From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c62d8k8edgxo
So that’s alright then! Nothing to worry about.
Nothing to do with the Spanish government’s obsession with renewable energy! Just blame it all on bureaucrats and capitalism.
Except, of course, it was solar power which was at front and centre of the blackouts, a fact which even the whitewash report could not disguise.
The catalyst for the blackout was a sudden loss of 2.2GW of electricity at Granada substation in southern Spain. The report does not appear to address why this happened, which you might have thought was crucial! But it is believed that one or two solar farms stopped transmitting because of negative prices – these resulted from too much solar generation for too little demand, and this is exactly how the market is supposed to work; negative prices lead to less generation, thus bringing the system into balance.
However solar power now makes up such a large part of Spain’s electricity (about 60% at the time of the blackouts), that the very system of negative pricing is a threat in itself to the grid.
As soon as that 2.2GW disappeared, voltages in the local grid plummeted, leading to a complicated chain reaction of grid disconnections. Within 30 seconds the entire Iberian peninsula was experiencing a complete blackout.
The Government whitewash tried to put the blame on the grid operator Red Eléctrica not making sure enough gas power was on the system at the time, which might have provided enough inertia to provide the crucial seconds needed to stabilise the system.
The report, by the way. was presented by Sara Aagesen, Spain’s minister of “ecological transition and demographic challenge” – I suggest that in future, the Spanish Government makes sure its energy system is run by an energy expert, rather than a climate activist. According to Grok:
Aagesen graduated from the Complutense University of Madrid with a degree in chemical engineering, specializing in environmental affairs. Since 2002, she has worked extensively in climate action and energy transition, starting at the Spanish Office for Climate Change (OECC)
But it is Spanish government policy to minimise and eventually get rid of gas power. It was only two weeks before the blackouts that they were bragging that Spain’s grid ran entirely on renewable energy for the first time ( a claim, by the way, which was fake!).
You can hardly overload your grid with intermittent renewables and then complain that there was not enough gas power to deal with those problems of intermittency. Neither can you mandate those renewables and then blame the grid operator for failing to deal with the problems created.
Despite the BBC’s distortions, the facts are very, very simple. If Spain had been running their grid with considerably more gas power and considerably less solar power, those blackouts categorically would not have occurred.
What is noticeable is that since the blackout, Spain has kept much more gas power running. Just before the blackouts, only 2GW of gas power was being produced, 7% of the total load.
In the last day or two, gas power has not dropped below 5GW.
Coincidence? I think not!
https://www.energymonitor.ai/power/live-eu-electricity-generation-map
Engineering & Technology have a much more factual review of the report than the BBC’s propaganda here.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Sooner or later, reality catches up to the idiotic Virtue Signalers, threatening to expose them as being really stupid and/or corrupt. In Spain’s case, it happened to be sooner.
Well the laughable part of the negative pricing system, designed to balance the grid, is that it neither works nor does provide the consumer with lower prices. My takeaway from this latest “blamegame” is the question: who decides which producer of solar power gets to make money and which doesn’t. Oh wait a brilliant solution pops up in my mind: the very same government…I spare you the sarc tag folks…
The Owners of PV systems decided to hell with this, I am not PAYING to deliver electricity to the grid, because of negative wholesale prices, so they just shut down their systems
Some of the smaller systems shut down due to high voltages.
The high voltages indicate over production relative to demand, and a lack of quick-reacting balancing capacity
Also, the graphs show GWh. They should show GW
Only hydro and gas plants could react quickly, but there was not enough capacity to counteract the huge solar drop..
Nuclear, coal, bio, etc., plants cannot react quickly,
The Spanish people should revolt, and throw all the idiots out, to MAKE SPAIN GREAT AGAIN
Coal plants CAN react fairly quickly because of all the thermal inertia.
No.
I used to design utility coal power plants
The provide SYNCHRONOUS ROTATIONAL INERTIA, SRI
They provide positive reactive power to support AC grids
They cannot quickly change outputs
I recall hearing that a late 1960’s vintage 700MW gas/oil fired steam plant (PG&E Pittsburgh unit 7) could be ramped at about 100MW/minute. I suspect coal plants would have a lower ramp rate due to a more complicated firing mechanism.
Plus many other reasons.
