by Russ Schussler (Planning Engineer)
On April 28th Spain, Portugal and parts of France suffered a major grid outage. A formal evaluation will likely be released at a later date cataloging many of the contributing factors and system deficiencies. Unfortunately, such reports often provide more confusion than clarity, as they tend to prioritize the triggers for system outages over the underlying causes. Post hoc it is easy to look at the vast data available and construct favored narratives about how the outage might have been avoided. This piece will look at “advance” warnings that point to the true cause of the blackout in Spain, Portugal and parts of France.
Core Insight: It has long been predicted that replacing conventional synchronous generators, which rotate together with the grid, with asynchronous inverter-based resources like wind, solar, and batteries will increase the risk of blackouts. Grid planners recognize that unanticipated adverse events—such as line outages, generator trips, substation failures, and major faults—will continue to impact power grids. Their challenge is to ensure the grid is robust enough to withstand and recover from such disturbances without major consequences. Proponents of wind, solar, and batteries may attempt to attribute blackouts to the adverse events that triggered the outage, rather than to flaws in the underlying system. This is akin to blaming an automobile’s brake failure on the conditions that necessitated sudden braking, rather than on the failure of the braking system itself. While lessons learned may help mitigate risks from adverse events, such occurrences cannot be entirely eliminated from grid operations. Reducing the risk of blackouts depends on enhancing grid robustness.
My Warnings and Predictions
My May 7, 2015 posting, Transmission planning: wind and solar noted the following:
The grid is built upon and supported by heavy rotating machinery. Synchronous spinning generators combine with power lines and loads to make up complex electro-mechanical machine that must maintains stability. Stability refers to the ability of the system to stay in synchronism, balance loads and generation and maintain voltages following system disturbances. Intermittent generation (wind/PV solar) does not rotate in synchronism with the grid. As such they do not have performance characteristics that support the grid as well as synchronously rotating generators (hydro, coal, gas, nuclear plants) do. The system must be able to ride out power imbalances caused by faults and outages. Greater penetrations of non-synchronous generators (inverters used for PV Solar and Wind) tend to make the system, all else equal, less stable….
The power grid does not always operate as planned. Extreme weather, unanticipated outages and a host of other factors can result in the system operating somewhere outside of planned conditions. Generally, the system is robust enough to handle most departures without problems. For more severe departures from planned conditions the re-dispatch of generating resources is a major tool for the system operators. As the amount of intermittent generation increases, this tool will become blunted from a lack of qualifying capable dispatchable resources…. …. There are suggestions that intermittents could better mimic conventional generation, but it would incur significant costs. ….Building a surplus of renewable resources to sit idle waiting to back each other up and respond as needed is economically implausible at this time.
Greater penetration of renewable resources will limit the options available to operators while at the same time increasing uncertainty around expected generation patterns. To accommodate such uncertainty the choices are to: 1) increase grid costs and infrastructure, 2) limit the operational flexibility of the grid , 3) increase generation costs through backup generation resources or 4) live with increased risks and degraded reliability. Likely all four are and will continue to occur to some extent as the penetration of intermittent resources increases.…
(W)hen intermittent resources only make up a small percentage of total system generation, the adverse impacts are masked by the margin and robustness built into the system… As penetration levels rise and renewables replace non-intermittent conventional units, they will have major impacts upon grid costs and reliability.
The next year in January of 2016 I elaborated on those points in a piece entitled Renewables and grid reliability. It’s worth a full read, but I will reference the key points here:
- There has been a high value placed on having an extremely reliable bulk grid as the costs and consequences of bulk grid outages are severe
- The bulk grid supports and is supported by conventional rotating generators (Coal, natural gas, hydro, nuclear, biomass) which provide “Essential Reliability Services” (ERSs)
- Wind and solar provide increased reliability risks because they are new changing technologies, they are intermittent and they do not as readily provide ERSs
- Current high levels of reliability depend upon experience gained over time through the gradual adoption of new technologies
- Wind and solar can be made to provide approximations of ERSs, but that requires significant increased costs and reduced generation output
- Because of the complexity of impacting factors and the high level of reliability maintained for the US grids, systemic degradation of the reliability of the grid is hard to detect and measure
- The amount of renewable penetration that can be accommodated will vary from area to area and power system to power system – There is not a single answer
- Because conventional resources produce an abundance of ERSs, accommodation of low levels of renewables may be accomplished with negligible risks
- Because current renewables do not provide adequate ERSs high penetration levels provide significant risks
- Between the above two levels there is a gap of (wicked?) uncertainty.
- For assessing grid reliability, the maximum penetration of wind and solar during times of stress is the key number not the “average” contribution of wind and solar
- Increased penetration of such asynchronous resources, all else equal, will likely adversely impact bulk grid reliability
- As the penetration level of asynchronous generation increases this will either increase cost, limit operational flexibility, degrade reliability or most likely result in a combination of all three factor
A decade ago, major power systems were still sufficiently robust, so the risks from emerging problems were minimal at the time. The above statements warned that such concerns would eventually arise if trends continued. At low levels of penetration, the additional risks were small, but as penetration increased, the risks grew exponentially. By the time of this posting, Wind and Solar Can’t support the Grid in December of 2024 the existing risks had become clear:
Unlike conventional rotating generation, wind and solar do not readily supply inertia and other essential reliability services. As penetration of wind and solar resources increase, grid reliability decreases. The challenges of increasing wind and solar increase exponentially as you increase their share of generation. Policy makers, academics and others seeking to increase wind and solar are focusing on the wrong problems (intermittency) and failing to study the real operational problems inherent in inverter based generation from wind and solar.
On February 19 of this year in this post Unraveling the Narrative Supporting a Green Energy Transition, I outlined the major issues by addressing the misleading and false claims of the “green energy narrative” through bullet-point rebuttals. The points about inverter-based generation are particularly worth reviewing for those seeking more detail. After considering these factors and analyzing reviews of grid outages, it became clear that wind and solar were significantly degrading grid reliability in many areas, and much was being done to conceal this fact. I felt confident that upcoming grid outages would be linked to high penetration of wind and solar.
When an outage occurs, you can always choose to point a finger at any of the multiple things that went wrong. (#44, #26) Some traditional fossil fuel technology will always be included in the set of things that were not right. (Loss of just renewables doesn’t usually cause big problems because apart from energy, they don’t support the system while in service.) For various reasons, advocates insist the finger should be pointed away from renewables (and the gap in needed system support) and at the conventional technology that was not perfect when the outage occurred. It’s critical to note that conventional technology is never perfect across a large system, however we were able to make reliable robust systems that could easily accommodate such imperfections. But now the presence of less dependable resources and inverter-based energy makes systems far less robust, even during times when those problematic resources are working well. It’s a near sure bet the next large grid outage will be largely caused by problems associated with high levels of wind and solar penetration, whether those resources are available during the outage or not.
Major Outages Following my Posting
Since my February 19, 2025 prediction was published, two major blackouts have occurred. The first, six days later, left 98% of Chile without power. Limited reliable information is available about the Chilean outage, which was caused by a 500 kV line outage. Although Chile has significant hydro resources, many were offline, and the system relied heavily on wind and solar at the time. The system collapsed due to “unwanted activations” of electronic and special protection systems. At best, the issue likely stemmed from the learning curve associated with the complex protection schemes required for wind and solar generation. Our experience with conventional technology has developed over decades, so glitches with newer systems are expected. However, with accelerated efforts to integrate large amounts of newer technology, more such glitches are likely. A more serious concern is whether the complexity and challenges of high levels of asynchronous inverter-based generation are, as warned, inherently overwhelming.
More information is available about the blackout impacting Spain and Portugal. Two large solar installations tripped offline, followed by the loss of an interconnection to France. This created a generation shortfall that caused the system frequency to drop dangerously. Large amounts of asynchronous resources (wind and solar) disconnected from the system in response to the frequency drop, leading to the system’s collapse.
Frequency control is an essential reliability service supported by rotating machines with inertia. Such machines would have limited the frequency drop and helped the system recover from the excursion. More load shedding based on automatic underfrequency protection could have delayed the collapse and possibly saved the core grid. Inverter-based generation exacerbated the collapse and did little to prevent it. This collapse resembles one in South Australia caused by a lack of inertia.
What Are They Saying About This Outage?
Remarkably, many are focusing on the problems caused by a lack of inertia and the challenges of inverter-based generation. The core issues driving this blackout are clearer than in most cases.
Predictably, others are deflecting blame from wind and solar. The Spanish Prime Minister blamed Induced Atmospheric Vibration (IAV) for introducing frequency oscillations, claiming extreme weather caused corona discharge, which created electrohydrodynamic (EHD) forces. These forces allegedly caused low-frequency oscillations that worsened the situation. IAV may have triggered outages or aggravated the situation, but as noted, there will always be triggers stressing the system. The system should have been robust enough to withstand this disturbance, but it wasn’t due to lower levels of inertia.
