Pride cometh before a fall, indeed. In a classic tale of hubris, recently the Spanish government was trumpeting that, for a brief sunny, windy moment, its grid was running on “100 per cent renewable power”. But the gods, as the ancients knew, swiftly punish the boastful. ‘Renewables’ are even more fickle than the Classical gods.
Just days ago, Spain, and the rest of the Iberian peninsula including parts of France, were suddenly plunged into complete blackout for over 30 hours. In a repeat of the punishment doled out to South Australia in 2016, there was utter chaos as every electrical device across multiple countries suddenly stopped working – and stayed not working for over a day.
Trains stopped in tunnels, people were trapped in lifts, shoppers went on a panic buying spree – if they had cash, as credit cards and other electronic payment methods failed to work – the internet went down and mobile phones failed, as the country lost all electricity.
Politicians and electricity regulators are scrambling to find explanations – or, more correctly, excuses – but it should have surprised no one. At least, no one who’s been paying attention and isn’t completely deranged by Climate Cult ideology. This is exactly what we’ve been warning about for years.
Solar and wind make grids inherently unstable.
Surprise, surprise, the blackout was triggered by solar farms.
One Red Eléctrica [the network operator in Spain] executive, Joao Conceicao, said a possible cause was “very large oscillation in the electrical voltages, first in the Spanish system, which then spread to the Portuguese system”.
Within seconds, around midday, grid capacity plummeted more than 15GW, or 60 per cent of the total capacity. This caused the entire system to cascade into total collapse.
One possible cause identified is inertia: put simply, keeping spinning parts like turbines running. This has to be kept within strict limits to keep grids stable. But solar doesn’t produce inertia. Wind, which does, was only producing about one-tenth of the total capacity at the time.
Solar, on the other hand, is massively variable. If you have a home solar system, simply observe the output readings from the inverter on a day with scattered clouds. When the sun goes behind a cloud, output plummets right before your eyes. Then surges again when the sun comes out.
This sort of variability can be catastrophic for grids. Gas or coal turbines can provide backup when solar output drops, but sudden drops put enormous stress on grids turbines are being spun up to speed. This also causes massive release of greenhouse gases (compare it to the exhaust pipe of your car when you rev it hard).
But when solar suddenly surges and floods the grid with massive amounts of electricity, once it reaches capacity, there’s simply nowhere for all that electricity to go. We all know what happens when you overload an electrical circuit.
Despite their frantic denials in the aftermath, the Spanish grid operator had previously admitted just what would happen.
Earlier this year the Spanish grid operator had warned the stock market of the reputational risks of power cuts from surges in renewable energy demand, especially around lunchtime.
Red Electric said there was a short-term risk of generation disconnections due to the high penetration of renewables during the middle of the day. The outage on Monday occurred at 12.33pm […]
France was able to stabilise the electricity because it uses hydro and nuclear sources as well as renewables and has more predictable outputs.
Predictable outputs like… gas and nuclear. In fact, more than half of France’s electricity comes from nuclear. The very nuclear that Labor in Australia are so ridiculously demonising.
Well, at least Spain is giving the rest of us an object lesson in just what ‘Net Zero’ looks like in practice.
Panicked customers scrambled to withdraw cash from banks and streets overflowed with crowds floundering without internet and phone coverage as a power outage plunged Spain into chaos on Monday.
Carlos Condori, one of millions of affected in Spain and Portugal, was on the Madrid metro when the blackout brought his journey to a shuddering halt.
“The light went out and the carriage stopped,” but the train managed to crawl to the platform, the 19-year-old construction worker told AFP outside a metro station in central Madrid.
“People were stunned, because this had never happened in Spain,” he added. “There’s no coverage, I can’t call my family, my parents, nothing: I can’t even go to work” […]
Tens of thousands took to walking him [sic] from offices in central Madrid. Restaurants, conscious of their food being at risk without cold storage, offered promotions to the weary and stranded.
Just so long as they had cash.
Well, they can’t say we didn’t try to warn them.