MSGA…wishful thinking, sadly…if you lived there and knew those people first hand you would rather say: the last one of you please turn off the lights
😉
If they made that decision they were switched off way before the problems emerged: prices were negative before 11a.m.
There were overvoltages caused by a lack of reactive power absorption due to insufficient CCGT operating and a lack of alternatives such as synchronous condensers. REE had decided to wing it when the night before a key CCGT in the South declared an outage for the next day: they did not replace it with an alternative. Too late, they asked another to sync up, but it would not have been available until 14:00.
There is actually no evidence of solar farms switching on or off for market reasons thus causing grid problems. There are plenty of reports of them being disconnected as a response to overvoltage. Here are the actual day ahead prices from OMIE: they reached zero at 10 a.m. and remained at zero or below until 6 p.m. Within day trade behaved similarly. It’s a lame excuse by REE for grid mismanagement.
The biggest swings in power flows were caused by power oscillations on the grid: the 0.6Hz one has been traced to the inverters on a large solar farm, while the 0.2Hz one is a Europe wide resonance of the grid, for which power oscillation damping coils had been installed on most of the CCGT capacity 15 years ago or more. But the CCGT was mostly not running, so they resorted to opening more grid links, cutting exports to France and disconnecting grid reactances. That did help calm oscillations, but it also caused a rise in grid voltages.
“Except, of course, it was solar power which was at front and centre of the blackouts, a fact which even the whitewash report could not disguise.”
So, of course, the experts at WUWT know the truth, and the people who actually operate the system are just fools. It was always going to be so. And there is no reason to even read the report. And no, I haven’t read it either. I can’t find a transtateable version.
But I have read what informed people say about it. The problem wasn’t the solar station switching off because the price was too low. The report is specific – the operator was required for stability to have 10 thermal stations operating. But one pulled out, with suitable notice, and RedElectric decided not to replace it, though a replacement was available. That, says the report, created the deficiency which meant the system could not handle the change.
RedElectric disputes this, saying that the number of thermal stations was sufficient, but the stations didn’t do it right. Neither side is blaming renewables.
‘the operator was required for stability to have 10 thermal stations operating. ‘
I don’t understand this.
Why are 10 thermal stations needed for stability?
Red stated ‘Had conventional power plants done their job in controlling the voltage there would have been no blackout.”’
What are ‘conventional’ power plants? Should we switch them off on sunny days?
They mean thermal. You do need system inertia, and the Spanish system relied on the spinning flywheels. The report syas they needed 10 of them, and only had 9; RedElectric says 9 was enough, but they didn’t do their job.
‘They mean thermal.’
What are the best renewable energy sources to run these 10 thermal plants on?
Asking for a Spanish amigo, who wants to persuade the rest of the government to support the switch to renewable energy sources.
Read a book about grids, then comment on this site.
Grid stability comes in various flavours. The most obvious is maintaining frequency which is the province of inertia. However, it is also important to ensure that voltage and current cycles are closely time aligned with each other. If they aren’t, then for part of each cycle voltage and current will be of opposite sign, so power will flow on the opposite direction. Part of the stabilisation role is to provide countervailing so called reactive power to neutralise the effect. Another role is the suppression of power oscillations on the grid, with Spanish CCGT being especially equipped to deal with the 0.2Hz oscillations that caused a lot of problems.
I have read the reports,, both the government and the grid ones and you are wrong Nick.. The government one left a lot of stuff out like the names of the stations which triggered the events. That is because they were solar. The ENTSO report (still to come) is likely to be very scathing of the Spanish government.
The main cause of the collapse was over voltage because they had to many renewables on operating at fixed power factor. There were also subsynchronous oscillations caused by the renewables that made the grid harder to control. The voltage got so high that the protection systems on a number of the renewables went early. That started the cascade. It was not a lack of inertia problem. When the French interconnector went from about 400MW to 4609MW. That disconnected and Iberia went black.
The grid report have it as an N-12 events in the cascade. Only N-11& 12 were not from wind or solar.
The report’s first key finding was:
Generation subject to Operating Procedure P.O. 7.4 failed to comply with its dynamic voltage control
obligations, resulting in system voltage levels higher than expected. Moreover, voltage excursions
both upward and downward— tend to be more pronounced due to this non-compliance. Generators
typically respond only when voltage deviations become significant, suggesting that their response is
primarily driven by internal plant protection mechanisms.