Reuter’s advises, Don’t blame renewables. Blame “management of renewables”. They suggest more conventional generation or devices like synchronous condensers should have been online to support the system—effectively admitting that Wind and Solar Can’t Support the Grid. Undoubtedly, other system components were also malfunctioning. As I mentioned earlier, a thorough review will provide data that can be shaped into narratives to deflect attention from the root causes.
An expert from Madrid argues that the triggering event wasn’t an N-1 event (where the system loses its single most impactful element) but an N-2 event (a double contingency). He does not blame inertia, as the system isn’t required to have enough inertia to survive an N-2 event. He suspects one of the events was caused by RoCoF relays, which interrupt generation when frequency changes rapidly. Note that frequency problems tied to low inertia caused the loss of solar facilities and the system collapse.
I may not have heard his best arguments fully and correctly and they may be refined further. He likely knows more about the technical specifics of the occurrence than I do, but I suspect our differences are more philosophical then technical. He seems to be saying that: 1) the system performed outside the bounds of study protocols, 2) the causes of the two events leading to the double contingency are unclear (though RoCoF variations may have caused one), and 3) since the event was outside study criteria, low inertia isn’t to blame.
I counter that system planning was insufficient. Systems should remain stable across many N-2 events, as many double contingencies have less severe consequences than the worst N-1 event. This N-2 event doesn’t seem particularly severe compared to potential N-1 events. Moreover, both RoCoF issues and large frequency deviations are worsened by low inertia and mitigated by higher inertia. This blackout has the fingerprints of low inertia everywhere.
How Should We Define the Cause of Blackouts?
Consider the Suzuki Samurai, a popular automobile in the 1980s with a stability problem: it frequently tipped over. Proponents of these vehicles pointed out that rollovers were often accompanied by sharp turns, adverse conditions, road grading, unanticipated obstacles, or the behavior of other vehicles. Despite these complicating factors, Samurais were much more likely to tip over than other cars due to their tall, narrow body, high center of gravity, and short wheelbase. These characteristics made the car nimbler in off-road situations, particularly at slower speeds. Proponents could argue that if other cars drove more slowly and were equally nimble, Samurais wouldn’t need to swerve as much, reducing rollovers. Sweeping changes to perfect the world—such as ensuring all roads are well-graded, lowering speed limits, or preventing dogs and children from running into the road—could theoretically eliminate the Samurai’s problems. Similarly, calls to “modernize the grid and its operations” so wind and solar can perform without causing problems are overly idealistic. The Samurai needed to be safe in less-than-optimal conditions that drivers might encounter. Likewise, the grid must be robust enough to survive many issues claimed to “cause” blackouts. Trying to improve the world while making the Samurai’s base narrower and raising its center of gravity is a fool’s errand, as are efforts to eliminate grid problems so wind and solar can function without conventional generation.
A 2016 post entitled Renewables and grid reliability explained:
I will share a planning secret. We don’t really think that the specific outage and the specific conditions which were identified in the study will actually occur and the system will be “saved” by that particular fix. We have learned over time that planning that way results in a system that is sufficiently robust so that system operators can sufficiently recover when unanticipated events happen across variety of circumstances. Planners will model the new technology as best they can, but if adoption of new technology is rapid, they will not have the needed experience behind them to justify confidence in the models.
Low inertia and the fact that many inverter-based generation resources tripped offline during the frequency excursion caused the blackout. While it’s true that without the triggering event, no outage would have occurred, systems cannot be designed to avoid all serious unanticipated events. Power systems should however survive most rare, once-in-fifty-year events, whether anticipated or not.
If low inertia (among other issues with asynchronous inverter-based generation) makes N-2 outages and cascading events more likely, planning criteria must change. If the many models for dispersed inverter-based generation are collectively less accurate than considerably fewer models for large central generating stations, planning must change. If the protection schemes are grossly more complicated and prone to failure, planning must change. All this will increase costs and complexity and incur more failures in meantime directly attributable to wind, solar, and batteries. Proponents might ask, “We never had to plan for N-2 events before; why now?” The answer is simple: these changes are necessary to maintain reliability. RoCoF, mentioned earlier, is a newer metric developed solely due to high penetration of inverter-based generation, as detailed in ENTSO-E’s Inertia and Rate of Change of Frequency. RoCoF “protection” contributed to this blackout. It cannot be overemphasized that adapting to increased inverter-based generation will complicate planning, raise costs, and create more opportunities for failures.
The Evidence of Increasing Risk has been here a Long Time
The January 2014 posting, Renewables and grid reliability, included a graphic from NERC (North American Electric Reliability Corporation). This figure showed the system response to a 2,750 MW generation trip in actual and forecast years, based on additions of asynchronous resources. The chart clearly illustrates that the system responds less favorably each year as the amount of inverter-based resources (shown in parentheses) increases.
This same trend emerged in Spain and Portugal. It’s no surprise that the risk of blackouts grew as inverter penetration increased. In fact, a similar outage occurred in the Spanish system in2021, but higher inertia levels at the time prevented a disaster.
Increased penetration of asynchronous inverter-based generation degrades several metrics critical for system reliability. Grid experts have long been aware of these issues but have struggled to effectively reach and convince key audiences. The charts, data, and explanations may be clear, but most people won’t heed the message until they face a harsh wake-up call.
Conclusions
Proponents have long dismissed predictions that increased wind and solar use will raise costs and reduce reliability. Despite calculations on paper suggesting that large-scale integration of wind and solar is cheaper, real-world evidence shows they increase costs. Despite claims about reliability, previous outages have demonstrated the potential for wind and solar to heighten blackout risks. Pressure has been applied to frequently to distract from the real issues and real-world impacts.
It cannot be emphasized enough: the grid must be robust enough to survive major contingencies in an imperfect world. We must stop listening to those who, after an outage or blackout, insist the problem was unexpected events on the grid rather than the fact that grid reliability has been degraded by increased penetration of inverter-based generation.
Similarly, those who claim that wind, solar, and batteries can be made to support the grid more effectively must be challenged to acknowledge their current real-world capabilities and set reasonable expectations for future performance. Making inverter-based generation perform well enough to support a grid is a complex and extremely challenging problem.
Reuters’ suggestion to “not blame renewables, but rather the management of renewables” is particularly infuriating. Grid managers, tasked with maintaining stability, have been ignored for far too long. Grid and generation decisions are often driven by political rather than engineering considerations. The challenges of using and managing inverter-based generation have been acknowledged for years. Blaming those struggling to manage what’s been thrust upon them, while excusing renewables, is blatantly unfair.
Wind and solar have a place, but their appropriate levels vary by region based on current and foreseeable capabilities, not unrealistic hopes. Hopes for the future are admirable, but there’s a vast gap between what might one day be possible and what is practical and proven today. Reliable electricity is too critical to depend on unproven technology.
The recent blackout should serve as a wake-up call for policy makers. If it doesn’t, more events will follow, with increasingly severe consequences.
Note: Thanks to Chris Morris for edits, ideas and discussions around this topic.
It would appear that wind and solar just can’t sustain an AC grid. Lack of inertia is another factor to add to their weather dependence.
They should be taxed as a hazard,not subsidized.
There is nothing new here about the causes of the blackout, which remain obscure. Just the usual a priori blaming of renewables.
“Their challenge is to ensure the grid is robust enough to withstand and recover from such disturbances without major consequences.”
Well, yes, and we know how to do it. Synchronous condensers, solid state devices with battery, even flywheels driven by electric motors (with battery). Probably another look at trigger seteings. It’s all doable. The cost is small in the overall picture of generation. Spain may not have kept up, but they will. More attention needed, not despair.
“The cost is small in the overall picture of generation“. Which cost of generation? The cost that we used to have when we generated with coal/gas/nuclear, or the new much higher cost of generating from wind and solar. The cost may or may not be small ……. but we just keep on and on adding these costs until the total cost becomes obscene.
We know that wind and solar make electricity more expensive, because we have seen that the countries with most wind and solar have the highest electricity prices, even though they also have the highest government subsidies (except maybe Iran). It’s also to be expected, because the old systems have to be kept for backup, so wind and solar are just an additional cost. Now South Australia and Spain have shown us what happens if we drop the backups – we get blackouts.
Instead of the authorities turning themselves inside out trying to justify the unjustifiable, all we need is reliable cheap energy. The energy we used to have.
“The cost that we used to have when we generated with coal/gas/nuclear”
Yes. Much smaller than the fuel cost alone. Compare the cost of running a solid state unit with the cost of running a coal mine.
“We know that wind and solar make electricity more expensive, because we have seen that the countries with most wind and solar have the highest electricity price”
No, we don’t. and no, we haven’t.
Match this:
In Douglas County WA [center of State and east of the Columbia River] the rate is 3.27¢/kwh. You can check the location of the dams on the river. Wells Dam is here: 47°56′43.44″N, 119°51′57.6″W
Yes. That is what you can achieve if you don’t have fuel costs.
At the time of this event in Spain, the wholesale price of electricity was negative, and Spain was exporting as much as hte wires would carry. You can’t beat that.
Oh yes you can. You can keep the electricity on. 50 million people would agree.
