Re: Grand Apagon - Electricity (not) in Spain

On Thu, 1 May 2025 10:27:36 +0100, Martin Brown
<'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

On 30/04/2025 22:28, Joe Gwinn wrote:

On Tue, 29 Apr 2025 23:33:17 +0200, "Carlos E.R."
<robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
 

On 2025-04-29 14:24, Martin Brown wrote:

Spain suffered a very spectacular near total loss of its national grid
yesterday taking parts of France and all of Portugal down with it. This
is an unprecedented failure of a supergrid system by cascade failure.

>
(total loss in the peninsula)
>
For those that can follow spoken Spanish, there has just been a detailed
explanation on Radio Cadena Ser. Aimar Bretos interviewed Jorge Morales
on Hora 25:
>
«Director of Próxima Energía and expert in the energy sector.
Entrepreneur and industrial engineer from the Polytechnic University of
Madrid, he has more than 20 years of experience in the Spanish
electricity sector.»
>
Direct link to mp3, starting from 31:30
>
<https://25673.mc.tritondigital.com/HORA_25_CADENASER_320_P/media-session/9db9ab48-74f6-4fac-9b8f-ab24df840f9f/2025/4/29/cadenaser_hora25_20250429_210000_220000.mp3?dist=cadenaser-web-tfp-permanente&csegid=22000&dl=1>
>
and:
>
<https://25673.mc.tritondigital.com/HORA_25_CADENASER_320_P/media-session/a06f2199-cd2a-4ce5-8045-ba282565c2c0/2025/4/29/cadenaser_hora25_20250429_220000_230000.mp3?dist=cadenaser-web-tfp-permanente&csegid=22000&dl=1>
>
>
Or, if that fails:
>
<https://cadenaser.com/audio/cadenaser_hora25_20250429_210000_220000/?ssm=whatsapp>
>
Continues on
>
<https://cadenaser.com/audio/cadenaser_hora25_20250429_220000_230000/?ssm=whatsapp>
>
>
>
Waiting for the podcast to appear [...] got it.
>
<https://cadenaser.com/nacional/2025/04/29/se-puede-repetir-el-apagon-un-experto-responde-la-duda-tras-la-caida-de-la-red-electrica-cadena-ser/?ssm=whatsapp>

 
 
The Wall Street Journal just published an analysis.  The authors are
Spanish.
 
How the Lights Went Out in Spain
The country flew too close to the sun — which is to say it relied too
heavily on unreliable solar power.
 
The following link should not require a subscription.
 
.<https://www.wsj.com/opinion/how-the-lights-went-out-in-spain-solar-power-electric-grid-0096bbc7?st=MbzSqb&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink>

>
Thanks Joe.
>
That sounds plausible. Icarus syndrome! There must still have been some
initial transient event that tipped the thing over the edge though.
>
A perturbation big enough that the inertia in the remaining mechanical
kit was not enough to prevent a rapid large frequency deviation enough
to make PV arrays drop off grid pretty much all at the same time.
>
A countermeasure that they should have done a long time ago is stagger
the dropout points on big PV arrays so that they don't all give up at
more or less exactly the same time. A few should be paid extra to drop
off early so that the whole system behaves more smoothly.
>
The link to France which was exporting power at the time failing might
well have been that trigger. Only time will tell. One thing is certain
the reports that governments get about green energy are complete junk. I
have been studying the UK ones very recently.
>
The UK NESO ones are utter garbage with scenarios in them that are so
totally divorced from physical reality that they are useless to decision
makers (who mostly are mostly lawyers and bean counters anyway).
>
NESO ETYS2023 Ten Year study showed all the seasonal network overloading
problems and how even with the "improvement" plan the worst overloaded
North-South choke point would *continue to get worse* out to 2033.
>
ETSY2024 all that tricky overloading info has been conveniently excised
although the summary heat map on p6 still shows that we are screwed!
>
I hadn't realised that the French government have deliberately limited
400kV link capacity over the Pyrenees to protect EDF nuclear power from
cheaper competition from Spain's massive solar PV investment.

One consequence of using a lot of solar power is that interconnected
networks get bigger hence less stable.

A lot of mid-sized natural gas power plants (or, eventually, small
nukes) would allow regions to be independent when they have to be.