The second one was:
RCW generation not integrated under P.O. 7.4 failed to meet power factor requirements in approximately 22% of cases. Analysis shows that this non-compliance is concentrated among plants with lower active power output, indicating that compliance with reactive power requirements only begins above a certain active power threshold.
Both of those inverter based generation faults.
Do you have (English) links?
Is this a typo?
Here someone has posted a machine translated version.
Tim
No that sn’t a typo. It is why the interconnector tripped out so quickly after sucking the frequency of Eurpoe down.
The interconnectors tripped because of rapidly diverging frequency at 48.46Hz in Spain while the frequency in France (e.g. at Saucats) remained above 49.85Hz, and probably because the AC links were getting overloaded: the HVDC link was operating at 1GW export until it finally tripped. There were some violent switching transients afterwards, and Spanish RoCoF was probably off the scale.
Yes the massive inflow happened because of the frequency divergence starting. Without seeing the actual event logs, I don’t know what the actual protection that took the line out was. The first to react may have been an incidental device.
It’s multiple lines, although the main 400kV ones are at either end of the Pyrenees, and the HVDC line runs from Perpignan/Baixos to Santa Llogala. The power cuts in France were in the Biarritz area, so that was probably the more violent trip.
Chris,
“you are wrong Nick”
I just summarised what the report seems to be saying. You seem to be disputing the report, not me.
No Nick. I was responding to your words. It wasn’t the thermal station unable to absorb VARs. It was the solar plants that were not providing voltage support.
Wind and solar system draw positive reactive power, PRP, from the grid, in almost all cases, and provide no SRI
Traditional plants are automatically set up to feed PRP to the grid, plus provide SRI for “ ride through”
“The report’s first key finding was:”
I see you are quoting from the Red Electric report. It would have helped to give a link, which is here (in English).
“Both of those inverter based generation faults.”
No, you are wrong. The PO7.4 generators (first finding) are conventional. The report sets out the important issues:
The first was a key finding, and specifically says that conventional generators did not do their job, which they regrd as the key factor.
So the problem in Spain and Portugal would never have happened if 100% of the electricity was being generated by gas powered plants?
but… but… then Spain would be contributing to the planet burning up and the oceans boiling! /s
Inadvertently, Stokes has just admitted that Wind and Solar are fundamentally unable to power a grid without conventional fossil fuel.
Bingo!
“So the problem in Spain and Portugal would never have happened if 100% of the electricity was being generated by gas powered plants?”
Not true. The custom in Spain is to designate a number of thermal stations to provide frequency control services, for which they are paid. On this day, the number was 10. But it didn’t happen. The government commissioned report says the reason is that one went off line (with notice) and was not replaced. Red Electric says nine was enough, but they didn’t do their job.
Either way, it is a failure within the group paid to control frequency. It doesn’t matter what the other generators are. Spain has about 20% hydro, capable of controlling frequency, but apparently are not called on.
Frequency control was not really a problem until the grid was collapsing. The problems were reactive power and voltage control, and damping of power oscillations.
OK, frequency and voltage control.
Power oscillation damping requires very different methods that have nothing to do with normal frequency control via inertia. Because they didn’t have the CCGT capacity with that capability connected in suffient quantity they resorted to grid kludges instead: cutting export to France, dialling back solar under instruction, adding more grid links and disconnecting reactances. The result was overvoltage.
It is a nice irony that they blame solar disconnections when they were instructing plant offline themselves.
Not frequency at all. Up until about Event 10, there wasn’t any effect on frequency and by then it was too late.
Here are the other findings on voltage control
Under Operating Procedure P.O. 7.2, all generation types participate in secondary regulation as a single node at the peninsular level. However, since the updated proposal for Operating Procedure P.O. 7.4 has not been approved, not all generation provides dynamic voltage regulation. As a result, the activation of secondary upward or downward regulation involving RCW generation leads to corresponding increases or decreases in system voltage. In this context, and until Operating Procedure P.O. 7.4 is updated, greater importance is placed on those generating units that do comply with the current procedure.• P.O.1.4 update has been pending approval since 2021; however, Ministerial Order TED/749/2020 stipulates that generators must withstand voltage rises higher than those specified in P.O.1.4 without disconnecting.