The usual logical fallacy. Take two systems, then take one parameter where there is a difference. Then claim that this shows that this difference leads to a system difference on that parameter, in this case cost.
Sailing ships use wind which is free, steamships or diesels use coal or oil which has a cost, therefore sailing ships must be cheaper to run.
Sailing ships use canvas, galleys use oars, so have no fabric costs, therefore galleys must be cheaper to run….
And so on. Horses must be cheaper than tractors because they only use steel in their shoeing…. Deliveries by cargo bicycle….
For the intellectually challenged arguing so fallaciously would be merely stupid. In someone of your ability it looks uncommonly like dishonesty.
BS. Do you have any idea how electricity prices are set?
Hint it involves the price of gas…
Electricity prices can only get negative if the green mafia insists on using a totally perverted scheme to set those prices.
Nice grid you got there…shame if anything happend to it…oops!
Spot the Englishman. Nick is Australian and we dont set our prices by the most expensive generator bid like you chaps do. We have a system evolved in the colony that involves lowest bids.
Your energy pricing policy/process is the thing that is BS.
Price goes negative because it costs money to accommodate, un-needed energy. There is no buyer who will pay for it.
In my shallow opinion wind and solar alone cannot sustain themselves. They simply cannot produce the energy required to mine, manufacture, distribute, construct, and maintain itself; while providing the energy to construct and maintain the grid and distribution of electricity. Anywhere you look in this vast chain of events to the completion of net Zero is laughable. Today all of these functions are provided by coal, gas, and oil.
All of this before any customers are served.
the wholesale price of electricity was negative, and Spain was exporting as much as hte wires would carry
Maybe accountants discontinued the generation to prevent an economical collapse of Spain.
Negative spot price is not a good thing. It means that un needed, useless energy is being fed into the grid and some other utility has to be paid to take in order to provide stability.
They want to be paid for that because it is disruptive to their generation. The utility taking the surplus has to shut down their machines to accommodate the excess.
This incurs an expense on the utility taking the garbage.
Basic error in understanding basic words. Cost is based on how much money is required to produce something. Price is set by how much a buyer is willing to pay for something. If it costs you $1000 to produce it and no one will pay you more than $100, the price is $100 or there are no sales, making the term ‘price’ meaningless. (The equivalent of an item not being for sale, for any price, being ‘priceless’.)
Wind and solar power production always have a positive cost. The power generated may be worthless if no one wants to buy it.
Nick Stokes
Compare the cost of running a solid state unit with the cost of running a coal mine.
It is much cheaper to run a coal mine. China imports coal from Indonesia and Australia, and that is still cheaper to supply their electricity than building out renewables.
Currently the coal mines are used to manufacture solar panels in China.
I don’t think you understand what a synchronous capacitor is. They are used for power factor correction. If they were used for grid stability they would lose velocity and fall out of frequency in milliseconds. They are not an energy source.
Synchronous condenser
“ If they were used for grid stability they would lose velocity”
Here is Siemens explaining. It is headed “Ireland’s great grid stabilizer”
“The critical first step, however, is the installation of a synchronous condenser to allow the station to continue to provide the necessary grid stability once its coal-fired turbines are ultimately shut down. It’s the safety net in Wall’s tightrope analogy and supplies the same kind of rotating mass, inertia and short-circuit power as a coal or gas turbine as well as absorbing reactive power to regulate voltage.”
OMG!
You took this quote completely out of context. You have the reading comprehension skills of most climate alarmists! I.e. NONE!
This does *NOT* mean that synchronous condensers can replace coal or gas turbines for providing REAL POWER to the grid. What they are for is maintaining synchronization of wind turbine generators after coal and gas fired generators are cashiered.
The problem is what keeps the synchronous condensers in sync on the grid when the coal and gas fired generators are destroyed and major generation capacity fails?
This has nothing to do with maintaining the grid when major generation entities fail thus leaving major loads/demands unmet on the grid. I.e. what happened in Spain.
You continue to ignore the fact that synch condensers have no drivers. Thus they are only passive actors. They simply cannot replace driven generators on the grid.
“The problem is what keeps the synchronous condensers in sync on the grid when the coal and gas fired generators are destroyed”
The Siemens quote explicitly answers that:
“the installation of a synchronous condenser to allow the station to continue to provide the necessary grid stability once its coal-fired turbines are ultimately shut down”
You may insist that I don’t know about power engineering, but Siemens certainly does.
“You continue to ignore the fact that synch condensers have no drivers.”
Enough power is supplied (from the grid) to overcome friction losses and keep the flywheel frequency within limits. The rotational inertia does the rest.
Siemens also knows about advertising. Without even reading it I’ll bet the document doesn’t tell you how long it can maintain rated frequency at full load and no input.
That’s something an electrical engineer would ask when looking for a product. A device that can maintain rated output frequency for 5 to 10 cycles with no input drive is worthless in an outage situation.
It is basically a parasite on the grid that dies shortly after the limb dies.
“Enough power is supplied (from the grid) to overcome friction losses and keep the flywheel frequency within limits.”
What power from the grid? This issue is what happens when that power is interrupted in some manner. Focus. Stay on target.
MJ >> “We know that wind and solar make electricity more expensive, because we have seen that the countries with most wind and solar have the highest electricity price”
NS > No, we don’t. and no, we haven’t.
California has entered the conversation.
What is the cost of the blackout? That has to be included.
Nick, I think you have it backwards. The problem was that the renewable generation was allowed (and encouraged) despite the fact that the needed grid inertia was not available. In a sane world, the folks who want to connect renewable generation capacity need to make sure there is adequate sources of grid inertia before the renewable generation is allowed to connect to the grid.
The only way I would fault Russ’s write-up is that he assumes the readers would have at least a smattering of control systems theory.
It would be possible to simulate rotating generation with static power electronics, but that will come at a cost likely an order of magnitude higher than current inverters.
It would be higher, but still a small part of the overall cost of generating electricity.
The consumer pays more for the ‘free’ electricity.
I guess many hours long blackouts are the new overall cost of generating electricity, too. It won’t be long before consumers, who are also voters, refuse to pay your imposed ‘costs’.
Nick – dont get fooled by LCOE – Far too many costs omitted
You know the cost factors?
Please enlighten us with the specific details.
Not handwaving. Verifiable data.
How often in life do we need to learn the lesson rather than listen to, and act on advice?
No you are not right, any high frequency inverter can be built with internal capacitors holding enough energy to simulate inertia of generation. Instead of switching off when frequency drops, it will “push up” frequency using this capacitor energy for some seconds.
“for some seconds”
That only provides for a few milliseconds of stability. If you lose major generators on the network how does a few milliseconds of stability help? You will still lose significant parts of the network.
Remember, you aren’t talking about super capacitors on a PC motherboard here. You are talking about capacitors large enough to provide megawatts of real power for a significant period of time. A capacitor bank that large is really nothing more than a *bomb* just waiting for a trigger to set it off.
No I meant seconds, how long can sustain turbine its energy output solely on inertia, I think it is seconds too.
I have solar system and I was thinking about using supercapacitors to store some energy to smooth peaks from battery.
1F capacitor can store around 300J of energy at 48V. 1kWh is 3.6MJ. So it is 8.3×10^-5 kWh, or 0.083Wh, or 300Ws. 100F capacitors are real, so at decent 10F at 48V you can supply 3kW for 1s.
Standard power of on grid inverters is 5-10kW. So it is quite possible to add into them energy buffer for 1-10s.
More practical is to use battery instead of capacitors.
The point where you start to discharge those capacitors their output voltage begins to drop exponentially. Just how much voltage drop will you see in that one second? It won’t stay at 48v very long.
I’ve built a lot of 100W transmitters and a few KW transmitters. The power supply capacitors won’t supply peak power for more than a few milliseconds when voice peaks happen. It’s one factor causing intermodulation distortion in transmitted signals.
What is the voltage rating on those 100F capacitors? 2V? 1V? What happens when you have to stack 12 of them in series to reach 48V? How do you equalize the voltage across each one so you don’t blow one in the stack? What does the equalization network do to the efficiency of the output from the stack? What is the total capacity of twelve 2V/100uF capacitors in series? It’s about 8F. So you would need six stacks of twelve series capacitors in parallel to reach 100F. How do you equalize the voltage and current for each stack? What does that do to the efficiency of the output?
It’s not nearly as simple as you make it sound. I’ll stick with my estimate of being able to maintain the network for just milliseconds, not seconds, minutes, days, or hours.
Large generators that sustain driver power loss are probably in the second range for frequency support, minutes at tops. I’ve never actually looked it up.
Same deal for a large rotating mass maintainingfrequency. The frequency range they need to maintain is very tight and a drop of 1Hz is already way out of spec. The goal is to stay within 0.15Hz of their target which is 50Hz in Australia.
Here is the spec
Tim, you are mostly right, this is why I added on the end that use of batteries is more practical.
Inverters are working in some DC input voltage range, for example 33V – 66V for 48V inverter, so you can use this range of capacitor capacity. Not only what is stored above or tightly around 48V.
