Good summary of the politically-caused blackouts in Spain and Portugal on Monday, April 28, 2025. For those interested in learning more about synchronous grid inertia, please see GreenNUKE's March 4, 2024 article with a prescient subhead: "Why is Grid Inertia Important?
Without sufficient synchronous grid inertia, the grid becomes unstable and a blackout occurs." https://greennuke.substack.com/p/why-is-grid-inertia-important There are many elaborations in the comments, including a link to a 2018 ERCOT paper regarding the importance of synchronous grid inertia.
I lay the blame for this blackout squarely on Spain's Socialist government. Spain's government thought that edicts could repeal the laws of physics. Socialists also forced Germany's safe and well-maintained nuclear power fleet to close. These Socialist imperatives cause the West to unilaterally disarm. The hypocrisy of Socialists is exposed when considering they support the large nuclear power fleets in both Russia and Communist China. (These two nation's use of huge quantities of fossil-fired generation is perfectly fine.)
Ha! Yes, that's what I was thinking of when the idea for the title came to me. By the way, I want to review your series on generators and frequency and momentum but had a little trouble finding them on your site. Could you list the titles? Maybe by message, or here...I'd like to add the links to them for to the addendum to "The Pain in Spain".
Yet the investigations made it very clear that the problem was not lack of spinning reserve, that failure of fossil fuel plant to do voltage regulation they were contracted to provide was the proximate cause, with systemic failures to respond in a timely manner contributing to that failure. Any poor, inappropriate responses by other generators including solar and wind will be addressed with better protocols.
The more enduring response to this will be more doing more renewable energy and doing it better. Between synchronous condensers and batteries with grid forming inverters emulating spinning reserve that issue is unlikely to present as insurmountable to a high RE grid.
The alarmist economic fear of Renewable Energy is a principle meme of doubt, deny, delay climate and emissions 'policy', promoted by people and interests that handed the issues off to known anti-nuclear environmentalists like a live grenade with pin pulled - "you care, you fix it". If the interests that supposedly believed absolutely that nuclear better than RE (back when that were true) could not bring themselves to fight for nuclear back before RE crossed into the commercial viability - doing so because global warming is real and they really believe nuclear is the best - they aren't going to change their minds because of anything 'green' activists say or do now.
The RE boom is no longer driven by green activism, it is driven by commercial imperatives - making electricity at least cost. As long as nuclear advocacy is aligned closely with pro fossil fuels opposition to decarbonisation - and continues to make the arguments about saving economies from RE rather than addressing climate and emissions the insincerity will undermine support from those who want emissions addressed.
Thank you for your opinions. I don't have time to address all your points - I'll just answer the first one - "failure of fossil fuel plants to do voltage regulation". The failure of fossil fuel power plants to be or come online is the same as not having spinning reserve, so the lack of enough spinning inertia was in fact a major cause of the blackout, despite the reports.
New battery pricing, material technology and construction will make solar and wind viable, but systems will have to be redesigned for local distribution and nation-wide networks will not be feasible.
Good idea - to separate wind and solar out as local systems, not connected to outside grids. But I don’t really agree that solar and wind will ever be economically feasible without subsidies. Besides, I hate the way they ruin the landscape and farmland, kill birds, and require batteries that rely on so much lithium mining.
AI— I agree with you that, as a priority, these systems need to be improved to emphasize cohabitation with the natural environment. Also we have to break past battery tech that requires dangerous and hard-to-source elements like lithium to move forward. Pakistan has made huge steps toward solar use—but as you point out—the main issues have yet to be solved to really make these technologies safe and sustainable in a real, not imaginary, sense. I haven’t given up on different types of fusion but all technologies have their negatives. Fingers crossed.
James, thanks for the ocmments. I've read recently that progress is being made on sodium ion batteries as opposed to lithium ion. Fingers crossed there too.
If this path to Net Zero continues I think we will witness a big upheaval in Europe.
Haha I loved the title
Good summary of the politically-caused blackouts in Spain and Portugal on Monday, April 28, 2025. For those interested in learning more about synchronous grid inertia, please see GreenNUKE's March 4, 2024 article with a prescient subhead: "Why is Grid Inertia Important?
Without sufficient synchronous grid inertia, the grid becomes unstable and a blackout occurs." https://greennuke.substack.com/p/why-is-grid-inertia-important There are many elaborations in the comments, including a link to a 2018 ERCOT paper regarding the importance of synchronous grid inertia.
Here's a no-cost link to read a Wall Street Journal article explaining the cause of the Spanish and Portuguese blackout https://www.wsj.com/opinion/how-the-lights-went-out-in-spain-solar-power-electric-grid-0096bbc7?st=NMdCNh&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
I lay the blame for this blackout squarely on Spain's Socialist government. Spain's government thought that edicts could repeal the laws of physics. Socialists also forced Germany's safe and well-maintained nuclear power fleet to close. These Socialist imperatives cause the West to unilaterally disarm. The hypocrisy of Socialists is exposed when considering they support the large nuclear power fleets in both Russia and Communist China. (These two nation's use of huge quantities of fossil-fired generation is perfectly fine.)