Where they had the first units trip out on over voltage – which broke the rules and went early, there were no synchronous generators. And as you know Nick, VARs are local.
Sounds like they should update Operating Procedure P.O. 7.4.
Whatever the law says (when the law is in your favour, pound the law), REE procured CCGT at or below minimum stable export (6 stations at an average of just 160MW each) and failed to have any support in the South which was the area where problems started to get out of control. Operating on the edge is always fraught with extra risk, and REE procured a record low of support, as even the government report admits. Moreover, they created grid conditions requiring additional reactive power control in responding to the oscillations in grid frequency.
A more logical response would have been to turn up the CCGT and curtail solar, providing more capability and reducing the problems.
“A more logical response would have been to turn up the CCGT”
They tried to turn up the CCGT in Andalusia, before any tripping of solar, but the response was too slow.
There was no CCGT in Andalucia. It was due to come up at 14:00. They didn’t even instruct it until very late in the game(12:26).
In the light of the measures adopted to mitigate oscillations and their impact on voltage control, the system operator decided to connect additional conventional generation for the Southern zone to provide voltage control per PO7,4 and with the capability to dampen the inter-area oscillations through its power damping systems that are installed at particular stations.
[Elsewhere I discovered that some 6.7GW of new CCGT was so fitted by 2010, with a further 2,4GW retro fitted by then]
To that end at 12:18 they asked various facilities to quote start times, opting for the fastest start (1:30 delay) with instruction confirmed at 12:26 to synchronise from 14:00. Since the blackout happened at 12:33 the unit was not available in time.
The grid operator’s report also highlights this:
It is important to highlight the rate at which generation output can change within the system. New
technologies based on power electronic inverters are capable of adjusting their output within a
matter of seconds. While this capability is highly beneficial for the economic optimisation of
individual generating plants, it is not necessarily ideal from a power system stability perspective
in general.
A clear example of this is the rapid schedule changes in photovoltaic generation driven by price
fluctuations in electricity markets. From an electrical standpoint, such abrupt changes in inverter –
based generation introduce significant imbalances into the system, because regulation
mechanisms haven´t operated yet. These imbalances must be compensated mainly through
interconnections, particularly the one with France.
Severe imbalances lead to drastic shifts in power flows across the network, which in turn alter
the capacitive and inductive behaviour of the grid. Consequently, system voltages can vary
rapidly. This effect is further exacerbated when such generation operates under power factor
control and doesn´t provide dynamic voltage control, as it limits the dynamic reactive power
support that could otherwise help stabilise voltage.
All that says is that W&S can make sudden changes, faster than thermal. But they don’t have to. That is just a matter of regulation, maybe when Operating Procedure P.O. 7.4 is updated.
That is in a prominent box, and clearly has at times caused difficulties for REE. However they provide no evidence at all that it was a factor in the events of 28th April – because there is none. Market prices were zero or slightly negative from 10 a.m. through 6 p.m. in the day ahead and intraday markets.
And here was Event 5 all inverter based stuff faults
At 12:33:17.368 h —approximately 0.98 seconds later— the disconnection of three wind farms occurred. These facilities are connected at 132 kV and evacuate through a 400 kV transmission substation in province of Segovia, resulting in the loss of 23 MW of generation.
Eighty milliseconds later photovoltaic generation connected to the transmission substation B was disconnected due to a trip within its own installations, resulting in a further loss of 118 MW.
Twenty-seven milliseconds after that, an additional 34 MW were lost due to the disconnection of one wind farm and one photovoltaic plant, both injecting into a 220 kV transmission substation in the province of Huelva.Following this, 233 milliseconds later, a new generation disconnection occurred because of the trip of a link of a generation collector substation in province of Seville, resulting in the loss of 550 MW. The transmission end of the line received a direct transfer trip from the generation end. Two hundred milliseconds after that a photovoltaic installation tripped in the province of Cáceres. It was injecting 37.5 MW. The generator owner has declared, in a PDF file, that the voltage raised up to a value that is under the voltage threshold that the Order TED/749/2020 stablish that the generation that is connected to a 220 kV POC must withstand at least for 60 minutes -253 kV-.Finally, 40 milliseconds later, a photovoltaic plant connected to a 220 kV transmission substation in the province of Badajoz tripped. Other additional 72 MW were lost.
