Meanwhile, the Iron Law of Electricity prevailed in Portugal’s recent election, as those who enjoy civilized living went to the polls and picked a “far-right” candidate.
Posted by Leslie Eastman
Legal Insurrection readers will recall that a sudden and unprecedented power outage struck the entire Iberian Peninsula in late April, plunging nearly all of Spain and Portugal into darkness for several hours.
The blackout, one of the largest in recent European history, also briefly affected parts of southern France and Andorra. Essential services, public transportation, telecommunications, and financial systems were severely disrupted. At least eight deaths have been linked to outage-related incidents.
The blackout was triggered by a rapid, cascading failure in the grid that resulted in the loss of about 60% of Spain’s electricity supply within seconds. The event was linked to the grid’s inability to handle the variability and intermittency of renewables, especially solar and wind, without sufficient backup from more stable sources like gas or nuclear power.
Now, in the aftermath of this blackout that could have been much worse, Spain has significantly increased its reliance on natural gas-fired power plants to stabilize its electricity grid. This strategic shift is the direct result of concerns about the grid’s ability to handle high levels of renewable energy, particularly solar and wind, which accounted for a substantial share of generation during the outage.
The output of combined-cycle gas turbines [CCGT], a more steady generation technology than solar, jumped 37% in the two weeks after the outage, compared with the two weeks prior, data from power grid operator Red Electrica show. Their average share of Spain’s power mix increased to 18% from about 12%.
…CCGTs can be a source of around-the-clock generation, and turbines also provide kinetic energy to the grid, a key element needed to keep the network stable. The day after the blackout, their output soared to 216 gigawatt-hours, a 157% jump compared to the day before the outage, and over three times more than two days before.
Although the grid operator’s mandate is to meet demand at the lowest possible cost, it can also modify the generation mix to maintain an “adequate voltage profile,” Red Electrica said.
The use of CCGTs is probably adding between €5 and €10 per megawatt-hours to costs, according to Javier Revuelta, senior principal at energy consultancy AFRY AB, who estimates that as many as 2 gigawatts of extra gas-fired capacity is being added daily to the Spanish mix compared to the days before the blackout.
The Blooberg article cited above focuses on the increased cost of gas-supplied energy. However, as the people of the Iberian Peninsula discovered, having electricity when you need it (especially after dark) is priceless.
Reliable energy sources are a treasure, and I strongly suspect that is why the recent election in Portugal went as it did.
Portugal’s far-right Chega won a record vote share in Sunday’s snap election and was vying to become the main opposition party as the ruling centre-right Democratic Alliance (AD) again fell short of a majority needed to end a long period of instability.
Prime Minister Luis Montenegro hailed the result as a vote of confidence in his AD which won most seats in parliament.
By “far-right”, what is actually meant is Portuguese who love their country and enjoy civilized living.
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What I found amazing about the Spain-Portugal blackout was the speed with which power was restored. It seems that these countries have some very capable grid system operators. Now if only the politicians would listen to them.
They were greatly aided by being able to tap into the high inertia French grid to get them started. Also helpful was extensive hydro power which is much more tolerant of blackstart conditions. CCGT could then be added to take more load. Renewables were only allowed back on once there was stable supply established. Solar remained somewhat curtailed.
If those connections were HVDC, zero synchronous rotational inertia was transferred.
Most land transmission lines,e.g. France to Spain – are AC. Is that not so? Undersea connections are DC, and then, using inverters, converted to AC for the grid.
Theres 8 or 9 interconnectors most are AC. The newer and planned ones with higher capacity are DC
There is 1.4GW of AC capacity and 1.4GW of HVDC.
“If?”
Thanks for that. I seem to remember the cities were only restarted in the middle of the night so as to match the demand when it was was lowest.
While it was not days or weeks it was several hours.
Comparatively speaking it was speedy. In absolute terms for those stuck in elevators or who could not get home, I doubt speedy is a good choice.
It was worse than that for some. 8 lives documented lost, plus quite a few injured.
Lots of lives were saved, due to the normal rate of accidents being much less during a shut down. Most people were walking or navel gazing
Actually, it was easy, because the quick-starting CCGTs were fueled, staffed, in good working order, ready to start
But, when a grid is down, it has to be brought back in small pieces at a time.
If it is done too quickly, the whole thing just collapses again.
That is the reason grids are made up of pieces, each of which must be autonomous regarding reliable, traditional power plants.