Balancing of serial cells is already solved thing. In reality it is just one active balancer hooked up to all cells, which is balancing voltage of cells/capacitors to same voltage.
Same as batteries.
Whole system already exists in off grid/hybrid inverters, they can not work without battery to stabilize AC output.
You can use smallest battery which can provide needed current.
For example LTO Lithium Titanium Oxide batteries, can last 30 years and 30,000 cycles, providing current 30C, 30 times their capacity.
So for 48V 5kW system it is enough to have like 4Ah LTO battery to provide needed 100A.
4Ah 55V (average voltage of 24 cell LTO) is 220Wh, able to provide 2.6 minutes of 5kW.
Price of such batteries is somewhere around 120$. Quite small part of inverter price – 500 – 2000$
“Balancing of serial cells is already solved thing. In reality it is just one active balancer hooked up to all cells, which is balancing voltage of cells/capacitors to same voltage.”
I’m not sure you understand. Balancing cells in a battery is a different thing than balancing the charge state of multiple capacitors in series. What do you think an active device can do to control the voltage across a capacitor in a series string? The charge on each capacitor in a series string will be the same but the voltage across each one is based on Q/C. Capacitors with lower capacitance will charge to a higher voltage. The only way to control this is with an external control on each capacitor WHICH DECREASES EFFICIENCY of the series string. In lower power installations this is typically done with equal value resistors across each capacitor element thus you get efficiency losses in the resistive string plus limiting the maximum current the string can provide ( Q = VC so limiting voltage limits the charge thus limiting the maximum current). An active device just mimics this resistive string while still causing the same kinds of efficiency losses.
In essence the same thing happens when balancing battery cells. You limit the current capacity available by limiting the voltage available from each cell.
My whole point is that nothing is as simple as it first appears. There ain’t nuthin in this world that is free or easy – not even death or taxes.
And what happens at 2.7 minutes?
Correct.
I don’t think you have a good understanding of the transient response of large alternators to phase/frequency changes and short circuits. For the latter, an alternator may generate 5 to 10X normal current for a few cycles. This response can be used by protective relays to determine which circuit breaker needs to be opened to isolate the short circuit.
Another issue is that a large alternator will ride through short duration rapid changes in local frequency – which brings up the point of to define what exactly is the local frequency? Perhaps the simplest way to properly simulate a rotating machine is to put a 0.5 – 1.0 p.u. inductor between the inverter and the connection to the grid.
I have seen enough surprises in system modifications of various sorts, and repaired enough equipment, to know that when something unexpected occurs it isn’t a bad tactic to look at the last system repair or modification.
Trigger settings? Have a look back at the graph of the frequency transient resulting from the trip of 2,750MW of generation with varying amounts of inverter based resource (IBR) on the grid. What you can see is that it is difficult to detect a frequency droop quickly enough for a solid state grid former to aid stability with more DC to AC resource. With enough inverter based resource the droop is critical in few cycles of the AC system or even less. Delay is detrimental to stability, and more IBR makes smaller delay intolerable.
You say that solving these problems is just a matter of spending a small amount of money. Yet the appropriate metric would be dollars spent per unit of utility. Adding more storage, more dedicated grid voltage stiffness that is parasitic, more renewable generators that work at low capacity factor, more transmissions systems, all of which is only occasionally employed, to overcome the known shortcomings of the renewable grid, is called “poor use of capital”.
How euphemistically. I like the simple more direct statement.
“A waste of resources.”
This is not true. Grid forming inverters have an immediate response, less than a single cycle. Here’s an example of it in action from here
Yes most probably every high frequency inverter is basically creating sine wave from many immediate voltages. Which voltage should be next is counted for every step. It is only matter of computing power and algorithms implemented.
I am not at all expert on grid forming inverters, but it appears to me that they can only provide the required response if the electrical source they are running on can provide the voltage and current needed. This may not always be the case.
Grid forming inverters have an immediate response, less than a single cycle.
=======
There is a huge difference between E/0ms and E/20ms.
A spinning generator responds instantly. An inverter does not. The righting moment on the phase angle for kinetic energy is orders of magnitude greater than a high speed inverter, due to lag time
No it doesn’t. It “responds” as a result of phase difference and so it has by definition moved away from being in phase.
If it does not then why the talk of “triggers settings”? The trigger point is part of parameter adjustments.
The “phase difference” response is from the relative position of the main field as supplied by the rotor field windings with respect to the rotating field set by the stator. Large alternators almost always have damper windings (essentially a squirrel cage induction motor) that will respond to changes in frequency.
Yes, but not E/0ms as ferdperple implied.
Also as it’s a large mass, the response can’t be minimal or it’ll have no effect. I think there is some sort of assumption that oscillations only happen from disconnected corrections (eg synthetic inertia) but large masses can oscillate too.
Any resource covering transient conditions in power systems will state the same thing – an example is “equal area criteria” for power system stability. I’ve done experiments in a power systems lab simulating what happens when one line of a two line interconnect is disconnected and was impressive watching the alternator swing back and forth for a few cycles.
Another way to look at it: The synchronous generators act as low pass filters when responding to phase/frequency changes, where the governor responds changes in power demand on the order of numbers of seconds to minutes and letting inertia take rapid changes in demand.
It appears to me that the grid forming inverters did not do much to resolve the issue. It would require more to stabilize the actual frequency. This makes management much harder to control as a sequential reduction from several grid formers would require coordination to prevent an oscillation from occuring. One could island this system but that leaves the “grid” still vulnerable.
They may not have had any on their grid at all. Most inverters are not grid forming. I’m interested to see the technical diagnosis of the failure which should include the grid make-up.
Not talking about Spain. I’m talking about the graph you posted. The “grid forming inverters” did not bring the frequency down. Something missing here.
The graph was about response time. In that case something else as having a large impact and responded more slowly. Probably a large spinning mass.
Response time is immaterial if the device that is responding has no effect.
Nick, I agree that synchronising inverter frequencies to the local grid shouldn’t (isn’t?) be a technical hurdle. However, as usual, the devil’s in the detail. Depending on the technique used, a momentary dropout of grid supply (say an over- or under-voltage trip), may cause an inverter carrying a high current load to lose synchronisation, and provide an anomalous supply to the grid.
Sometimes the totally unexpected just occurs, and sometimes even after an event, nobody can quite figure out what happened.
In climate terms, the Younger Dryas, the Akkadian Collapse, 300 year megadroughts – many possible explanations, but nothing definite. The decline of the Anasazi was blamed on climate change, but there is evidence to show that societal changes were occurring before severe 13th century drought usually blamed.
Much speculation, but establishing past factual details is often difficult, if not impossible. Even in a fully deterministic physical system, determining the past from the present doesn’t work. A stationary ball on the ground came from somewhere. All the physical knowledge in the universe won’t help you to work out where it came from. A guess is as good as anything, I suppose.
The Anasazi were eventually fed up with the other tribes in the area, so they stopped having them for feasts.
Food for thought, indeed.
Sorry about that – the Divil made me do it.
You like Nick would be wrong the issue is grid resonance and you can’t do anything about it at a node. A node can’t even see the oscillation until it’s on it and it’s attempt to regulate will just as likely reinforce the resonance as dampen it.
Or maybe it isn’t? You sound very sure of yourself. Can you convince me why I should value your opinion more than my own?
From all the post comments here you are all clearly well out of your knowledge box. I am not here for a dick swinging contest about how much I know about this field and no I have no intention of convincing you lets just say there are reports that are due out and you will see.
Leon, you said –
In other words, you can’t even say what you think I am wrong about, is that it? Maybe you are disagreeing with “Sometimes the totally unexpected just occurs, and sometimes even after an event, nobody can quite figure out what happened.”?
But no, you refuse to commit yourself to anything specific – just muttering about “dick swinging”, for no reason at all.
I’m sure “reports” will ensue, and some of them may even be correct. A bit early to assume otherwise, wouldn’t you agree?
“In other words, you can’t even say what you think I am wrong about, is that it?”
No. He is not saying he can’t. He is saying he won’t.
You have a grid back online that is in that same state before the event there is a bit more urgency than sitting around discussing it. All the academic dropkicks and activist politicians and groupies get pushed to the curb and you actually get a panel of power engineers
https://www.acer.europa.eu/news/expert-panel-investigate-blackout-portugal-and-spain
Leon, from your link –
As I said, reports will ensue. I decline to nominate the outcome. You?
So Nick tell us what were the percentages of these “Synchronous condensers, solid state devices with battery, even flywheels driven by electric motors (with battery)” in place?
So much stupidity in one post it’s hard to deal with. We already know Nicks power generation credentials when he didn’t realize any electrical generator gets hot in a previous equally stupid post.
All Nicks answers create inertia nodes and they are connected to an electric network with LRC characteristics. It doesn’t solve the resonance issue it actually makes it much much worse and likely what caused the problem in Spain. The East Coast of Australia also have a nice resonance going and they are not sure what to do about it.