In total, an additional 834 MW of generation was disconnected within a 650 ms window, along with the associated reactive power absorption. The estimation derived from the ROCOF suggests that the generation loss during this interval was approximately 1,150 MW, indicating that additional generation may have been lost within this period.
This is the cascading failure and some batteries on the grid could have dealt with the oversupply. It’s very interesting frequency wasn’t listed as going out of spec. It looks like the load (supply) shedding applied wasn’t well orchestrated and that too much dropped too quickly.
The generators tripped off because of over voltage protection. As they tripped off, the voltage rose – they had been absorbing VARs and that tripped off more
Chris, this just chronicles how various generators dealt with a collapsing situation. Maybe they could have been programmed to be more tolerant, or react more slowly. As TTTM says, batteries would be very helpful in stabilising voltage.
But it doesn’t get to the cause. The government commissioned report says the problems started to appear about 9am, and were due to insufficient assigned stabilisation.
Inverters typically have very little line frequency impedance between the switches and the bus connecting them to the grid. As such they provide very little voltage support as the output has to follow the bus voltage closely otherwise they would be sourcing or sinking a lot of current and drastically changing real power flow. Generators typically have on the order of 1 “per unit” reactance (a 33kV generator would have equivalent of 33kV voltage drop across the winding inductance), so the excitation can vary without affecting the real power flow.
A simple way to make inverters behave would be placing inductors between the inverter output and the bus connecting to the grid. The downside is that the inverters would be quite a bit more expensive.
A grid forming inverter backed by a battery can source or sink a lot of power.
All pretty much theory. The first real one was announced as going into operation at Blackhillock quite recently. It’s really a live experiment, and a costly one – within an order of magnitude of the cost of conventional provision (i.e. less than 10 times as much).
Well, not that costly:
“In total, NESO awarded ten contracts as part of this project (worth £323 million overall) to secure 11.55 GVA of Short Circuit Level (SCL) in Scotland and 6.75 GVA seconds of Inertia for Great Britain through the use of five synchronous condensers and five grid forming batteries”.
And how will that help control voltages?
A battery is a great help in controlling voltages.
As I though Nick, other than repeating primary school science, you have no understanding of the subject.
The inverters changing DC to AC do not do voltage control (whether they be from solar wind or battery supplying the power. Nor is control done by importing power.
Syncons are the devices that control voltage but they consume significant power and usually have a limited range.
Well, there are five syncons in that list. I think you just make it up as you go.
No Nick. You wrote ” battery is a great help in controlling voltages” You got it wrong. I just showed you can Google without understanding what you parrot.
The gridforming batteries are supposed to provide the synthetic inertia, though that hasn’t been proven in fault conditions.
Here is what ENTSO-E had to say on the subject “Activation and deactivation of the grid forming capability shall be excluded because: i ) the system needs the capability continuously, ii) switching would
cause implementation and reliability issues and, iii) implies unjustified additional costs for manufacturers.
So I would like to see if NESO got acceptance from them before making the announcement. On previous form, I suspect not. You ought to read Ms Porter on the subject, She is a lot more knowledgeable than me.
In the context of the UK grid 6.75GVAs is next to nothing. The grid is often over 400 and has a minimum of 150 though they want to drop it to 120. The Short Circuit increase is because the lines out of Scotland are overloaded and having more phase correction allows more power to flow south.
Nick, the “problem” was the defective nature of the crystal balls used to foresee the supply from all sources, and the future demand.
Nothing wrong with renewables, if the load can be tailored to the output, and the resultant electricity supplied at a cost acceptable to the consumer. Highly unlikely, if not impossible.
It’s pretty simple – if supply doesn’t meet demand, a catastrophic chain of shutdowns may result. Even worse, sometimes there is no well-defined reason for a shutdown trigger, regardless of supply/demand.
It’s happened before, and it’s guaranteed to happen again, if my crystal ball is any guide.
Trump calls wind expensive bullshit that uglifies the beautiful American Plains, and kills birds and bats.
Just calling a spade a spade.
