 18 c/kWh, wholesale, after 50% subsidies, for electricity from floating offshore wind
Utilities pay 12 c/kWh, wholesale, after 50% subsidies, for electricity from larger solar systems
.
Excluded costs, at a future 30% W/S annual penetration on the grid, based on UK and German experience:
– Onshore grid expansion/reinforcement to connect distributed W/S systems, about 2 c/kWh
– A fleet of traditional power plants to quickly counteract W/S variable output, on a less than minute-by-minute basis, 24/7/365, which leads to more Btu/kWh, more CO2/kWh, more cost of about 2 c/kWh
– A fleet of traditional power plants to provide electricity during 1) low-wind periods, 2) high-wind periods, when rotors are locked in place, and 3) low solar periods during mornings, evenings, at night, snow/ice on panels, which leads to more Btu/kWh, more CO2/kWh, more cost of about 2 c/kWh
– Pay W/S system Owners for electricity they could have produced, if not curtailed, about 1 c/kWh
– Importing electricity at high prices, when W/S output is low, 1 c/kWh
– Exporting electricity at low prices, when W/S output is high, 1 c/kWh
– Disassembly on land and at sea, reprocessing and storing at hazardous waste sites, about 2 c/kWh
Some of these values exponentially increase as more W/S systems are added to the grid
.
The economic/financial insanity and environmental damage of it all is off the charts.
No wonder Europe’s near-zero, real-growth economy is in de-growth mode.
That economy has been tied into knots by inane people.
YOUR tax dollars are building these projects so YOU will have much higher electric bills.
Remove YOUR tax dollars using your vote, and none of these projects would be built, and YOUR electric bills would be lower.
To follow EU grid frequency
https://www.swissgrid.ch/de/home/operation/grid-data/current-data.html
Well it was a terrorist incident.
Said terrorists being the eco-loons driving the unsustainable growth in “renewable” power.
Subsidized eco-terrorism, the latest fad to cripple a nation.
I bet Spanish government puts the author of that report in jail, clearly it is his fault for pointing out the obvious.
I picked up this tidbit from a conspiracy website.
“Since 2012, China has been the largest shareholder in Portugal’s energy grid, with China State Grid Corporation owning 25% of Redes Energéticas Nacionais (REN), the operator of Portugal’s electricity grid and China Three Gorges (CTG) having a 23.27% stake in Energias de Portugal (EDP) and a 49% share of its renewable energy subsidiary, EDP Renewables”.
What could possibly go wrong?
Do Spain and Portugal win the Energy Booby Prize?
And to think that the EU is mandating E-Fuels be a substantial part of the renewable energy mix. Fuels produce by using “excess” power to reduce water to H2, then use H2 to reduce CO2 to CO, then more H2 to reduce CO to hydrocarbons, all with an energy efficiency of 30% overall. What a waste of good energy.
The EU Mandate for Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF) in 2032 is only 2% of the total jet fuel used by airlines (This is 20,800 bbl/day SAF.) Yet that amount of fuel produced from electric power will require 39.8 TW-h of energy. This is 4.546 GW of power.
To produce this power requires installed capacity of at least 4X that amount of power just to cover the Capacity Factor of Wind/Solar (about 25%). At $4 million/turbine, this means an investment of nearly $16 billion in turbines alone. The land area required for the wind turbine farm is 1331 sq mi. All this for 20,800 bbl/day.
And the E-SAF demand for 2050 is 35% of the jet fuel consumed, that would take the power of France in its entirety to produce.
The EU mandates for renewable energy production are insane.
H2 production CANNOT occur with “excess” electricity because said excess electricity is available in the order of 2 to 5 hours a week, on average. Between the massive capital cost, the start/stop costs and the low value of product – negative price electricity does not prevent intermittent hydrogen generation from being a massive money loser.
No electrolyzer that I know of would operate in an intermittent mode. The most efficient uses run at 400°C. Heating/cooling cycles every day would kill them in short order.
No electrolyzer that I know of would operate in an intermittent mode.
I think the old school ‘experiment’ of carbon rods attached to a battery would work that way, at least to a degree. But the efficiency would be dismal. (I remember doing that one many years ago)
So how many more of these “incidents” will it take before people wake up to the reality of relying on sun and wind renewables? Whole country blackouts isn’t enough?
If they did not learn after South Australia or Texas 2021, they just prove to be like the French Bourbons, who never learned and never forgot.
And made terrible biscuits…
“How the Lights Went Out in Spain: The country flew too close to the sun—which is to say it relied too heavily on unreliable solar power.”By Gabriel Calzada and Manuel Fernández Ordóñez Updated April 30, 2025 Wall Street Journal [paywalled]
“Time will tell if the course can be reversed before a more prolonged outage occurs among the Net-Zero aspiring nations.”
And states like CA, CT, NY, MA and a few others.
Heavy reliance on other people’s money
How much does it cost to fix a door in the House of Lords (Parliament)?
Work has two years after that finished on the door, which is now operational. Guido hears the total cost of the operation ran up to in the region of a whopping £9 million…
https://order-order.com/2025/05/01/finally-finished-house-of-lords-door-renovation-costs-taxpayer-9-million/
Now you know
Richard Gere moved to Spain after Trump won. I saw a story today that said he’s now he’s planning to move back to the US.
I wonder why?
Because cutting off your nose never really spites your face, no matter how much you want it to.
Am I the only one that is triggered every time energy and electricity are used as synonyms?
I really cannot take any article that mixes these two up serious.
Is anyone triggered every time someone uses adjectives instead of adverbs? I really cannot take anyone who does this seriously.
Yet there are those that claim ‘renewables’ do work, and this is proof we need more of them. Seriously.
Sometimes getting the stuff you ask for can be ugly.
Is the satellite image at the top of the post genuine or was it photo-shopped?
If genuine then it is a truly dramatic symbol of Nut Zero.
There appear to be lights around the coast of Spain, which is interesting. Maybe the coastal resorts have backup lighting and power sources?
Does anyone have a link or source for the image?
Chris
These are the same type of folks who would bury a water tank in their backyard – minus a pump – and then wonder why there’s no water pressure when they turn on the faucet…….
What caused the power outage in Spain and Portugal? | Reuters advises the grid was depending heavily on solar power at the time of the outage and was exporting power to France. Something happened to a solar facility and the grid could not cope. The inter-tie with France was interrupted thus France could not backstop. Frequency instability is a problem if it occurs.
Restarting the grid takes some time, it was able to get power from France during the restart process.