Re: Grand Apagon - Electricity (not) in Spain

On 30/04/2025 1:59 am, john larkin wrote:

On Tue, 29 Apr 2025 11:27:24 -0400, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:
 

On 4/29/2025 10:57 AM, john larkin wrote:

On Tue, 29 Apr 2025 13:24:46 +0100, Martin Brown
<'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> 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.
>
It seems likely they had got the effect of widespread solar PV has on
load shedding wrong (much like happened in the UK) and so it failed
completely. Two events a second apart delivered the coup de grace.
>
They seem to have ruled out cyber attack and the electricity company is
now trying to blame "the wrong sort of temperature variations"...
>
Their 400kV lines seemed to be taking the blame with the national power
company blaming exceedingly rare atmospheric phenomena due to "large"
temperature differences in central Spain. They claimed that the magical
sounding "induced atmospheric vibration" was to blame.
>
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/apr/28/spain-and-portugal-power-outage-cause-cyber-attack-electricity
>
Another marginally plausible explanation given was that different
impedances on cables at radically different temperatures on different
paths messed up the phasing (but the numbers don't look right to me).
>
Anyone have any idea what actually happened?
>
The only one I am aware of that can take 400kV supergrid down is cables
clashing together in older pylon configs where they are exactly one
above the other and resonance effects allowing large amplitude standing
waves to build up in the spans can occur in 70+mph winds.
>
Most UK ones now have a longer central pylon spur so that the lines are
more widely separated and up-down motion cannot allow them to touch.
>
They do sing quite impressively in a gale though. The little weights at
each end are apparently there to prevent such standing wave resonances
damaging the pylon structure. Without them some pylons did fall down in
the distant past during the most extreme of winter storms.

>
Spain is a leader in renewable power, shutting down nukes and fossil
fuel power plants. One theory is that local lack of sun and wind can
be overcome by huge long-distance inter-state and inter-country
networks. "The wind is always blowing somewhere."
>
Politicians are not usually good electrical engineers.
>
Go green, go dark. Germany is de-industrializing too.
>

>
In 2005 there was 5 GW of photovoltaic solar capacity installed
worldwide, 5 GW is now what's being installed worldwide this year every
72 hours.

 And most of the world goes dark every night.

About 40% of new roof-top solar power installations in Australia include a Tesla Powerwall (or something similar) to keep the lights on at night.
It adds appreciably to the capital cost, but pays for itself in a couple of years. Australia's feed-in tariffs aren't generous.
Africa and India use this approach because nation-wide grids are expensive. Only the moderately rich can afford it. but that's still quite a few people.

The only place significant new nuclear is being built is in China, I
believe they built about 40 GW in the past decade. The US built way less
than that I see why it's even less popular here, venture capital likes
making money.

 Making money implies efficiency. And vice versa.

Far from it. Ponzi schemes make some people a great deal of money.
Spending money on advertising is totally inefficient,but can let you make a great deal on money. Look at the fossil carbon extraction industry, which spends millions on the lying climate change denial propaganda that you re-cycle here.
--
Bill Sloman, Sydney