Re: The Physics Behind the Spanish Blackout

On 10/06/2025 5:21 pm, David Brown wrote:

On 10/06/2025 07:01, Bill Sloman wrote:

On 10/06/2025 6:44 am, Liz Tuddenham wrote:

Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
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On 2025-06-09 21:54, Don Y wrote:

 

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OTOH, we're sticking with other technologies (fossil fuels -- coal -- and
nukes) despite obvious and yet to be solved problems INHERENT in their
technology.  Adding "inertia" synthetically to a network is a considerably
more realistic goal than sorting out how to deal with nuclear waste or
the consequences of burning carbon.

 Technically and economically, dealing with nuclear waste is many orders of magnitude easier than dealing with the consequences of burning carbon.

Nuclear fission waste is mixture of isotopes. Some of them are very radioactive and decay fast, and keeping them safe until they've mostly decayed is technically demanding. The less radioactive isotopes are easier to handle, but some of them stay dangerously radioactive for upwards of 100,000 years, and keeping them safely isolated for that length of time is an as yet unsolved problem

Politically, ignoring or denying the consequences of burning carbon is many orders of magnitude easier than doing anything at all.

Until the climate gets warmer, sea levels rise, and tropical cyclones get more energetic. People are getting spooked by the changes they've seen over the last thirty years, and politicians are finding them harder to ignore.

Solar and wind can be made to impose a gigantic inertia with appropriate
electronics. You can fixate the output at 50Hz, locked no matter what.

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Only if the surplus energy is available to supply the necessary current.

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That's why you need pumped hydro storage and grid scale batteries.

 It's the same as pretty much any other problem with hardware - add some big capacitors, and it will all be much more stable.

Only if you do it right.

That's exactly why South Australia installed the first ever grid scale battery in November 2017, and half of it's capacity was immediately devoted to short term (within cycle) frequency control. They had a lot of solar cell generation, and their quick-start gas-turbine unit had failed to start when it was needed, so they went shopping for a better solution. Search for the Hornsdale Power Reserve.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornsdale_Power_Reserve

 Grid storage is a major part of the way forward in electricity distribution (the other component is high voltage DC lines).  But lithium batteries like that one are no more than a stop-gap.  Lithium is expensive, dangerous, a limited resource, and mining it is an environmental disaster (albeit much more localised than the disaster of burning carbon).  The main battery type for grid storage should be sodium ion batteries.

Lithium isn't particularly rare. Stars have been making it for the past 13 billion years. You don't have to wait for a supernova.  We haven't put as much effort into finding lithium rich ores as we have put into finding copper, gold and silver, which are all heavier than iron.
Mining is always an environmental disaster if you don't keep a sharp eye on the miners.
There are a variety of of opinions about what battery type would be best for grid storage. Vanadium flow batteries have their fans. In so far as lithium is dangerous, sodium is even more dangerous (and potassium is even worse). Cheapskates who cut corners can extract a disaster from the most innocuous materials.
Most of the "lithium is dangerous" propaganda comes from the fossil carbon extraction industry, who wants to keep on selling gasoline to be burnt in  internal combustion engines.
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Bill Sloman, Sydney