Posted on 04/29/2025 5:03:14 AM PDT by MtnClimber
Today there have been widespread electricity blackouts across Europe, beginning in Spain and Portugal in the early afternoon (local time), and then spreading to other countries including France, Andorra, Belgium and the Netherlands. Is this related to the increasing penetration of intermittent generation from wind and solar facilities?
For years, many in the climate skeptic community have warned that expansion of intermittent renewable electricity generation on the grid will, sooner or later, lead to frequent blackouts. The reason for the warning is easy to understand: The grid has some rather exacting operational requirements that the intermittent renewable generation technologies cannot fulfill. Primary among these requirements are, first, minute-by-minute matching of electricity supply with electricity demand and, second, grid-wide synchronization of the frequency of the alternating current. When wind and solar generate provided relatively small portions of the electricity consumed, other generation sources, particularly thermal (fossil fuel) and hydro, would fulfill these requirements. But as wind and solar come to dominate generation, the problems become much more difficult to solve.
Here at Manhattan Contrarian, I have mostly steered clear of covering this topic. Although I think I understand the main issues, I am certainly not a grid engineer. And there are many smart people who are engineers and who have the job of “balancing” the grid to keep it consistently up and running in the face of the challenges of intermittent wind and solar generation. Maybe they can succeed. I doubt it. But I definitely have wanted to avoid “crying wolf,” predicting over and over that frequent blackouts are imminent, only to find that the engineers have come up with solutions that seem to work reasonably well.
As of this writing, it does not appear that a definitive cause (or causes) of today’s blackouts has been established. However, there is every reason to think that the increasing penetration of wind and solar generation in Spain is the most important part of the problem. Here are links to some articles that have appeared so far today: this one from the Daily Mail at 8:41 AM EDT (which would be 2:41 PM in Spain); this one from Yahoo News at 10:21 AM EDT (4:21 PM in Spain); and this one from Climate Change Dispatch (no time indicated, but based on a paywalled piece from the Telegraph, with a time stamp of 3:21 BST).
According to the piece in the Daily Mail, Spain’s state electricity network operator, known as Red Electric, reported that today’s problem began with “‘a very strong oscillation’ in the electrical network [that] caused Spain’s power system to ‘disconnect from the European system.’” On the question of the initial cause of the “oscillation,” there is only speculation. Proposed causes range from “extreme temperature variations along very high-voltage power lines in Spain,” to a hacking attack.
But whatever the initial cause of the “oscillation,” what is clear is that the Spanish system then lacked the ability to respond sufficiently to keep the power on. Why? The Daily Mail puts forth a very plausible explanation of grid instability resulting from heavy reliance on wind and solar generation. The Mail attributes the theory to “some analysts” (unnamed):
[S]ome analysts have suggested that the Spanish grid operator's reliance on renewable energy sources to supply the majority of the nation's electricity could have led to the blackout. Traditional generators, like coal and hydroelectric plants or gas turbines, are connected directly to the grid via heavy spinning machines. When turned on, these massive machines are in constant motion and the inertia created by their weight and momentum acts like a shock absorber, helping to insulate the grid against a sudden disturbance - for example, in the event of a transmission failure. Solar and wind power do not provide the natural inertia generated by these so-called 'spinning machines', leaving the grid more vulnerable to disruptions and subsequent oscillations in the electrical frequency.
Just before the blackout hit, it seems that solar facilities were generating over 60% of Spain’s electricity:
At 12:30pm local time today - five minutes before the widespread blackouts occurred - solar power was generating some 60% of Spain's electricity. . . .
But how about wind generation? This is from the Yahoo News piece:
Spain has one of Europe’s highest proportions of renewable energy, providing about 56pc of the nation’s electricity. More than half of its renewables comes from wind with the rest from solar and other sources. That means Spain’s electricity supplies are increasingly reliant on the weather delivering enough wind to balance its grid. For much of the last 24 hours, that wind has been largely missing. The website Windy.com, for example, shows wind speeds of 2-3mph, leaving the country reliant on solar energy and old gas-fired power stations.
So when the “oscillation” occurred, what is going to keep the grid steady on its 50 Hz frequency? From Michael Schellenberger today on X:
[A]ll of Europe appears to have been seconds away a continent-wide blackout. The grid frequency across continental Europe plunged to 49.85 hertz — just a hair above the red-line collapse threshold. The normal operating frequency for Europe’s power grid is 50.00 Hz, kept with an extremely tight margin of ±0.1 Hz. Anything outside ±0.2 Hz triggers major emergency actions. If the frequency had fallen just another 0.3 Hz — below 49.5 Hz — Europe could have suffered a system-wide cascading blackout.
The bottom line is that there were multi-hour blackouts in many places today. A random “oscillation” of some sort, which could have been easily handled in a world of fossil fuel power plants, became a huge problem when wind and solar generators could not respond to it appropriately. And so people were stuck for hours in elevators or subway trains; traffic lights went dark; banking and cell phone networks stopped working; and so forth. But within a few hours all of those were back in business.