As usual, Trump is not wrong.
A UK expert, Kathryn Porter says UK is following Spain’s folly.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/06/18/gas-free-britain-not-just-fantasy-downright-foolish/
The UK risks exposure to Iberia-style blackouts for the sake of a few symbolic minutes of ‘zero carbon’
And Nick Stokes will then be along to explain that the blackouts are due to conventional power plants not working properly after Zero Carbon has been achieved.
A version is also available on Kathryn’s blog
https://watt-logic.com/2025/06/18/should-neso-be-allowed-to-lower-its-minimum-inertia-requirement/
This would have never happened, if no wind and solar systems were on the grid.
Sanity would have been SOP.
Did Spain ever have a nationwide blackout when all of its electricity was generated from fossil fuels?
Well Nick, you certainly are an “Expert”…otherwise I couldn’t possibly explain all the downvotes you receive here…
Ah, there are so many experts. I even got downvotes just for providing a link to an english language version of the report.
The incredulity is an automatic reaction now Nick.
Same thing happened to The Boy Who Cried Wolf.
Except in the case of grid-scale wind & solar, you’ll never get the chance to crow about how they’re actually producing the goods.
At least the wolf ultimately did actually turn up.
So Nick who doesn’t read Spanish is now an expert. My Spanish is good enough to read the (heavily redacted) report and translate the technical terms correctly (unlike the BBC report cited above, despite it being from their Madrid correspondent or online translators), and my understanding of transmission systems is good enough to spot when they are attempting whitewashes.
Moreover, I have read REE’s own report which is in English, which lifts the lid on some of the elements redacted by the government (which is utterly wedded to a net zero grid without nuclear). Of course, REE write it up as not at all being their fault. I was reminded of the old saw
When you have the facts on your side, pound the facts, when you have the law on your side, pound the law, and when you have neither, pound the table.
REE explicitly blame a large solar farm for causing the 0.6Hz oscillations that resulted in wild swings of 800+MW in exports to France. They blame some 22% of solar and wind installations for failing to maintain power factor control, contributing to overvoltage. They blame many for tripping out at what they claim were conditions they should have ridden through. Not exactly not blaming renewables.
Here are the power oscillations with France: the scale runs from 800 to 1800MW
I have linked to and read the English language version of the gov’t commissioned report. I think I am the only one to do so.
“REE explicitly blame a large solar farm for causing the 0.6Hz oscillations”
No they don’t. That was event 3 at 12.32.57pm. . By that stage they had already called on a CCGT station in Andalusia to start up to provide more voltage and frequency control. They say
“Following this finding, the 0.6 Hz oscillation frequency was reviewed across the system, revealing that small magnitude 0.6 Hz disturbances had been occurring since 10:30 h. “
They describe (highlighted) the situation before the first solar trip thus:
“As a result of all the events explained, the system reached an operating state significantly different from the initial conditions, characterized by reduced damping and diminished flexibility in voltage control. The adopted corrective measures could not be fully implemented, as the synchronization of the two groups—intended to enhance voltage stability in the area and to damp potential inter-area oscillations through their Power System Stabilizers (PSS)—. “
They were already in trouble. The oscillations were already present. The damping and voltage control, supposed to be provided by the thermal stations, were not working. They tried to get more stations in to help, but the response was too slow.
They do say
“Forced oscillation at 0.6 Hz, possibly originating in a photovoltaic power plant in the province of Badajoz, triggers system-altering protocolized actions”
But the grid should have been able to damp it, and couldn’t.
Wrong. The time of the first 0.6Hz oscillations is given in the chart I posted from the report. Read the caption: it says from 12:02 to 12:08. So I don’t think you read it anywhere near as closely as I have. Commenting on its reappearance a few minutes later at 12:16 they say:
The earlier oscillations were all at 0.2Hz, the inter-area grid oscillation best controlled by the power oscillation dampers in CCGT plants. So as early as 10:30 they could have taken precautionary action to secure CCGT capacity to handle that, instead of waiting two hours when then system was on the point of collapse or hoping they could get away with grid tweaks in a configuration with which they had no historical experience. Since the plant they eventually instructed had in fact been online until 9 a.m. it might well have been able to restart sooner than the 90 minutes they quoted after midday too.