Old school FF generators run one of two or three ways to synchronize multiple generators as a basic guide start with say a data centre multi generator situation
https://woodstockpower.com/blog/generator-load-sharing-principle/
The key point to realize is the grid inertia is at the point of generation it isn’t spread around thru the network. If you have multiple generator sites it also preferred to directly tie them to each other. So that way the inertia of each site is tied to each other. That is the very model renewables don’t want to do and why they are running into resonance problems.
Nick: We can make a boat out of cement.
Me: Uhm..well in theory, but…
Nick: Its all a matter of buoyancy. The cement hull just has to be designed to displace more weight in water than the cement weighs.
Me: Wouldn’t it easier to build the boat from less dense materials? Like wood for example?
Nick: Well yes but cement has so many advantages over wood, like not having to cut down trees.
Me: But the dimensions of the boat would make it impractical.
Nick: Well we could add pontoons to the hull, and rows of propellers driven by electric motors on the bottom of the hull to add some upward thrust and we could also fly huge hot air balloons tethered all around the boat to provide more lift. All of these things have a low cost in comparison to the boat.
Me: You win Nick. There are some arguments so stupid that they are debunk proof. You win.
Of course you can make a boat out of cement
So what? You can make a boat out of steel, which is even denser than cement.
Hear that whooshing sound, Nick? That’s the point going over your head.
You can…
Concrete ships are built primarily with ferrocement (reinforced concrete) hulls, reinforced with steel bars.[1] This contrasts against more traditional materials, such as pure steel or wood.
From the link: “(Ferrocement ships require thick hulls, which results in either a larger cross-sectional area that hurts hydrodynamics, or leaves less space for cargo.)”
Of course, “ferrocement” isn’t just cement.
Again, you totally missed the point.
This ^
adding solar and wind to the grid could be considered Rube Goldbergesque
Not a good analogy though. There are plenty of cement (concrete actually) boats.
And a vast number of steel boats which is even denser than concrete.
Mr. H: Not a perfect analogy, but the Suzuki Samurai analogy is just about perfect. Mr. Stokes brushed past that one by ignoring it and insisting indirectly all the little fixes to road curves cost little compared to the total cost of the road, tires, cars, fuel, on and on. This last bit is iconic, Mr. Stokes can hide behind the fudge about “total cost of generation” to make ff generation’s costs seem infinite. An example- he’s trying to include the cost of mining coal now. Well, it was always included by the company selling electricity. He doesn’t go into the cost of mining coal, does he? Instead, it is vaguely higher than the small costs to buttress wind/solar, also not calculated. I doubt that it can be accurately calculated, which is a feature not a bug for Mr. Stokes.
If that analogy didn’t knock him off the stage, nothing will. Another reflexive defense of renewables on his part.
“More attention needed” to the stated goal of renewables.
It’s not reliable power generation. Rather it is to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere.
How’s that working for you?
It is interesting to note the level of CO2 increase looked to be levelling off around 1995 but the demand for renewables with all the attendant mining activity it involves, along with massive foundation concrete basses for wind turbines looks to have increased the steady CO2 increase from then on.
Who said the IPCC and COP didn’t have a meaningful impact on CO2?
The ultimate goal is to repair the weather/climate back to some optimum, by reducing CO2 in the atmosphere, via the use of renewable energy. No evidence that is working either.
No evidence that it could work, or what this mysterious “optimum” actually is.
The “optimum” is warmer, so why are we trying to fight warming?!
Ah, if only we could return to the fine “pre-industrial” (read: Little Ice Age) days of killing frosts, short crop growing seasons, crop failures, diseases, and mass starvation!/sarc
Without knowing the optimum (there isn’t one), how can it be determined the optimum was achieved.
This whole renewables, CO2 is a pollutant, has not end game. It is explicitly for draining resources until there are now funds left.
No evidence that the weather is getting “worse.”
No evidence that a warmer climate is “worse.”
TO THE CONTRARY, on the second count, and to some extent also the first.
Wind and solar are non-solutions to non-problems.
Nick,
it is ideology that drives government to try and run will so much fragile renewable generation on their grids.
It does nothing for climate and everything to make the country very much less commercially competitive and far more expensive for the populace.
They should not compromise grid security over their illogical wishes, we don’t need fragile grids.
Sticking plaster ‘solutions’ to fragile and short lived renewable generation is just going further down a dead end road, it’s simply unsustainable.
Yes it is UNSUSTAINABLE…ironic!”
“Sustainability” being about every 5th word out of the Eco-Nazis’ mouths!
Well, yes, and we know how to do it. Synchronous condensers, solid state devices with battery, even flywheels driven by electric motors (with battery). Probably another look at trigger seteings. It’s all doable. The cost is small in the overall picture of generation. Spain may not have kept up, but they will. More attention needed, not despair.
This is, yet again, classic: literary criticism masquerading as analysis. Various unquantified remedies are proposed in general terms, the costs are not quantified but are claimed to be small, there isn’t the slightest sketch of what an implemented system would look like, and the aim is to support the conclusion that W+S as large proportions of generation are both feasible and affordable.
And once again in another post we get the claim that W+S have no fuel cost. This is once again the usual logical fallacy/ The question is not whether the fuel is free. That is immaterial. The question is whether a whole system relying on this free fuel is cheaper and better than one where there is a cost of fuel.
The fuel was free for sailing ships too. But that was and is immaterial. The total cost (including the human welfare cost) of using this free fuel to transport goods around the world was and is far higher than that of using first coal and then oil as fuel. As a sailing ship operator you were always being underbid, it was impossible to make a profit.
The same would be true of W+S in a free market in energy generation.
If you want to make the argument that W+S is better and cheaper you need to compare two systems with the same outputs and the same parameters of reliability. And that means all the costs of deploying, using and servicing the W+S to deliver reliable dispatchable energy, not leaving half of them out as the usual LCOE estimates do.
I keep on saying, do it, show some numbers do a back of envelope estimation of what it will take to run a real country with real weather and demand patterns. I think the UK is a great one to take, the data is all out there readily available.
But you won’t, and neither will anyone else. My conclusion is that it cannot be done, and that you all know it. But you are all stuck in a loop of ideological fantasy chanting ‘but the fuel is free’. Yes, it is, but the other costs are the killers and the only way you will talk about them is to claim they are small or not significant, without ever saying what they are or how the systems compare over their life.
Of course it can be done, and is being done. Here is a report of Ireland installing a huge synchronous condenser, with what they say is the worlds biggest flywheel. It cost 85 million euros. They expect they will eventually need six of them. What does it cost to build a coal fired power station again? Let alone fuel cost.
Ireland? Take their population and compute how many would be required world wide. Ridiculous.
Phase locks loops installed in any of these devices require a stable, grid wide signal at their input. Inertia type generators supplies this signal today. As unreliable generation reach higher and higher penetration, this stable input disappears.
Telephone companies dealt with this situation as digital carrier systems reached high levels of penetration. They solved it by deploying highly accurate and stable timing network that was independent of the carrier systems.
The same thing could be done on the grid. Every inverter would be required to connect to this external timing network by some means. Frequency and phase would synchronized and remove the need for patchwork devices.
I know. Link them to the internet.
/sarc
Does this giant flywheel and synchronous condenser generate electricity, or simply manage it?
Manages.
In other words, this 85 million euro system just manages electricity generated elsewhere, so it is not at all comparable to something that actually generates electricity, like a coal fired power plant.
And that, definitely, will not affect the cost of generation. Amortization be damned.
/s
A synchronous condenser can only provide MOMENTARY real power and it doesn’t matter how large it is. IT HAS NO DRIVER. If it has a driver then it is a GENERATOR and not a synchronous condenser! Meaning you may as well build a coal fired plant if you want a true generator with a driver.
A synchronous condenser is meant to stabilize the network over *very* short term transients (e.g. a major short circuit) before fusing elements can isolate the transient cause. They are *not* meant to be backup generators to true generators. Synchronous condensers simply can’t provide synchronous real power to the grid over seconds, let alone minutes, hours, or days.
Nick is a dog with a frisbee. He clings to it and doesn’t see the car coming. Rube Goldberg’s point was it can be done, but it don’t make no sense when something simpler works better.
From your link:
Siemens Energy will provide the technology for a project in Ireland combining a synchronous condenser and a battery energy storage system (BESS) with a capacity of 160MWh.
160MWh is not impressive.
Irish peak demand is about 6GW. UK is about 48GW now, but is going to rise with electrification. I guess this means you would need 48+ for the UK? Or isn’t it linear? And what is the performance, by which I mean what does the system protect against? How much inertia does it give?
Then, independent issue, don’t forget the terawats of storage needed to deal with intermittency, and the over-capacity in wind that you need to recharge it. See Royal Society report repeatedly cited.
You have not met any of the arguments offered in the head post, and you keep on implicitly defending net zero in generation without ever being prepared to specify just how much capacity of what kind you think could cover the UK in its actual climate.
WindSolarCCGTNuclearBioInterconnectWhat you have to supply, depends on the year you pick, but lets take 2030, well over a 50GW peak, maybe 60GW, and on current plans you will have 90GW of wind and 45GW of solar. Its 4pm in January, dead calm, you are down to 10GW from the wind, and have been for days, often much lower. Solar is doing nothing, it being night, and has been doing minimal all month, since its winter.