If certain grid pieces have too much solar, then, near noon time, all hell can break loose, if a hick-up occur, as they did in Spain/Portugal.
S/P, infatuated with solar, subsidized it to the hill, liberties were taken, pros were not listened to, politicians should be keel-hauled.
There would have been no blackout, if at least 10,000 MW of quick-starting CCGTs had been on hot standby, meaning their generators spinning at 3600 RPM, but providing no power to the grid.
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If a solar hick-up would occur, some of that CCGT MW capacity would immediately, within seconds, provide power to the grid to offset the voltage drop of the hick-up.
Of course, such a set up might not be woke correct with the enviros, but screw them.
THE SHOW MUST GO ON.
Thats ideal, 10GW, but likely uneconomic. The standby reserves have been getter lower and lower as a % of the demand load as the interconnections with even bigger grids occur We are talking 2-3% for say the Iberian peninsula
Spinning at 3600 rpm would have been a disaster. European grids operate at 50Hz.
Grids operate with cover for the largest single infeed loss as reserve. In Spain’s case that is probably 1.4GW for the HVDC interconnector with France although that was exporting well below capacity. Probably the fastest acting reserve is their hydro and pumped hydro. However it also needs to be in the right place. No use having it where it will simply overload transmission lines because the trip was at the other end of the country.
3000 rpm
Thank you for your astute input.
The reserve rule was set at least 60 years ago, when no wind and solar.
I started in the power industry in 1963
Worked on grid fault analysis and segmenting to reduce cost and increase reliability.
Unreliable wind and solar changed the game.
The more wind and solar, the shakier the edifice.
Read my below comments
Good for you. I have been reading as much as I can mainly from Spanish sources about what actually happened. ENTSO-E reported:
The main steps of the restoration process were the following:
ENTSO-E expert panel initiates the investigation into the causes of Iberian blackout
The above few steps likely are the main ones
There are many other steps not reported by ENTSO-E
A plant with black start capability has enough emergency power to start up a plant so it operates at 3000 rpm, but does not feed into the grid; Hot Synchronous Standby Mode.
Only after a signal from the grid operator to the plant is one or more segments activated.
Per Bloomberg, ‘[t]he use of CCGTs is probably adding between €5 and €10 per megawatt-hours to costs…’
A textbook example of the broken window fallacy, as introduced in Bastiat’s essay, ‘What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen’.
If they stop the practice of paying wind farms for electricity that isn’t used – something which they do not do for gas coal or nuclear – then there should be no increase at all. Unfortunately, the capital outlay on wind and solar cannot be recouped.
They don’t pay for curtailment in Spain: it is simply mandated by the grid. Historically it has been a limited problem with balancing via exports and pumped storage allowing subsidy harvest to continue. However the generous solar subsidies enacted in recent times and the energy crisis have led to a huge upsurge in PV installations and the current problems,
The image without having to click on it:
If a-to-z costs are considered, using unsubsidized, gas-fired CCGTs would cost 6 c/kWh, whereas the highly subsidized, regulation-favored, government-coddled solar systems would cost at least 15 c/kWh, although the “reported” cost, for PR purposes, is less than 6 c/kWh
Nobody is officially allowed to do the accounting, because that would expose a Europe wide scam, that enriches the moneyed elites, at the expense of all others.
Those elites want to keep the gravy train going no matter what the cost of brainwashing the public
Expensive Wind and Solar Systems
The over-taxed, over-regulated taxpayers and ratepayers are paying at very high rates, c/kWh, for: 1) electricity and 2) Heat Pump heating/cooling, and 3) EV driving.
There is no way such high-cost electricity will increase standards of living and increase the real GDP.
Businesses and skilled people will move to low-energy-cost states.
These businesses and people are tired of paying for:
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1) highly subsidized, expensive wind/solar systems that disturb the grid with weather-dependent, variable, intermittent electricity, which has caused expensive brownouts/blackouts, as in Spain/Portugal, and many other places, over the years.
2) grid expansion to connect all these far-flung wind/solar systems to the grid,
3) grid reinforcements to ensure the grids do not crash during periods with higher levels of wind/solar power
.
In cases of too much wind/solar power, it needs to be curtailed.
Owners still get paid for what they could have produced.
In cases of too little wind/solar power, reliable, traditional plants need to increase outputs to meet demand, on a less than minute-by-minute basis, 24/7/365; wind and solar systems do not qualify.