Some might think that green virtue signalling got in the way of common sense.
“Wrong. The time of the first 0.6Hz oscillations is given in the chart I posted from the report. Read the caption: it says from 12:02 to 12:08.”
Wrong? I quoted them explicitly, with the relevant part bolded. . Here is a screenshot, if that helps – page 5:
REE state up front:
They do not mention the 0.6Hz oscillations at all for prior to 12:00. They even describe the 0.2Hz oscillations as nothing significant, yet they were a clear warning of incipient instability.
The evidence they provide for the solar plant in Badajoz being responsible is damning: detection of the problem in the locality, cessation once they had acted to suppress it at the solar farm. What more evidence do we need? The government report hides the location, but intelligent work looking at the map of Badajoz and the generation levels quoted means it is almost certainly this plant:
Planta fotovoltaica Núñez de Balboa – Iberdrola
Once Europe’s biggest solar farm. It is connected at 400kV
“detection of the problem in the locality, cessation once they had acted to suppress it at the solar farm. What more evidence do we need?”
But did it stay ceased? No.
But anyway, of the many complaints about solar and wind, emission of low frequency oscillations is a new one. I can’t even see how an inverter could do it. But the entities paid to administer FCAS should have been able to suppress it.
As they said of the situation before the first solar trip:
“As a result of all the events explained, the system reached an operating state significantly different from the initial conditions, characterized by reduced damping and diminished flexibility in voltage control. The adopted corrective measures could not be fully implemented, as the synchronization of the two groups—intended to enhance voltage stability in the area and to damp potential inter-area oscillations through their Power System Stabilizers (PSS)—. “
The system wasn’t working, and it wasn’t because of solar.
The system wasn’t working and it was because they had cut back on the use of CCGT to admit more solar. CCGT offers reactive power and voltage control, and stabilisation of the CE grid 0.2Hz oscillations. There is no guarantee that a filter design for 0.2Hz would be effective for 0.6Hz. However the simple expedient of shutting the offending solar down and ramping up CCGT to replace it would solve that.
It is not as if it was entirely novel. The government report mentions similar oscillations being recorded a year previously in a heavily redacted section of their report. Clearly they do not want the detail revealed
Operating CCGT at minimum safe export offers no flexibility to increase MVars by reducing active power. They were operating outside the envelope of previous experience. High risk, and it bit them, 1:40 before solar noon. Having a grid that was inadequate for running at high renewables penetration does not help, but failing to make use of the available tools by thinking about the risks is the main error. There was more solar than the grid could hande. It should have been dialled back further and more stabilising CCGT run. Which is exactly what they have been doing since.
Electricity is a service and not a good like oil or gas. The market mechanisms are different, since production and consumption of a service are always synchronous. With goods they are asynchronous: you can store goods, you cannot store a service.
This is basic economics, chapter 1, page 1.
With low or negative prices production of a service will cease. That is something the idiosyncracies of modernday electricity networks cannot handle in an elegant way.
So not only are the climatards wrong on the climate, temperature and CO2. They are also ignorant of how services markets work.
Is there anything they are good at?
no
Yes: lying and obfuscation.
So they will either spend a lot of money quietly or add more excuses next time. Is this what climate communicators are training for?
From the grid report leading up to the event
Since there were no overvoltages on the transmission network 400 kV side —and the values were well below such thresholds—. It could, once again, be inferred that the cause lies in the generator transformer tap setting.As the system was recovering from previously low voltages, the transformer was likely operating with a tap position configured to maintain appropriate voltage levels at the 220 kV collector substation and the associated evacuation network. As voltages began to rise, the tap changers may not have responded quickly enough, potentially resulting in overvoltages on the secondary side without corresponding high voltages on the primary side of the transformer.
The disconnection of this installation is not correct, as the voltage in the point of connection with the transmission system remains within the limits established in grid codes.m This “Event 3” also m eontributed to a further increase in system voltage —still within operational limits— due to the same mechanisms previously described: the loss of reactive power absorption from the tripped installation
and a reduction in power flow through the transmission network, as generation was lost at a location far from the Spain-France border. The export flow to France, which had been around 450 MW, dropped to nearly zero
Tap changers are not instant devices. They take a real time to operate. They were undervoltage then they went suddenly to overvoltage. An operator would have to see the change, assess if it wasn’t a transient, then activate a move. They are likely being pinged for non-compliance, technically correct but it is very likely that the time of transition is not accounted for.