Do you think this will keep the lights on? And if no, what would it take to keep them on? What’s so hard, all you have to do is give half a dozen numbers.
And don’t forget to provide for inertia!
If you don’t know how you are going to do it, you don’t know whether or not you can do it.
“160MWh is not impressive.”
How so? It is energy needed to fine tune the phase, not provide base power.
Yes, you might eventually need to spend about $4B euro for the whole UK. That is a tenth of the cost of just one new nuclear station (Hinkley C).
And exactly how does it maintain GRID frequency and phase with such a small available power? It would somehow need to be THE main source of power all the other generators would use, notice the word ‘would’, that is different than could.
And I cannot tell, from your link, just what this huge synchronous condenser with the world’s largest flywheel delivers in performance.
They would supposedly need 6 of them. But with what assumptions, and delivering what, exactly? Protecting against what kinds of moves of frequency or losses of power?
They do just what the flywheels on traditional generators do.
But you do realize that as soon as the motive supply disappears the flywheel begins slowing down, right?
Of course they supply enough power to overcome frictional losses and maintain speed.
You have no clue! Exactly WHAT device supplies power to overcome frictional losses? What occurs when that device dies.
You don’t seem to understand that the grid supplies power and when the grid dies, so does the flywheel. It isn’t a perpetual machine.
Get your hotdogs ready and wait for the fire.
There’s also an energy cost for running a synchronous condenser, figure MW usage of 1 to 2% of the MVA rating at best. This comes for free with a rotating generator.
I don’t think some of these folks realize the size of these rotating masses. Think of a really large freight railroad engine with a shaft through it. It neither speeds up or loses speed very quickly.
Nick does not yet know that Lazards have finally admitted that their LCOE left out the cost of firming the intermittency of wind and solar, that is the cost to provide power when there is not enough wind or sun to meet load demand.
They also have acknowledged that their assumed life of a new gas plant was only 20 years when 30 – 40 is often the case.
It only took them 16 years but it looks like it will take Nick much longer
aka total life cycle costs of ownership.
“Well, yes, and we know how to do it. Synchronous condensers, solid state devices with battery, even flywheels driven by electric motors (with battery).”
Synchronous condensers and flywheels can only provide momentary real power to the network since they are not true generators. They are meant solely to provide *very* short term frequency stability to the network in the case of something like a large short circuit before fusing elements can react to isolate the short circuit.
Since synchronous condensers and flywheels are not true generators they simply cannot provide an answer for the loss of actual generators. Unless true generators can be brought online in milliseconds to actually support the frequency stability of the network the network *will* suffer the loss of frequency stability with results like Spain just saw.
As for “electric motors (with batteries), exactly how do you synch that electric motor to the proper frequency when it is being driven by a battery? What you have described with this *is* nothing more than a generator. Do you know long it takes to bring a generator on line from idle as far as frequency stability is concerned? If you are going to add a lot of small synchronous generators to the network why not just add a few big ones? It would be much less expensive from a maintenance point of view.
What is surprising is that they have not attempted the SV/WTG generators powering batteries powering electric motor/generators that emulate what is seen is diesel electric vehicles.
This does not solve the problem of night and clouds and no wind, of course, but it does provide the same level of stability as traditional energy generators.
One can adjust the voltage and current to tune the motor that drives the generator and get feedback from the lines to complete the control loop.
Is it financially viable? Hell if I know. Is it technically feasible. Yes.
However, when the wind goes away and the sun sets, you have a limited time until a system shutdown due to lack of primary energy.
Stokes, you get more ridiculous every day.
Prove it. Point to one place that has done it.
Have you ever taken a course in electrical engineering or power generation?
Your ignorance is astounding even for you.
Empty vessels make the most noise.
Nick. Let’s go back 15 years or so. I would be predicting that replacing conventional tehnology in Spain and Portugal with inverter based genertion would lead to complications because the new elements don’t support the grid as well. You and/or those like you would be telling me about synchronous conensors, flyweels, batteries and solid state devices. (My first posting https://judithcurry.com/2014/10/22/myths-and-realities-of-renewable-energy/ described how wind and solar might theoretically could be made reliable with such devices). But my arguement then and now is that using those tools is complicated, challenging and expensive. Those pursuing heavy inverter based resources additions initially can’t tell the truth about those costs and once underway they don’t and can’t spend that kind of money. Impossible is a big word. I don’t say things are impossible – but probably impracticle, likely unacheivable, at least not a good plan……
“ But my arguement then and now is that using those tools is complicated, challenging and expensive.”
Running a power grid is complicated, challenging and expensive, and always has been. But we manage.
What are your power engineering qualifications, Nick?
Do you know what anti-islanding is?
“The recent blackout should serve as a wake-up call for policy makers. If it doesn’t, more events will follow, with increasingly severe consequences.”
Seems like the “wake-up” call has been made repeatably — while policy makers hit the snooze button. Nevertheless, time, money, and resources are not over-night available. More events are now built in. Be prepared to eat the ice cream before it goes from soft to liquid!
Either that or they follow the same illogic that Nick uses and/or have advisors that read Nick’s posts.
Typical responses to “why did our electricity fail” from the grid operators who went from stone cold reliability to intermittent blackouts with the renewables. And they think the people don’t know why?
There is a much better article here, from someone actually in Spain, and with much more detil about the sequence of events. Still no cause established, but one event alomg the way was the sudden loss of solar generation, which seems to have been switched off from a central source. The sun was still shining. It seems like defective control software.
This came after the nuclear shutdown, which removed a lot of spinning inertia from the grid.
Was that before or after the solar shut down? Your reference doesn’t say that.
“A few minutes before the outage, fluctuations were observed in the grid, and there was a spike in wind power generation, which had been very low until then. France suddenly stopped importing electricity from Spain, perhaps because it detected a problem in the peninsular grid, and this deepened the imbalance between supply and demand.
At that point, the few operating nuclear power plants received an overload signal. In accordance with protocol, control rods were inserted and they were automatically shut down.
Ergo Nuclear was not the cause, but an effect.
The solar shutdown was at 12.33 pm. They say:
“At 12:33 there was little by way of stable source base in the Spanish grid and, in addition, the few nuclear power plants that were operating had been switched off when they detected a surge in the grid. Hydroelectric facilities were at the limit of their regulation capacity, and no provision had been made for the availability of gas-fired plants.”
Nuclear had been about 10% of generation. So inertia was knocked out; it should have been available.
Wow! So in order to support your fantasies of renewable energy, reliable energy must be constantly available, but not running, ie running at a massive loss to support your ‘free’ energy.
Got it.
So before the outage there was a spike in wind power, France detected a problem in the Peninsula grid, and at that point, after all of the above, the reactors shut down, BUT it was the reactors fault. OK Got it.
That implicitly admits the problem was INERTIA.
Should have been available? That is a consequence of closing gas, coal, and nuclear plants that COULD HAVE been available. Those closings were due to adding W&S.
Nick, the introduction of wind & solar to the utility scale electrical supply market was the modern-day repeat of Ford’s introduction of the Edsel model (aka unrivalled “lemon”).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edsel
The problem started minutes earlier they already has oscillations of approximately 0.15 Hz on the system all it needed was a large impulse to trigger it to grow which was provided by the solar farm disconnecting.
They have had the issue before but got lucky not to have a large impulse
https://eepublicdownloads.entsoe.eu/clean-documents/SOC%20documents/Regional_Groups_Continental_Europe/2017/CE_inter-area_oscillations_Dec_1st_2016_PUBLIC_V7.pdf
They haven’t fixed it and aren’t sure what to do about and yes it could happen again.
The reports are due out tomorrow
These wide area oscillations, as your link makes clear, are the result of phase lags in transmission over long distances, as in interconnectors. It has nothing to do with renewables. But the interconnector to France closed down at a very early stage, well before the solar shutdown. Cutting off France itself provided a jolt to the system, since France was importing a lot at the time.
I can’t recall the problems of instability and resonance ever occurring before Ruinables were added to electricity grids. Any idea why that should be?
They most certainly did but modern grids (pre renewables) didn’t suffer from them as we’d learned many hard lessons in the past and configured the grids to be resilient.
You still haven’t learnt how to control them Spain and East coast Australia have them. I can’t speak for other countries but i would be surprised if it stopped there.
Renewables add complexity to the grid that isn’t yet well understood. There are plenty of lessons to be learned between now and renewable based grid stability.
“Renewable based” and “grid stability” are antithetical to one another.
Great you got the message they are wide area oscillations so you can read and now you just need to read WHY THEY ARE CONNECTED TO RENEWABLES.
The answer is obvious but lets do layman answer for you. Conventional generation is on a few places on the grid and the inertia is at those points. Renewables comes onto the grid all along it and solar on a house is the worst. Then you are suggesting to dampen them down with synthetic inertia at node points. Good luck with that 🙂
There are even papers on the problem by power engineers from Spain if you care to look instead of spreading misinformation
https://repositorio.uloyola.es/bitstream/handle/20.500.12412/918/Grid%20resonance%20attenuation%20in%20long%20lines%20by%20using%20renewable%20energy%20sources.pdf?