So was this really a big deal? As Schellenberger points out, with just “a hair” more frequency variation it could have been far worse. Will that happen some time soon? I’m not going to pretend I know. But I do know that the electricity system in most of Europe and many U.S. states is in the hands of crazed fanatics who have no idea what they are doing. My own bet would be that there are many far worse blackouts to come, until this idiotic “net zero” thing is abandoned.
When you exceed the rule of thumb of 15% for renewables as part of grid capacity, you increase your risk for blackouts.
Spain was up to 56% and then went to 100% last week. Renewables are expensive and produce inconsistent power whereas nuclear and coal produce cheap and consistent electrical power. I expect to see many more blackouts in their future. Netzero could be re-defined as zero electrical power for you.
Spanish power BLACKOUT: Why Net Zero and RENEWABLES were to blame | MGUY Australia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ed8JLg92zGw
Spain’s big blackout came less than week after it went full green on electricity
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4313907/posts
Spain’s 100% renewable energy milestone followed by historic blackout – Coincidence?
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4313945/posts
The Iberian Peninsula… wiped off the map of lights. This is how it looked from orbit last night after a massive blackout hit Spain and Portugal. Cosmic silence over the region.”
https://x.com/buzzyrobot/status/1917172175418659130
It is difficult to regulate the AC frequency without heavy rotating machinery with lots of angular momentum. Sun and wind make frequency regulation an almost impossible task. The system is “hard” when you have power generated by 90% spinning mass and solar and wind cannot upset it. But when you get above 20% or 25% renewables without spinning mass regulation becomes hard and above that the system can become unstable.
I thought that there was also an reliance on out of state grids that couldn’t come through?
“Crazed fanatics who don’t know what they are doing” describes it pretty well. We can’t work with electrical sources that are constantly varying with not only unavailability, but with frequency & available voltage & current going up & down. The only thing is, we keep hearing about someone putting in another solar array or another wind farm, but not another conventional powerplant that furnishes ectricity in the way we need it. What’s wrong with these “geniuses” that can’t understand this? This is general knowledge about electrical energy that’s been known for some time now.
What kind of control over voltage & frequency can these “green power” sources provide? These are vital in any major power sources for a nation. I never went to college; graduated from high school & I understand this, so why do we depend on college educated “geniuses” to figure this out?
The traditional power generators are based on turbine engines. Steam turbines for nuclear, coal and oil-fired generators. Gas turbines for natural gas generators. These generators have rotational generators where the rotational speed and generator winding count determine the frequency output (50 cycles per second in Europe and many other places, 60 for the USA). The torque into the generator determines the power put into the grid. The generator will sync to the frequency of the grid and if more power than demand is put into the grid than the generator will "slip" it's phase slightly ahead of the grid (360 degrees is one cycle). If the generator is falling behind in supplying power to the grid then the phase will slip backward. The control of the grid depends on matching power supply and demand. The phase slip is how you know if you are supplying too much torque or too little.
The cited sources stated that the frequency was falling below 50 cycles per second (Hz) and that the European grid connection to Spain and Portugal was disconnected. That indicates that the power put into the grid from Spain and Portugal solar and wind and traditional generation was not enough to meet demand and that the European grid could not supply enough power to make up the difference. This inability to supply the power caused the European generators to have pole slips and the thing that happens when the phase slips too much is that the frequency slows down and if the phase slips more than (I think it may be 90 degrees, but it could be 180 degrees) then the generator starts "skipping poles" which is the grid power slamming the generator through a partial rotation to get back in phase which is a violent event which can destroy the generator. If the European grid was being dragged down then at a certain point it will disconnect from the branch draining power to avoid damage to generators. The solar and wind generators produce direct current (DC) which must use inverters to change to alternating current (AC) power and match the grid frequency. I am not sure how the green energy power input is regulated, but as long as it is not too large a percentage then the traditional generators could regulate everything. It looks to me like there was not enough traditional generation capacity in the European grid to make up for the shortfall in Spain and Portugal. This is exactly what the skeptics have been saying would happen.
You can look at your situation two ways...business and freedom. So it takes you 8 years to get your money back and to break even...well that sucks. On the otherhand you are already “rich”. If things go to crud, and standard grids and power goes down for months or years and normal money and economic systems go haywire so that the old ways at looking at expenses and break even points suddenly become meaningless, you have a powered house. You better have friendly neighbors and the means to defend it.
You are intrinsically in a better place, even if you lament about ‘getting your money back over 8 years’. What price is grid independence worth to you?
It comes from electricity. But, over its lifespan, it will create a heck of a lot more electricity than it took to make it. Now, the question you should be asking is how toxic the manufacturing process is for solar panels.
If the wind don’t blow steady or the skies are cloudy the electric power won’t be reliable.
Coal, nuclear, natural gas power plants are reliable 24/7.
I’m surprised that France is affected. I thought the frogs had nuke plants. The one smart thing they have ever done.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.