Synchronous Inertia Serves to Stabilize the Grid
Closing down traditional plants (nuclear, gas, coal, hydro), with rotating generators that provide SYNCHRONOUS inertia, de-stabilizes the grid; a death sentence for the grid.
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Wind/solar systems provide ZERO SYNCHRONOUS inertia to help stabilize the grid, because their variable outputs are digitized, then reconstituted into an artificial sine wave with the same phase and frequency as the grid.
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Connections Between Grids
Almost all grids have connections to other grids for import and export purposes.
Such connections usually are high-voltage, direct-current lines, HVDC
Such connections transfer power, but do not transfer SYNCHRONOUS inertia to other grids.
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Reactive Power
No AC grid can function without positive reactive power; power factor greater than zero.
Wind/solar systems take reactive power FROM the grid; power factor less than zero
All traditional power plants are automatically set up to provide reactive power TO the grid
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Synchronous Condenser Systems
The weather-dependent, variable/intermittent, wind/solar feed-ins to the grid often create transmission faults.
Those faults are often minimized with synchronous condenser systems that provide positive reactive power TO the grid.
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Net-zero by 2050 to-reduce CO2 is a super-expensive suicide pact, to increase command/control by governments, and enable the moneyed elites to get richer, at the expense of all others, by using the foghorn of the government-subsidized/controlled Corporate Media to spread scare-mongering slogans and brainwash people.
.
Ignore CO2, because greater CO2 ppm in atmosphere is an absolutely essential ingredient for: 1) increased green flora to increase fauna all over the world, and 2) increased crop yields to feed 8 billion people.
Spain has 2 400kV AC links ot France – on on the Atlantic side from San Sebastian to Biarritz, and the other on the Mediterranean side from Perpginan towards Barcelona (Green circles). There’s an additional HVDC link there as well (Dark blue circle). There are also some 132kV and lower voltage AC links across the Pyrenees, but they are less important.
A 400 kV line, with a power factor of 0.8, and assuming a line current of 1000 amps could transmit approximately 554.2 MW.
If the line is longer, say 200 km, MW is reduced.
If ambient temp is high, MW is reduced
In any case 500 MW is nothing compared to the sudden MW drop during the outage..
BTW, MW is further reduced, if a power factor is applied.
The various AC links add to 1.4GW with the HVDC adding a further 1.4GW. At the time of the apagon, Spain was exporting 868MW to France. The loss of the export was not a critical factor in the event, happening after most of the generation had already tripped out, although the extra offtake from the North which was short of power will not have helped. The HVDC was last to go.
It was the Biarritz area in France that suffered temporary blackout so presumably accounted for a good share of the export (there is a parallel 132kV line as well). Also Andorra, which had been taking supply from Spain, but when that was lost it was able to connect to France in a matter of seconds.
Typically major transmission lines are operated at a power factor of 0.95 or higher, with adjustment of reactive power to achieve that. It’s also why there are substations at intervals along a longer route allowing correction. In any case it doesn’t apply to the HVDC link, and the power transmitted was well below thermal capacity on the AC side.
Batteries can provide power, but provide ZERO Synchronous Rotational Inertia, SRI
Spain doesn’t have grid batteries. In reality, they need them to help stabilise renewables output especially in areas where there is little other generation. Batteries provide synthetic inertia by charging or discharging at a rate proportional to frequency deviation. They now dominate frequency control ancillary services in much of Australia and the UK for instance.
NESO seem to have increased their procurement of Dynamic Containment (synthetic inertia) since the Spanish events on days of high renewables output and therefore lower inertia from conventional generation.
Of course they were not needed until renewables because conventional generation has inertia built in.
It is likely one or more solar inverters failed, which lowered voltages sufficiently to cause cascading, etc., all due to insufficient SRI for a few seconds of ride through, and for hot synchronous mode plants to fill the power voids.
‘What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen’.
Unfortunately, increasing availabile backup power to avoid future failures serves to paper over the fallacy of renewables, thus keeping the charade going.
That Bloomberg statement is total baloney, and they know it.
Bloomberg is big into solar, so no negatives are allowed, any lies are OK
The fact the grid went down so fast is a testament to the controls set up to prevent long term damage. It looks like the people managing the grid know how it works and where the problems are. I think they were turning a blind eye thinking the worst would never happen. As we all know, it will happen so now with a catastrophic result, at least the political pressure is going to subside until time passes and the politicians get back into it.