The inverters use phase locks loops to control frequency and phase. Those PLL’s require a stable input frequency in order to synchronize their frequency and phase. The grid supplies the input signal. Without inertia to maintain those two items, the system will attempt to find its own baseline, which of course is a losing battle with hundreds of asynchronous inverters all competing.
Someone who actually understands the technical basis of the problem and it doesn’t matter if it’s inverters or synthetic inertia systems. Yep the PLL have to be able to go faster or slower to aquire lock but when the grid itself gets resonance you have an issue.
Phase changes in power systems are driven by imbalances in supply/demand at the various nodes on the system. Inertia slows down the phase changes and makes sensing and control easier.
AEMO has done investigations on the impact of solar inverters.
The paper can be found here
The Executive summary is
So this means there are two conditions under which the solar inverters will trip. Either no grid signal at all or a grid signal that is way outside the spec for the grid and under those conditions the large generators have tripped out anyway, which would lead to the solar inverters to disconnect.
Paper here
Nuclear was generating ~ 10% of the electricity, so nuclear could not have provided more than 10% of the rotating inertia.
Not a stable system if it can’t handle a delta of only 10%.
No nuclear, hydro and gas were providing each about a third.
The very fact that these systems are enormously complex is in itself a failure of policy
This unavoidable level of complexity was of course know from the outset, and should have led to the total abandonment of the idea
We know why that didn’t happen, this is purely ideological or politically expedient or involves financial interests
We can’t now expect those very same people to admit that the problem was caused by their decisions
They will use the vast propaganda machinery at their disposal to obfuscate, divert, conceal and otherwise hoodwink the public
While this works on a majority, there is now a vocal and growing minority of people who have seen through the lies
This is all it takes for any kind of revolution
There is a fellow on X explaining that Spain isn’t doing it right. He points to South Australia (2 million people), which has lots of solar, including rooftop, and they are just proving it can be done.
I checked Grok. They use NG for 24% of their electricity and just built two new peaker plants.They have the highest electricity rates in Australia. No good estimate of how much the atmospheric CO2 will be lowered by their efforts,though. South Australia emits 0.08% of global CO2 emissions. I think Grok used the term “negligible” (.02ppm).
And South Australia export their high costs to Victoria. The Victorian grid is about 5 times the size of SA. When SA was islanded a couple of years ago, the gas plants ran continuously and the wind farms shut down because they could not bear the high cost of FRAS needed after the high inertia generators in Victoria were no longer available to ride on. The cost of FRAS was more than the wholesale price of the energy. The SA battery recovered most of its capital cost in 2 weeks meeting the 5 second ramp component of FRAS.
If SA was an isolated grid the cost would be much higher than it currently is. If you wade through the Q1 2020 report to figure 29 you see the massive increase in FCAS costs. This increase was primarily due to SA slanging for just two weeks.
https://aemo.com.au/-/media/files/major-publications/qed/2020/qed-q1-2020.pdf?la=en
If the Climate Scammers go to where they belong (prison) then the grid scale wind and solar will disappear as the visible subsidies dry up and the hard to see ones get exposed.
More grid collapses with accelerate the return to sanity. There is a place for solar power but it is not connected to an existing grid. I doubt there is any good reason for wind turbines given their very low energy density, long wind droughts and avian destruction.. Humans need to cherish wild bird life not mince them.
“They have the highest electricity rates in Australia.”
In fact, their wholesale prices are mid-range, above Vic and Tas, but below the coal states of NSW and Qld. Retail costs are higher because of the small market and a wide area to cover (and also a ripoff).
Western Australia isn’t on the graph I know because we aren’t on the National Grid but really they don’t want you to see it 🙂
You are using wholesale prices. I was quoting retail prices from Grok.
Here is the entire reply from Grok on South Australia’s electricity pricing. I think it is clear now that wind/solar can sell cheap because subsidies and free fuel, but the grid has to spend a lot of money to accommodate renewables because of their intermittent nature. Those increased costs make electricity from the grid more expensive. Stop gaslighting!
Wholesale Prices:
Retail Prices:
And of retail Grok only says that SA had highest retail prices in 2017, back when they were just giving up very expensive coal.
Since you have recent wholesale data, do you have recent retail prices?
Why did you offer wholesale prices as proof of anything. The retail price is 2 to 5x the cost of wholesale, according to Grok. We would all love to pay wholesale. You tried to mislead. This is typical of green advocates.
Wholesale represents the difference between generation types. Retail reflects add-ons which would be the same whatever the source of power.
You keep gaslighting.
I notice you will not proved retail pricing.
Building new transmission lines for solar/wind, and FCAS payments go into the bill. Here in Maryland, USA, Capacity payments increased 800% this year. That goes right onto the retail price.
You are so misleading, going forward I will no longer bother to read anything you post.
Let’s acknowledge – rent-seeking – the real culprit.
LCOE discounting clears loans, guaranteed by governments, in 10-15 years – before the systems need replacement. Then, new systems with new guaranteed loans have to replace the old – forever while requiring twice as many loans every 20 years to meet energy demand growth – great banking schemes! They win, you lose.
Whether the energy system works well or is sustainable is tertiary, or lower, in concern. The politicians and elite get theirs out early and have their own power systems. The middle class is impoverished. Oligarchies reign.
LCOE- meaning – Lets Collect Ours Early, justifies the construction of short-lived energy systems; last year reaching in all aspects – 2 $trillion, according to Bloomberg NEF, and this year; double that again
Soon, global bankruptcy will follow.
Engineers know the problems, but are prevented from taking corrective actions due to COSTS (rent-seeking), so, for example, rotational inertia is replaced with short-lived inverters run at saturation, limiting PV and wind turbine output below peak design, providing ‘pseudo-inertia to simulate ‘ride-through. Coupled to load followers (CCGT), the system survives – to a point. The exceptions are always- “extreme climate induced excursions” – when collapse happens – the media will scream. This scenario can be and has been milked for a decade already as the system teeters ever closer to repeated disaster. Chile, Feb 26, 2025, Spain and Portugal, 26 Apr. 2025, repeated Dunkelflaute last winter. Who next trips on their own petard? Many others are following soon. Meanwhile, the smart money is enjoying Biarritz.
Just FYI, I don’t read your posts on principle. Stop using bold for everything, it detracts from using bold to highlight important points.
Same.
I honestly thought you’d finally lost your bold ink last time you commented. Ah well…
Obviously, the “genius” who cunningly designed his petard so that it didn’t hoist anyone, but inflicted injury by tripping the intended victim. Should have read his Shakespeare properly.
Probably a climate scientist.
The pain in Spain will stay the same, regardless what or whom they blame.
Well since the obvious is not being discussed nor mentioned by the lefty government and the lefty overlord UE continues pushing for even more eco BS all the left leaning gullible sheep will follow the herd into the next and hopefully bigger disaster. Who said Spain is lacking “inertia”? I observe lot’s of it and the wall to hit as well 🤣.
I like the idea that the idiodic left is the devil’s work, making life on earth a true living hell. Well they’re really good at it, wait for pitchfork time lol.
Yes I’ve seen the published loads and and analysis leading up to the failure and there was another event 1.5s (that was handed) before the actual failure. So it looks like a double failure of sorts. Early days though…
Also there is a distinct lack of discussion on synthetic inertia to stabilise grids. Not surprising though. Most people don’t even know it’s a thing yet.
Yeah I am sure the power engineers in Spain didn’t know what synthetic inertia is 🙂
Look I am sure they will be on the phone to you shortly so you can fix it for them.
In my home state in Western Australia we have a little issue with roof top solar causing grid instability as well. This is the PR from the grid operator
https://www.synergy.net.au/Blog/2021/10/How-low-load-is-challenging-WAs-energy-system
So we need you to come and solve it for us ASAP please because you are the man.
Leon, so your solution is a big battery? Apparently you need someone to fix problems that the experts employed by your grid operator can’t. Get onto your grid operator, and suggest that they employ people who know what they are doing.
They have your phone number, I suppose. I’m sure you will get a call if you are as knowledgeable as you imply.
Well the best solution (IMO) is grid scale batteries that can grid form because they help stabilise the grid.
But from your link, the strategy takes you to a site where the headline article recommends…
WA Government to offer rebates for residential batteries
Residential batteries are also good for WA’s situation of too much solar supply.
Replying to myself… Further down in the article from Leon’s link is the strategy of adding a grid scale battery. All good, they’re doing both.
And replying to myself once more to confirm the grid scale battery is intended to provide synthetic inertia from the link above…
You are missing the story or more like just taking what reinforces your view.
