Spain’s Impossible Dream Of ‘Green’ Electricity

Thousands of wind turbines and millions of solar panels generated a massive blackout

Paul Driessen

Updated Man of La Mancha lyrics could read: “To dream the impossible dream of clean, green, net-zero electricity, to fight the unbeatable foe of manmade climate cataclysms, we must run where the brave dare not go.”

Don Quixote saw windmills as malevolent and dangerous dragons. Spain’s governing classes view them from the Chinese perspective: benevolent and magical dragons.

They’ve erected over 22,000 gigantic windmills, to harness the wind and generate electricity. Portugal has nearly 3,000. Together, when conditions are perfect, they can generate almost 38 gigawatts.

Like Cervantes’ hero, the elites also want “to reach the unreachable star” – or at least capture the energy from one star: the sun. Spain and Portugal together also have 38 GW of photovoltaic solar panels.

However, the Iberian Peninsula neighbors have long ignored the dark sides of the forces they seek to commandeer.  

Those wind turbines, solar panels and transmission lines sprawl across some 2,000,000 acres of Spanish and Portuguese vistas, habitats and croplands. That’s equal to Delaware and Rhode Island combined.

They kill eagles, bustards, vultures, and other raptors and birds. Building them requires mining, pollution and child labor on historically unprecedented scales. Solar panels are easily destroyed by storms.

Worst, they provide intermittent, weather-dependent electricity – necessitating expensive backup power and making the electrical grid unstable. Just how unstable was demonstrated recently, and dramatically.   

On April 16, for the first time, for a few minutes, Spain generated 100% of its electricity with wind, solar and hydro power.

A fortnight later, on April 28, a prolonged blackout sent Iberia into chaos. Lights, televisions, refrigerators, cell phones and traffic lights went dark. Trains, subways and elevators trapped passengers. Airports canceled flights. Hospital backup power provided only basic and emergency services.

The outage even struck parts of France and Belgium. It was Europe’s biggest blackout ever. If France hadn’t shut off its connection to Spain’s cascading problems, all of Europe could have shut down.

Just a week later, another blackout hit Spain’s Canary Islands.

Power outages are nothing new. But the Spain-Portugal blackouts underscore fundamental problems with the supposedly “inevitable transition” from coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear electricity to wind, solar and battery power.

They show that the only inevitability will be more frequent and severe blackouts – because of our soaring reliance on electricity … political decisions to mothball or destroy reliable generating systems … and ideological commitments to “green” energy.

We’re effectively being told: You’ll have electricity when it’s available – not necessarily when you need it. In this modern technological era, that is absurd, outrageous, intolerable and dangerous.

One fundamental reality must override all other considerations: Modern industrialized societies require enormous quantities of steady, synchronous alternating current, 24/7 – at the precise frequency of 50 Hertz in Europe and 60 Hz in the United States. Without it, life shuts down, societies descend into chaos, and people die.

Frequencies outside 0.2 Hz above or below that frequency can trigger major emergencies. A mere ±0.5 Hz deviation can cause system-wide cascading blackouts.

In Spain’s case, with 80% of its power now coming from renewable sources, the country simply did not have enough reliable, dispatchable, instantly accessible power on hand to keep its grid from collapsing when a power generation glitch happened.

Rice University’s Baker Institute explained how a malfunction at two Spanish solar power plants triggered the widespread chaos.

“At approximately 12:30 pm local time in Spain – just minutes before the grid collapsed – renewable sources accounted for 78% of electricity generation in the Iberian system, with solar alone contributing nearly 60%. By contrast, conventional technologies, such as gas-fired and nuclear power plants, comprised only around 15% of the total generation mix….

“[Then] two consecutive generation loss events occurred in southwestern Spain, likely involving large solar installations…. Given the limited availability of conventional generation, these unexpected losses, combined with reduced support from neighboring systems – the instability triggered a disconnection from the French system – created a “perfect storm” for a massive power outage.

“In just five seconds, Spain lost approximately 15 GW of capacity, equivalent to 60% of its national electricity demand. The remaining generation was insufficient to meet demand, thus triggering a cascading failure across the entire grid. Various generating units were automatically disconnected to protect infrastructure, and nuclear plants were shut down in accordance with safety protocols.”

That’s all it took. In the blink of an eye, the Iberian Peninsula and beyond had a massive blackout.

Unless America’s Net Zero politicians and utility companies wake up to reality, multiple US states – and entire regions – face similar preventable (indeed virtually inevitable) disasters. The same nightmarish realities confront other countries worldwide.

First, because federal, state and local governments have pressured or ordered utility companies to shut down coal, gas, nuclear and even hydro power plants that still have years or decades of operational life. Other utilities have done so voluntarily, to showcase their climate and green energy bona fides.

Second, because the same governments also provide subsidies, loan guarantees, tax breaks, rapid permitting, and exemptions from endangered species and other environmental rules – to incentivize utilities to build more and more wind, solar and battery installations, instead of traditional power plants.

Third, because those same entities demand and often subsidize a steady conversion to electricity from gasoline and natural gas. Vehicles, home and apartment building heating systems, stoves and ovens, water heaters, lawn mowers, leaf blowers and more must be powered by electricity – to save the planet from manmade climate change – even as electricity generation and reliability dwindle.

This shortsighted, ideological, virtue-signaling government intrusion into what should be market-driven, reality-based, reliable-electricity-focused decisions puts our grid, our society and our lives at risk.

Abundant, reliable, affordable electricity is the lifeblood of twenty-first century civilization. Modern industrialized societies simply cannot function, or even survive, if they are forced to rely on land-hungry, expensive, insufficient, intermittent electricity.

And yet, largely because of misplaced climate fears (about human-induced droughts and a “thirstier atmosphere,” for example), $9 trillion has been spent globally over the past decade on wind and solar power, electric vehicles, energy storage, electrified heating and power grid adjustments.  

Congress, state governors and legislatures, the Trump Administration, our courts and utility companies need to act quickly and decisively to end this wasteful spending and fix our fragile electricity generating system and grid. The news media and academia must stop parroting “climate crisis” and “renewable energy” talking points, and start presenting the complexities and realities of these issues.

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, climate change, environmental protection and human rights.