Somewhere somebody knows who was on their laptop fooling with the phase correction software settings of different feeders…and they ain’t sayin’…cuz the result would be multi-million $ lawsuits…
Job security
At ISONE a number of engineers quit in disgust, because of all the favoring of wind and solar by top management, who would be slimed by woke politicians if they did not bend a knee.
Good engineering prevents catastrophic damage of equipment. Major pieces can take part of a year to be replaced.
They knew full well they were skating on thin ice, but not allowed to talk about, lest they lose their jobs.
The same is true in woke New England
The obvious question: If renewables MUST HAVE gas backup running 24*7, why even bother with the renewables. [Gas doesn’t need renewables backup.]
Right?
Cuz gas isn’t free and sunlight is……
/s
Of course… wind and solar are 100% useless. The exception is off-grid somewhere where any electricity is a luxury.
Be quiet.
Do not make such statements
The automat, thought police will nail you as a subversive
The issue with political change is that real reform can be difficult.
Brownouts and blackouts led to Gray Davis of California being recalled (along with a general air of corruption), but Schwarzenegger was rapidly co-opted by the same yahoos who caused the original situation.
I am waiting to see how they will curtail and step back the renewables, especially solar. Will it happen?
I am far away, and this outage seems minor compared to what may come across Europe.
Your last sentence is spot on. Several countries now have a major headache caused by rapid investment in solar that creates midday surpluses on sunny days between spring and autumn. We were seeing negative prices across swathes of Europe in the middle of the day from late March. Badly affected countries include Belgium, Netherlands and Germany, and even Denmark and the UK to some degree (of course Spain and Portugal are right at the front). The whole CEE grid operates at much lower inertia in these conditions, and therefore very large areas are at risk if it starts tripping out. The rapidity with which the Spanish grid collapsed to 48Hz (and below, but we don’t get to see the data) is a warning.
Here’s the past 90 days of Spanish generation, interconnector trade and day ahead prices. You can see that nuclear output was reduced in the days ahead of the apagon, under pressure from low nominal wholesale prices caused by rising solar generation.
The SCRAM shutdowns of the nuclear that was operating led to delays in nuclear restarts, and had the anti-nuclear government branding nuclear as “useless”, despite the fact that blackstart depended heavily on linking back to nuclear powered France for high inertia. However nuclear is now back operating at higher levels, if not quite at full load as during winter.
Initially Portugal refused to rely on Spanish exports, forcing Soain to curtail some solar. Even now they are limiting imports in the middle of the day to reduce the low inertia risk. In more recent days Spain has allowed increased solar and more expirts to France, depressing nominal wholesale prices in both Spain and France.
The real costs to Spanish consumers and taxpayers are a different matter due to the lavish subsidies that allow Spanish wind and solar to offer at negative prices. The subsidies disguise the fact that the renewables actually are more costly. The other cost has been that inadequate grid reinforcement and investment in stabilisation (including lack of grid batteries), voltage and reactive power control has left the grid vulnerable to instability and blackout.
A pressurized water reactor that has been shut down cannot be restarted for at least a day, because of an attribute of such reactors called xenon poisoning.
Exactly right.
Exactly right.
You misspelled Blueberg.
Right! I watch them for the chars with the sound off and text on. The articles drip like a greasy spoon with green propaganda.
The latter stages of grid reenergisation in satellite time-lapse
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/Power_Outages_in_Spain_and_Portugal_%28CIRA_2025-04-29_-_nolabels%29.webm
We could just get rid of AC current and switch everything over to DC. Not a big deal. Just replace a few pieces of equipment.
Your /sarc is missing
AC was invented AND ADOPTED for a reason.
It would take many pages to explain it to the plebes
In early 2024 Wind Europe and Hitachi Energy published a joint report entitled ‘Maximising the power of wind through grid flexibility’ Whilst the report is mainly about the effects of wind on the reliability of the grid its warnings are equally applicable to the growing amount of solar on grids.
“Clean energy transitions are gaining momentum in Europe. Electricity is only 25% of the energy we consume in Europe today. The EU want to make it 75% by 2050 with 57% coming from electricity”
“However there are inherent limitations to the controllability of wind power making life difficult for system operators who are trying to continuously balance supply and demand”
“Today’s power systems face two major challenges: the need for more capacity and the need to address the increasing complexity……. as the power systems becomes increasingly dependent on variable and often distributed renewables, coupled with the electrification of transport, heating and industrial processes, including growing demand from data centres, the complexity also increases.”