We have a mandate to go further but we can’t because we can’t stabilize the grid currently we have one grid battery but we will need four more to be built
https://minister.dcceew.gov.au/bowen/media-releases/more-mega-batteries-wa-power-homes-day-and-night
There is still lots of uncertainty if it will work and likely the batteries will need to be all synced via a network. That is why we only built one first but no one is singing about it and we have a secret report on it floating about the flatline why the real engineers try to get a plan
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/mar/03/premier-claims-wa-a-renewable-energy-powerhouse-but-leaked-document-shows-wind-and-solar-projects-have-stalled
We are only a small state of 3Million so a nation such Spain with 50 Million would need either much much bigger or 17 of these things that is all assuming it works.
At the moment our grid is still dangerously unstable to commit to what to do next. They were half expecting it to crash hence the PR page on the utility.
Like Nick you want to have your say and that is fine but you aren’t experts and that is blatantly obvious from your understanding.
You say
I quoted from your link meanwhile you come back with
And that article was mainly about criticism of government around the speed at which implementation was happening but confirmed the rooftop solar was progressing. So yeah. I’m the one reading stuff into it apparently.
Nope you still aren’t getting it, rooftop solar is being installed but it can’t be used. Under the new rules as of 2022 all installed solar must be able to be turned off by the grid operator.
https://www.wa.gov.au/organisation/energy-policy-wa/information-consumers-emergency-solar-management
Next they cut the feed in tariff and went around and bought back all the old 10 year feed in tariff contracts
https://www.wa.gov.au/organisation/energy-policy-wa/energy-buyback-schemes
You get the story we don’t want anymore solar, we can’t use it but politically we can’t ban it so the compromise is to try and suppress it. Specifically make the feed in tariff so low to not be a driver but high enough to try and keep the grants coming in from the feds 🙂
Western Australia can’t possibly make net zero by 2050 but it’s federal policy so you just pretend you can and hope for a miracle.
The great unwinding. Users of the parliamentary (Westminster, London, the seat of government for the UK) estate have been informed that from tomorrow they won’t be able to charge their electric vehicles in New Palace Yard’s underground car park.
The charging points are due to be removed on health and safety grounds following a review by the Safety and Fire teams, and in consultation with the Chair of the Administration Committee.
Guy Fawkes would be upset about that…
Wind and Solar have a place: In the trash heap of history.
This is the only thing I disagree with.
They have a “place,” it’s called OFF-GRID use. Connecting this crap to the grid will only make the grid less reliable and more expensive. It “achieves” nothing else.
Are 60 hertz systems more susceptible to blackouts than 50 hertz systems?
Edmund Burke “Two Letters on the Proposals for Peace with the Regicide Directory”
“Edge City: Life on the New Frontier” By Joel Garreau (1992) p. 453
A former co-worker of mine observed on occasion:
Here is a comment I posted to the article as it appears on Climate Etc in reply to Charles k May and Fernando L:
Charles k May: “Instead of employing inverters why don’t they use motor-generators to furnish power? You will now have the inertia and a clean power source. ….. “
Fernando L: “An AC motor-DC generator combination is feasible, but it costs too much.”
As it concerns the Net Zero transition, money is no object. The transition into a wind and solar future is a decision being made by politicians who don’t care what it will cost.
The Chinese will happily sell these politicians all the wind turbines, all the solar panels, all the batteries, all the control systems, and all the DC-AC motor-generator combinations
needed to make all these various renewable energy systems work together, technically at least.
If the price of electricity doubles or triples as a consequence, the politicians don’t care.
And one reason why the politicians don’t care is that if the recent election in Ozonia a.k.a. Australia is any indication, the political constituencies which voted these politicians into office don’t care either.
For me, the words inertia and intermittency don’t fully describe the situation. The rotating synchronous machines that I am familiar with all have prime movers that can throttle up and down to meet load demand fluctuations. Having less and less of these as a percent of generation makes maintaining sync all the more difficult. The conventional machines have to provide all of the accommodation.
Solar has zero ability to do this and wind is very limited.
Physics prevents replacing kinetic energy with inverters.
Grid stability depends on Energy/Time (E/T). For a spinning Generator, T approaches 0 about the phase angle, yielding near infinite phase correction. Inverters in contrast have a deadband about the phase angle due to sensor and electronics response time. By the time an inverter can react, T is much larger than 0, and the righting force is proportionally smaller. Worse still, the lag allows oscillation about the dead-band, similar to worn steering in a car causes the vehicle to wander. This wander is frequency Instability built into the system.
Response is plenty fast enough. As soon as the phases vary, it’s detectable and electronics are very fast. The response is the tricky thing to optimally get right but it’s not an insurmountable problem by any means. It’s going to take some failures and learnings along the way.
In an AC supply there is a voltage phase and a current phase. These both must be synchronized otherwise the grid delivers little power, because watts = voltage x current.
Instead the power simply reflects back and forth within the grid due to reactance and power factor. The problem is that capacitance sets the voltage phase and inductance sets the current phase, and every piece of equipment, every wire, every transformer, every motor, every generator, every inverter added or removed changes these values.
Wholesale electricity typicaly averages $35/mwh. This is a spot market where supply and demand are automaticallt balanced by price.
Wind and solar destabilize the market because they are paid about $75/mwh regardless of demand. This drives all other producers out of the market, leading to higher prices to the consumer along with brown outs and blackouts.
When doing a failure investigation, of which I have been called on many times to perform, it is critical to separate the trigger from the root cause.
In every one of those, it was a dogfight to get people to admit the root cause was not the trigger.
One was a payload system power failure causing an expensive loss. The payload experiments did not happen.
The trigger was a short in a cable. The root cause was a bad power system design.
Two flaws were identified. First,, the battery was left in test mode, meaning it automatically shut down if it encountered an excessive current draw. The test mode did not automatically clear. The flight mode would have.
The second was a violation of mission reliability. Power was routed through two separation planes, unprotected. Protection is called dead facing. Basically it means if there is a short, the short is blocked from affecting upper sections of the vehicle systems.
I addressed this to the agency’s lead systems engineer and pointed out that 10 years prior he had taught me about dead facing. He made certain the final report got it right.
The same applies here. There were several triggers, but they are not the root cause of the blackout. The root cause of the blackout was a flawed power system design.
The world has had AC power grids for a long time. Power engineers know what works and how to do it right. Those lessons learned were not applied when the intermittent power sources were added.
End of story.
Re the Chile blackout briefly mentioned here, an exhaustive 400-page report was finally produced by the Chile’s National Electric Coordinator. https://www.coordinador.cl/ (ironically offline as I write)
The trigger event was the inadvertent and unauthorized operation of protection systems that simultaneously disconnected two 500kV lines feeding around 1.8 GW of power from the North towards Central Chile, cutting the country into two islands.
Unfortunately there wasn’t enough generating capacity online in the southern section at that time to make up the shortfall, and the resultant frequency drop (to 47.5Hz), caused the online generators to activate their protections, and the whole grid cascaded down.
The Northern, much less populated island also shut down due to over-frequency, over-voltage conditions caused by the sudden disconnection of the Southern load.
Regardless of the energy mixes involved it shows how fragile grid systems can be if some amount of redundancy isn’t built in, especially in a earthquake-prone country like Chile.
Trigger versus root cause.
Nothing, of course, can be made perfect. Continuous improvement is key. One would hope they would learn and improve the system.
Something to note is that Spain has significant hydro power. Hydro is included in the total percentage “renewable” but is synchronous spinning power. So when one thinks of how high the percentage of unreliables in use, you can’t use the percentage of “renewables”. The percentage of the power generation that is wind/solar at the time of failure is less than the percentage of “renewables.”
From a quick check, hydro is Spain is between 1/3 and 1/2 the total of wind/solar.
From chatGPT:
Harmonic resonance in an AC grid over an interconnect is typically caused by:
1. Capacitive elements (e.g., long transmission lines, capacitor banks) interacting with
2. Inductive elements (e.g., transformers, reactors, transmission lines),
3. At a frequency where their impedances cancel (resonant frequency),
4. Allowing harmonic currents (from nonlinear loads or inverters) to amplify,
5. Especially across weak interconnects (low short-circuit capacity), where damping is low.
This can lead to voltage distortion, equipment damage, or grid instability.
The only documented damage that Actual Idiocy unearthed for me was –
By the way, your ChatGPT output is so vague as to be useless.
What does that even mean? That’s about as meaningless as “Climate feedback from H2O”!
“Harmonic resonance” sounds sciency, but means nothing. AI is overhyped.
Money quote:
> There are suggestions that intermittents could better mimic conventional generation, but it would incur significant costs. ….Building a surplus of renewable resources to sit idle waiting to back each other up and respond as needed is economically implausible at this time.
I doubt it is even technically possible at this time or any time in the reasonable future. Obviously redundancies in wind or solar cannot be co-located with existing sources so in addition to increased backstop capacity, long distance TIE lines would be required.
I suppose we could go back to DC generation and transmission. Each house would have an inverter to supply AC to all our appliances. Aside from the enormous cost and less efficient transmission, what could go wrong?
High voltage DC could minimize resistance losses in the distribution network. But that also means that the transmission lines must be much better maintained to prevent parasitic losses from high resistance paths at every support structure. It also means that in residential distribution the use of much higher voltages will be required thus increasing the danger to the public.