Shocking reality.
🎵 stays mainly in the plain🎵 sorry, I couldn't resist
Ha! Yes, that's what I was thinking of when the idea for the title came to me. By the way, I want to review your series on generators and frequency and momentum but had a little trouble finding them on your site. Could you list the titles? Maybe by message, or here...I'd like to add the links to them for to the addendum to "The Pain in Spain".
Sure Al, sorry I have been slow, the pollen got me with a sinus infection.
https://kilovar1959.substack.com/p/what-is-demand-response-and-how-are?r=23kggy
https://kilovar1959.substack.com/p/what-is-demand-response-and-how-are-4e0?r=23kggy
https://kilovar1959.substack.com/p/an-explanation-of-utility-demand?r=23kggy
https://kilovar1959.substack.com/p/power-systems-playing-with-magnets?r=23kggy
https://kilovar1959.substack.com/p/power-systems-lets-talk-about-frequency?r=23kggy
https://kilovar1959.substack.com/p/power-systems-cant-vote-for-this?r=23kggy
https://kilovar1959.substack.com/p/power-systems-inertia-big-iron-rolling?r=23kggy
https://kilovar1959.substack.com/p/power-systems-its-a-balancing-act?r=23kggy
https://kilovar1959.substack.com/p/power-systems-whos-in-charge-here?r=23kggy
https://kilovar1959.substack.com/publish/posts/detail/151394596?referrer=%2Fpublish%2Fposts
https://kilovar1959.substack.com/p/power-systems-its-a-renewable-thing-952?r=23kggy
https://kilovar1959.substack.com/p/power-systems-lets-get-connected?r=23kggy
https://kilovar1959.substack.com/p/powerplant-emergency-fuel-supplies?r=23kggy
https://kilovar1959.substack.com/p/making-wind-and-solar-work-what-would?r=23kggy
Thanks - I repeated the links to your series on power systems here in notes.
That is just an example of what can happen, so others should beware of the same situation.
Yet the investigations made it very clear that the problem was not lack of spinning reserve, that failure of fossil fuel plant to do voltage regulation they were contracted to provide was the proximate cause, with systemic failures to respond in a timely manner contributing to that failure. Any poor, inappropriate responses by other generators including solar and wind will be addressed with better protocols.
The more enduring response to this will be more doing more renewable energy and doing it better. Between synchronous condensers and batteries with grid forming inverters emulating spinning reserve that issue is unlikely to present as insurmountable to a high RE grid.
The alarmist economic fear of Renewable Energy is a principle meme of doubt, deny, delay climate and emissions 'policy', promoted by people and interests that handed the issues off to known anti-nuclear environmentalists like a live grenade with pin pulled - "you care, you fix it". If the interests that supposedly believed absolutely that nuclear better than RE (back when that were true) could not bring themselves to fight for nuclear back before RE crossed into the commercial viability - doing so because global warming is real and they really believe nuclear is the best - they aren't going to change their minds because of anything 'green' activists say or do now.
The RE boom is no longer driven by green activism, it is driven by commercial imperatives - making electricity at least cost. As long as nuclear advocacy is aligned closely with pro fossil fuels opposition to decarbonisation - and continues to make the arguments about saving economies from RE rather than addressing climate and emissions the insincerity will undermine support from those who want emissions addressed.
Thank you for your opinions. I don't have time to address all your points - I'll just answer the first one - "failure of fossil fuel plants to do voltage regulation". The failure of fossil fuel power plants to be or come online is the same as not having spinning reserve, so the lack of enough spinning inertia was in fact a major cause of the blackout, despite the reports.
New battery pricing, material technology and construction will make solar and wind viable, but systems will have to be redesigned for local distribution and nation-wide networks will not be feasible.
Good idea - to separate wind and solar out as local systems, not connected to outside grids. But I don’t really agree that solar and wind will ever be economically feasible without subsidies. Besides, I hate the way they ruin the landscape and farmland, kill birds, and require batteries that rely on so much lithium mining.
AI— I agree with you that, as a priority, these systems need to be improved to emphasize cohabitation with the natural environment. Also we have to break past battery tech that requires dangerous and hard-to-source elements like lithium to move forward. Pakistan has made huge steps toward solar use—but as you point out—the main issues have yet to be solved to really make these technologies safe and sustainable in a real, not imaginary, sense. I haven’t given up on different types of fusion but all technologies have their negatives. Fingers crossed.
James, thanks for the ocmments. I've read recently that progress is being made on sodium ion batteries as opposed to lithium ion. Fingers crossed there too.