“With the shift to renewables comes an end to the highly controllable and dispatchable power generation of the past. Where electricity supply was previously decided by plant managers and dispatch centres it will increasingly be influenced by weather conditions”
“This can be quite challenging for system operators across Europe whose major role is to balance supply and demand at every moment of the day. The variability of renewable power generation combined with the increasing fluctuation of demand brought on by new electrification loads and increased electrification itself makes the task of balancing the system increasingly complex”
“For now there is no accepted solution for how a low carbon electricity system will address longer periods of low wind speeds and solar irradiation, often coupled with high demand during cold winter spells. Addressing these long term energy deficits would require technologies capable of storing substantial amounts of electricity at considerably low cost”
Of course they think these challenges can be solved, but at least they acknowledge the difficulties
Wreckers. Those guys are wreckers and should be charged with the thought crime of undermining public trust.
It’s sort of like curing the hangover, and ignoring what caused the hangover in the first place.
probably adding…. speculative at best.
According to an earlier report I read, at the time of the failure:
In other words, supply was not a problem. So I don’t see why new CCGT plants need to be built, just run the nuclear plants at 100% all the time and throttle back the wind/solar. Actually it’s not clear from the referenced Bloomberg article whether they want to build new CCGT or simply use what they already have to a greater extent. Regardless, both nuclear and CCGT will disconnect if the grid voltage or frequency fluctuates excessively, which it did in April.
According to this reference, Spain has 7 operational reactors with a combined output of 7,121 MW. If they’re worried about the additional fuel cost of more CCGT generation, all the more reason to max out nuclear output first.
The Spanish government is aiming to close all nuclear, starting in 2027.
Sadly, this appears to be true. It was announced in 2019 that all seven will be shut down by 2035. Prior to 2011 there was a 40-year limit on operating licenses, which would have shut down three of them already. It looks like they plan to close one a year starting in 2027 after roughly 45 years of operation. The schedule for the first four has been announced.
Maybe another blackout or two will change their minds.
Maybe another blackout or two will change their minds.
More likely, by the time they realize how much of a problem it is, it will be too late to do anything about it.
A. That is a great photo! Was that as the first black start recovery was being made – in the large coastal cities – Madrid is still black?
B. Eliminating fossil fuels has made NO progress. EIA pie charts (2023) show fossil fuels plus nuclear produce 91% of our primary energy, and that 70% of the 9% from renewable energy comes from biomass and hydroelectric. Wind/solar yielded a pitiful 3% and wasted 15$ trillion.
C. Coal provides clean, cheap base power, if you do not tax it out existence, as the UK did and as Obama/Biden tried to do. Clean coal is making a comeback, but without the useless CCUS.
D. Natural gas plants are rapidly ramped for load balancing and building from a black start. That has been their best role for 50 years. Use natural gas for fertilizers, home heating, not in place of coal for base electricity production.
E. Natural gas shale basins lie all over Western Europe which refuses to exploit its own resources.
F. Few permits have been made on the shale regions of the Iberian peninsula. Maybe NOW?
Europe cannot be helped when it will not help itself. California and other blue (from the cold) states are no better, refusing to exploit their resources in an appropriate and environmentally sound manner, preferring to ‘import’ electricity and other energy from neighboring states. Shame on them.
The photo is fake. Some power was restored before dark which is as late as 10p.m. local in NW Spain. I posted a link to genuine satellite images taken when they were still restoring power in the South.
Isn’t Spain the country that produces solar energy in the dark?
The use of CCGTs is probably adding between €5 and €10 per megawatt-hours to costs
Help me out here. Doesn’t that work out to about 1 cent per kWh. Most folks won’t notice.
It’s not clear to me if it’s even true. I am finding it very difficult to establish what the subsidy regimes are for solar in Spain: one suggestion I have read is that recent investments are guaranteed a top-up to €0.31/kWh if prices are below that. But if they are curtailed they don’t get paid by the grid, nor I suspect by the government on taxpayers’ behalf. Because the subsidies are apparently paid direct by the government and added to their borrowing they are invisible but very real. I suspect that if that information is correct, consumers save ~€200/MWh by running more CCGT plus interest on the debt the government is adding to.