Could Spain’s Electricity Meltdown Be Coming to a State Near You?

Spain’s electricity supply went down last month due to cascading failures traced to faults in two solar plants in Spain’s southwest region, causing a blackout on the Iberian Peninsula. Americans should not be complacent because the North American Electric Reliability Corp., a nonprofit international regulatory authority, has warned that it might happen in the United States.

On April 28, the day of the Spanish meltdown, solar provided 59% of electricity, wind about 12%, and nuclear and gas approximately 22%. When the two solar plants went down, insufficient backup, or inertia, was available to keep the system going.

The sun shines and the wind blows for free, but providing electricity to people with intermittent renewables, such as wind and solar, is more difficult than with baseload power, such as coal, natural gas, and nuclear power.

The North American Electric Reliability Corp. forecasts inadequate current U.S. electricity supplies as coal and some gas-fired generators face retirement and energy demand is growing due to data centers and artificial intelligence technology. America faces high and elevated risks of shortages from 2025 to 2029.

For instance, in 2025 the Midcontinent Independent System Operator, which provides electricity for 15 states from Wisconsin to Louisiana, may suffer a shortage of electricity in the high-demand months of summer and winter.

Europe’s solar and wind power receives subsidies from the European Union. In America, Inflation Reduction Act subsidies for wind and solar, now being reconsidered by Congress, are central to the problem. Continuous, dense power from gas, coal, and nuclear is needed to back up renewables. But since these do not get tax subsidies, there is less incentive for companies to invest in them.

The danger of potential blackouts is why President Donald Trump declared an energy emergency on his first day back in office and has called for ending the Inflation Reduction Act subsidies.

As well as requesting an end to the act’s tax credits, he is taking several steps to avert the blackouts forecast in the regulatory report. These steps could also be emulated by Europeans if they want to ensure a reliable grid.

The president has asked the Environmental Protection Agency to end rules that require coal-fired and new natural gas-fired power plants to close if they cannot bury 90% of the carbon dioxide emissions. The combination of ending the subsidies for renewables and keeping open the existing power plants should avert the blackouts forecast in the report.

Trump is reopening Alaska to oil development and is fast-tracking permitting for fossil fuel projects, so approvals come in 28 days or fewer. He has asked the EPA to reconsider the finding that greenhouse gases such as CO2 and methane are pollutants.

On the international front, Trump has ordered the United States to withdraw from the Paris Agreement and other associated U.N. agreements, a process that takes a year.

The real winner from renewable energy use is China, which makes a significant share of turbines and panels used in renewable energy generation, as well as batteries for solar backup and electric vehicles. Trump’s China tariffs, as well as removal of the tax credits, should tilt American energy policy in a more resilient direction.

The blackout in Spain is a wake-up call about the risks of relying too much on solar and wind. America could face similar problems, especially with energy demand increasing. The president is taking steps to prevent blackouts by cutting subsidies for renewables; keeping existing power plants running; rolling back some environmental rules; and pulling out of net-zero international agreements.

The goal is to make sure America has a reliable power supply, learning from Spain’s problems.

Any spinning mass generator or motor that is synchronous connected vs VFD asynchronous carries grid inertia. People forget that every synchronous motor is also carrying and providing grid inertia once spinning at its synchronous speed. If a supply dip in phase angle happens the motors are now spinning faster than the new synchronous speed due to the grid frequency dropping they push current backwards into the grid just like a generator would. At least until the load starts to drag them down further and they load the grid again it’s the kinetic energy in the spinning mass and load that provides that back current.

Wind turbines can be synchronous generators a lot have gear boxes with fixed speed sync generators these are electrically no different than a fixed speed steam or gas turbine. A 5 megawatt fixed speed turbine driven generator carries significant inertia especially when you have a couple hundred grouped together in a farm. The inertia is the mass of the gearbox, generator rotor,and those giant blades all spinning with kinetic energy stored in them.

Of course asynchronous with power converters and PLL types give no active power control. The doubly feed asynchronous types absolutely have active power and reactive power control these provide inertia just like any other spinning load.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1155/2021/1218236

The issue is PLL type inverters are much cheaper than VSC types if you need active power and reactive power control in a inverter driven grid you can just mandate VSC with active power control capacitors and the computers to control it. It is not a technically unsolvable problem. You don’t have to have spinning mass if you have enough active power and frequency control.

DC power cannot black start, there have been studies on this. But green idiots don’t want to hear it. Sure DC can mimic the AC sine wave, but you need real power online or available to spin up fast to be able to support the grid. Get rid of that, and you’re asking for Trouble. NERC has been saying this for a long, long time now. But who wants to listen to the experts that know how the electrical grid operates!?

"There is no evidence that industrial wind power is likely to have a significant impact on carbon emissions. The European experience is instructive. Denmark, the world’s most wind-intensive nation, with more than 6,000 turbines generating 19% of its electricity, has yet to close a single fossil-fuel plant. It requires 50% more coal-generated electricity to cover wind power’s unpredictability, and pollution and carbon dioxide emissions have risen (by 36% in 2006 alone)."

https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2010/04/08/wind-power-is-a-complete-disaster/

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