The problem was the solars were tripping out, raising the voltage and the synchronous plant were trying to chase the moving target.
The measures by REE to control oscillations led to voltage instability on the grid, and indeed the power oscillations themselves will have caused problems in parts of it. There is a clear disconnect and lack of communication between the grid and the operators of collecting and distribution grids at lower voltages. That goes both ways. Reliance on the Law is no substitute for good practice.
So help me understand this, there was so much solar power being produced that the price went negative. Some solar outfits stop transmitting power because of the negative price. When they stop transmitting the grid goes down. Government blames the grid failure on the gas generators because there wasn’t enough gas online. So am I to understand that gas is expected to operate at negative pricing but solar isn’t? This doesn’t make sense.
Fire up all fossil fuel and nuclear generators. Build new fossil fuel and nuclear generators. Remove wind and solar from the grid, if you insist on keeping wind and solar sell that energy to England, I hear they like it.
Not correct. The gas that was run was being paid to do so: REE didn’t buy enough, and ended up with inadequate support in the South. There were no changes in market prices to motivate any change in outputs: they were consistently zero or just below from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. A good chunk of solar gets paid anyway under long term power purchase agreements. It is not sensitive to market price.
Then why were the solar facilities shut down. Is there not program to protect the grid? This doesn’t make sense.
REE established a programme of curtailment after the day ahead prices were known There were no surprises from that. Most solar is actually paid under PPAs, so the market doesn’t apply to them. You can see the companies Iberdrola signed up for the Nuñez de Balboa plant at the link I posted.
The reports mention that REE cut exports to France and generation in the South to match. So they instructed generation to switch off, but there is no admission of which plants/farms were instructed. It is likely this process contributed to the voltage instability.
I used to work around ELECTRICAL ENGINEERS who knew what they were doing because they were educated in the electrical field which is why I know this woman isn’t qualified to make a credible report because she doesn’t understand the nature of line integrity which needs to be maintained, or the field will collapse as the irregular nature of ruinables power output can overcome grid stability.
I see that Nick whines that he is only copying parts of the report made by someone who doesn’t have the qualifications for it, stupid!
“this woman isn’t qualified to make a credible report”
Of course she didn’t make a report. She was the politician who tabled it. The report was made by two working groups, first on cybersecurity, the second on operations:
You should read the report. It is very informative. But of course, that is beneath you.
LOL,
It is clear you trust government so much that you make apology statements about their whitewashing report which is politics as the government is in denial of the failure.
The truth will come out in time, and you will avoid it.
You should read about Spanish politics. The government has closely controlled its report, and redacted large chunks of it. It has a clearly entrenched policy to close nuclear and fossil fuel generation. It took great care to ensure that the report was couched in terms that did not undermine its policy stance.
The reality is that the grid and the grid code are not fit for such a purpose. The politicians have been totally unwilling to consider what the cost of rectifying that would be, or even admitting it to be necessary, because to do so would undermine their silly ideas.
Does anyone else find it ironic that nick is now tacitly arguing that renewables do not form a stable power grid and that FF generation is REQUIRED?
No. Some kind of stabilisation is required. The modern way is via grid forming inverters, where power from sun and wind enter the grid. But Spain still relied on thermal power stations, which were contracted to provided the service. The problem is, depending on which report you read, there weren’t enough of them on the day, or they didn’t do their job.
Name any grid that relies on grid forming inverters. There aren’t any. They are experimental, being trialled in parts of Scotland to see how they perform and interact with the rest of the grid. That’s a world first.
South Australia has been relying largely on the Hornsdale Big Battery, for at least five years. It has been successful enough that they export their services (and make a lot of money).
But it doesn’t have grid forming inverters. It follows grid frequency. It provides FCAS by responding to deviations in grid frequency by changing its rate of charge or discharge. It has no capability to provide short circuit current or voltage control or power oscillation damping or provide blackstart.
“But it doesn’t have grid forming inverters.”
It does. Here is the 2022 press release from NEOEN:
Here is a detailed 2024 report on its operations.