Re: The Physics Behind the Spanish Blackout

On 10/06/2025 6:02 am, Joe Gwinn wrote:

On Mon, 09 Jun 2025 09:49:24 -0700, john larkin <jl@glen--canyon.com>
wrote:
 

On Mon, 9 Jun 2025 11:34:08 -0400, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:
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On 6/9/2025 10:14 AM, Joe Gwinn wrote:

On Sun, 08 Jun 2025 17:16:09 -0700, john larkin <jl@glen--canyon.com>
wrote:
>

On Sun, 08 Jun 2025 19:15:57 -0400, Joe Gwinn <joegwinn@comcast.net>
wrote:
>

>
The Physics Behind the Spanish Blackout, Bjorn Lomborg, Wall Street
Journal, 3 June 2025 issue, page A13.
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Here is a gift link.  No paywall, but they will insist on trying to
persuade you to subscribe.
>
.<https://www.wsj.com/opinion/the-physics-behind-the-spanish-blackout-solar-and-wind-power-unstable-grid-8be54b2a?st=VUVUMR&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink>
>
Joe

>
What's net zero is the line voltage. The issue is partly spinning
mass, but more important is gross gigawatts available on bad
afternoons.
>
Another time bomb is that (cheap) solar panels and inverters and
batteries don't last as long as is assumed in payback calculations. In
10 or 15 years there will be an enormous disposal problem. And lots of
leaky roofs.

>
Yep.  And given the likely end of the mandates and subsidies,
replacement may prove expensive, making the business case less
attractive.
>
Joe

>
I remember not too long ago when the climate-change deniers were
claiming renewables could never be a significant part of a country's
energy profile but I guess when they find out Spain was running 73% one
afternoon they have to change their argument, lol.
>
Just goalpost-shifting forever.
>
Better question is will the fission nuclear industry ever give up trying
to push their obsolete pointless technology that has been nothing but
broken promises for 75 years. It's over give up, already.

>
France will happily sell power to Germany and Spain for maybe 50 cents
per KWH, or whatever that is in euros.

 Heh.
 I should add that the WSJ is focused on purely financial issues,
specifically where to invest, covering both equities (which stocks to
buy, which to sell) and municipal bonds (loans made to governments to
purchase such thing as bridges, roads, and power plants or
facilities).

The financial aspect that the WSJ is focussed on when it publishes climate change denial junk from propagandists like Bjorn Lomborg, is the adverstising it can sell to the fossil carbon extraction industry.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bj%C3%B8rn_Lomborg

The Financial world does not care about technical details per se, they
care that the loans will be repaid.

And they can be persuaded to believe in lots of nonsense because they don't understand the technical details.

Muni Bond Analysts consider the
engineering as a way to assess the likely scale and practicality.
Whereupon they encounter the big calculator issue - is the entity
large enough to be plausible to accomplish what they claim?

Size doesn't guarantee plausibility - look at Donald Trump and the MAGA movement, or pretty much any other Ponzi scheme.

I learned about the financial world by marrying into it - my wife was
a Muni bond portfolio manager.  I read some of her tutoials, and was > stunned to learn that while the stock market got all the news media
attention, the Muni market was in fact ten times larger.

But ten times less interesting. Municipal bonds are boring.
--
Bill Sloman, Sydney