Re: The Spanish Grid Drop-out - recently released information.

On 13/05/2025 11:48 pm, john larkin wrote:

On Tue, 13 May 2025 12:57:47 +0200, "Carlos E.R."
<robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
 

On 2025-05-13 06:25, Bill Sloman wrote:

On 13/05/2025 3:35 am, john larkin wrote:

On Sun, 11 May 2025 12:22:11 +1000, Chris Jones
<lugnut808@spam.yahoo.com> wrote:
>

On 11/05/2025 5:04 am, john larkin wrote:
>

As solar and wind get to be dominant, micromanagement of power sources
and loads will be necessary to ensure uptime.

>
This is largely unnecessary - if the control signal that was being sent
out by the central controller to micromanage each power source was
derived from a function of the frequency, phase, voltage etc., then
rather than trying to distribute the result of this calculation to
millions of devices with low latency, it is better to distribute just
the formula (once every few years or as necessary), and run it on a
microcontroller in the inverters several times every mains cycle. They
already have more than enough processing power.

>
A central (international!) controller would want to know what every
contributor was pushing into the grid, and probably see wind flow and
clouds moving around. One local transmission line could fail and take
down half of Europe. Again.

>
What makes you think that?
The current control system clearly isn't that well informed, and it
works pretty much all the time.
>

I believe that there are some new regulatuions in at least one
Australian
state, driven by the (fossil-fuel-stoked) fear of "too much solar
destabilising the grid", which require new home solar inverters to stop
exporting power, unless they receive continuous "permission to export"
signals from our overlords, the network operators. In other words,
rather than exporting power in the case of communications failure, it
goes into the state of "export no power" in case of communications
failure, because otherwise people might unplug their internet to export
more scary solar power if exporting power was allowed when the internet
connection fails.

>
This is nonsense. The Australian grid don't like having to deal with
excess power being exported by roof-top solar installation, and
discourage people from doing it, to the point where 40% of new roof-top
solar installations in Australia include a Tesla Powerwall or an
equivalent battery, and don't export anything.
>

This is a fairly new requirement, so not many
compliant devices are installed now, but once a few gigawatts of these
inverters are running, it will be interesting to see what happens when
there is a major internet outage on a hot summer day, and all of those
gigawatts suddenly go away. Hopefully they thought of that but I
doubt it.
>
The rapid control algorithms should be distributed, and the only
low-latency communication signals they should rely upon are frequency
and voltage.

>
A solar panel with an algorithm can't know about potential system
overloads. Solar and wind will have to be shed sometimes to protect
the entire system. Loads shed too. Renewable-heavy grids are fragile.

>
The existing system doesn't know about potential system overloads, and
it works pretty much all the time. Regular grids are fragile too.
>
The renewable-heavy grid in South Australia was fragile, until they
bought the world first grid scale battery in 2017.
>
https://hornsdalepowerreserve.com.au/
>
They promptly devoted half the battery to short term phase correction
and frequency satabilisation, and it isn't fragile any more.
>
Carlos says that the Spanish mainland grid hasn't got any storage - no
grid battery and no pumped hydro, which is a bit silly.

>
No, no grid batteries yet. Pumped hydro there is somewhere; some island
have it for sure, it has gone an entire month on renewables alone.
>
I asked chatgpt:
>
              Does the Spanish electricity network has storage capability?
>
Yes, the Spanish electricity network does have storage capabilities, but
on a limited scale relative to its overall electricity demand and
production.
>
>
*Key Points:*
>
1. Pumped Hydro Storage
>
This is the main form of energy storage in Spain. It's a mature and
widely used technology that involves pumping water uphill to a reservoir
during times of low electricity demand and releasing it to generate
electricity during peak demand.
>
     Spain has several pumped hydro plants, including:
>
         La Muela II (one of the largest in Europe)
>
         Estany Gento-Sallente
>
     Total pumped hydro storage capacity in Spain is estimated to be
around 6 GW (gigawatts) of installed capacity.
>
2. Battery Storage
>
     Grid-scale battery storage is still in early development in Spain
but is growing.
>
     Projects have been announced or launched, particularly to
complement renewable energy (especially solar and wind).
>
     As of recent years, installed battery capacity is relatively small
(in the tens to hundreds of megawatts), but it's expected to grow
significantly under Spain’s energy transition plans.
>
3. Other Technologies
>
     Thermal storage: Used in concentrated solar power (CSP) plants,
where molten salts store heat that can be used to generate electricity
after the sun goes down.
>
     Hydrogen: In development, with pilot projects aiming to use green
hydrogen for seasonal or long-duration storage.
>
4. Future Plans
>
Spain's National Energy and Climate Plan (NECP) and other strategic
documents aim to:
>
     Expand storage to around 20 GW by 2030, including batteries, pumped
hydro, and other technologies.
>
     Enable better integration of intermittent renewables like wind and
solar.
>
Conclusion:
>
Yes, Spain's electricity network has storage capabilities, primarily
through pumped hydro, with growing use of batteries and thermal storage.
Significant expansion is planned to support the country's renewable
energy targets and grid stability.

 Renewable and stable conflict. Both are expensive.

Renewable sources of electricity are the cheapest available.
Solar cells only work when the sun is shining, but it does that for a fairly predictable part of the day, and wind farms only work when the wind is blowing. but the long term average is pretty stable. You've got to manage the short term gaps, but with a bit of excess capacity people do seem top get by.

Pumped hydro is 70 to 80% efficient, but can't be located just
anywhere, so add transmission line losses. And there's a limit to how
much can be built.
 Thermal storage is usually less efficient.
 Batteries are big and expensive and often dangerous. Backing up a
country for a week is basically impossible.

Properly designed battery systems aren't dangerous. Grid scale batteries don't blow and burn like cheap e-bike batteries, even if the Murdoch press likes to create that impression.

Nukes are great, but not if you tear them down.

Nukes are remarkably expensive, and depressingly inflexible. Radiation damage to the structure means that you do have to tear them down after a few decades of use, and the radioactive waste starts off very radioactive, and the longer-lived isotopes have to be managed for a few hundred thousand years.

Lots of money is being spent to (mostly not) fix a problem that used
to not exist. If Europe wants to shiver in the dark and
de-industrialize, it's fine with us. And with China.

The only well-informed people who think that anthopogenic global warming isn't a problem work for the fossil carbon extraction industry, and they are well-informed about what would happen to their jobs if they thought differently.

Germany and Japan lost WWII largely because they ran out of energy
resources, and the US didn't.

That's not the usual formulation.

Now europe is voluntarily wrecking itself.

They haven't elected anybody as silly as Donald Trump yet.
They are phasing out fossil carbon  fueled energy sources, but the renewable alternatives seem to be able to replace them.

When unemployed people get cold and hungry in the dark,
politics will change. The left will put up a big fight but will lose.

That's pretty much what got Donald Trump elected. America has exported a lot of manufacturing jobs, and the people stuck with the low paid work they can get aren't happy about it. They are going to be even unhappier when they work out that his hare-brained schemes aren't going to make them any better off.
Europe hasn't got the same kind of problem - there's less economic inequality there than there is in the USA, and less of the social problems it generates.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spirit_Level_(Wilkinson_and_Pickett_book)
James Arthur doesn't like the book, because he doesn't like the message. He didn't seem to be able to fault the research.
--
Bill Sloman, Sydney