I found it amazing that on the 16th April 2025 it was said that Spain was using 100% renewable energy and 12 days later they have a major outage due to .“a rare atmospheric phenomenon” ie Sun and or wind decide to change quickly - like weather does regularly!
Reality really is a b**ch when it teaches you a lesson that quickly!
Yeah, they lied about "100% renewable energy". Their nuclear plants were still running, as they should be.
And it sounds like they're heavily reliant on their interconnect to France. Notice, their grid didn't go down until the connection to France cut out. I suspect that French inertia is the only thing keeping Spain synchronized.
Once again it appears to be a question of "kicking the can down the road" and hoping that there is a technological breakthrough that will vindicate their indecision.
This seems to be the operating conditions that all of the "climate nuts" adhere to. When will they realise that the laws of thermodynamics, physics, chemistry and other sciences do not have "feelings" and they are pretty much set in stone.
There may be a breakthrough in future but we have to live with conditions prevalent today!
In ancient Athens there was a period when generals, judges, and other important officials were elected by a vote of the citizen body. (Native Athenian men of military age only, of course).
Officials were usually elected for just one year at a time. They could always run for re-election on the strength of their record.
One catch: at the end of their year, the same citizen body voted on their reward - or punishment. They could get a vote of thanks, a bonus, a statue, a fine, exile, or execution. Many generals simply never returned at the end of their year.
That's a system we would do well to adopt. Whenever a politician is responsible for serious harm, he or she should be tried and, if appropriate, punished. Some would deserve hanging. At the moment there are only rewards, which is grotesquely wrong.
I haven’t watched network news in decades but I wonder if they covered this in between the Terrible Trump stories yesterday? It seems rather news worthy to enlighten the apathetic masses on the true dangers of “green energy”
Your mistake is believing the media believes its role is to in any way educate the peasantry - we have seen yesteryear's "ink stained wretches" (as reporters in the day referred to themselves) become haughty "journalists" whose goal is to vilify the enemy (nowadays, of course, that's The Donald) and maintain the narrative impoised by their masters of the Marxist left.
Just FYI for those not from Alberta, Chinook means a warm adiabatic wind a la the great scientific mind Leo DiCaprio.
We can have deep cold winter high pressure systems here and when warm weather noses in from the southwest over the mountains the temperature change is extreme, i personally have seen -35 to +10 C in 1 hour, 45C change, causes migraines in people, as well as lots of car accidents. Imagine roads and bridge decks at -35 and then warm air passes over, frost forms just like fog on glasses when you step inside.
Now this IS an extreme temperature change. I can't even imagine how it must feel. Funny how your grid doesn't trip from it. Very interesting, thank you!
The heroes of these happenings on the Iberian peninsula to me are the responsible engineers who - somehow, magically - managed to get a black start going in under a day with whatever baseload blackstart capacity they have had at their disposal. Imagine them not being able to do it in other "green energy"-transitioned but way more densely populated countries... oh, like Germany for example. Imagine if teenagers don't have WiFi to check the latest tiktok trends. O M capital G.
The claimants of "atmospheric anomalies" can only hope that people remain dumb/hypermorally pumped enough not to look up the term anywhere. It seemingly did not exist according to google search trends before it was somehow ... creatively brought into existence... as an "explanation" to yesterdays' power outage.
Yes. I think these are the unsung heroes of such events. There was a failure of the baggage handling system at Heathrow a few years ago and I remember thinking that there's some poor sap sweating at a keyboard somewhere trying to get it running again and behind him there's queue of managers who every five minutes keep asking him "How long are you going to be?" I have some experience of this.
This is very true. The people actually doing the work rarely get any credit and they should, plus a bonus for having to clean up the messes created by green idiots.
Yes, "Not a lot of people" have been covering this who also linked to a New Zealand substack called newzealandenergy who came to similar conclusions. Or at least not conclusions but likely causes. It was ironic about them celebrating the 100% renewables thing but they didn't mention that Spain has one of the highest electricity prices in Europe or so the internet tells me. The thing with a lot of the renewable technology is that it's complicated, lots and lots of high power electronics converting dc to ac and ac to ac. And these electronic devices can and do fail. The New Zealand guy suggested that it might have been started by an interconnector between Spain and France failing and then the domino effect occurs and everything comes down. There have been interconnector failures between UK and France. One in 2023 and another in 2018 when a ship collision severed the link.
I was interested to read today that the EU doctrine is more and more interconnected grids spanning the whole of Europe. Does this help or will it mean Europe-wide blackouts? That would be true harmonisation.
It means much higher risk of blackouts, I believe, in light of their other priority of more solar, more wind, whatever else happens. But you're right, it will be harmonious.
No doubt there's much of interest to emerge. Did the grid require a "black start" - a term recently new to me?
On a point of detail, there's no such thing as noon in Iberia - if it's noon in Spain it's 11am in Portugal. The two nations have lived in relatively peaceful harmony for some hundreds of years: I did once hear in a broadcast "We Portuguese live with our backs to Spain". Perhaps this has helped.
I sent the following quote to friends under the subject "Recognising genius when one comes across it", from Politico Europe: "Freak disappearance of electricity triggered power cut, says Spain PM Sánchez". "How do such imbeciles get elected to high office?" I mused with my wife. Came the response: "Because there are enough imbeciles to elect them".
You're married to a very smart woman. And wise, too. I had no idea they had a time difference. People are weird.
Also, interesting read, until I came to this point: "Continuing to rely on centralised grid structures without fundamentally rethinking resilience puts entire regions at risk — not just from technical faults, but from environmental volatility." Sounds like cheerleading for decentralised grids and this sounds risky to me. Case in point, the Canadian Chinook phenomenon from above.
Thank you Irina. Yes I am a lucky man: my wife is indeed smart and wise.
I shall be watching with great interest discussions about the development of electricity grids, which seems to have received insufficient attention, and about which I know almost nothing. I can see micro-grids working if reduced to the absurd point of each home going off-grid and having a generator. I have one myself for emergencies and I expect Mr Miliband will cause me to need it before too long. Thanks again.
I wonder how many blackouts will be blamed on "a rare atmospheric phenomenon" before the utility customers exclaim, in unison, "These grid operating bobbleheads don't know what they are doing!" Fantastic post!
Inertia is my nemesis. It has prevented me from sloping off into my garage to replace my bike's brake pads. Mind you, it is pretty hot out there at 95 degrees, so it was probably climate change all along.
“ The ability of power generators to respond to imbalances between supply and demand for electricity in the blink of an eye if not less.”
A better way to look at it is that it doesn’t change in the blink of an eye, it resists change and therefor frequency decrease for long enough that the generator governor can react and add fuel before the frequency decays to trip point.
Some may remember when Germany asked its residents to leave lights on at night because the wind output was so high. Electricity is not stored on the grid - it is simply a delivery vehicle, which makes the balancing of supply and demand so critical. When that is not in balance, the voltage swings, which damages equipment and, as we see, can take down the entire grid.
It is very probably we are seeing the future of the European power grid - increasing risks of blackouts as RES penetration grows. In addition to negative prices (which discourage investment in traditional non-subsidized generation assets) this has the potential to ruin our party...
Who could possibly have predicted this could happen!! Per Wimmer in his book "The Green Bubble: Why Alternative Energy Is Not The Answer To Our Future Energy Needs", published in March 2015 predicted this very issue in Spain ten years ago. This was the first time I was made aware of how intermittent power impacts grid stability and have been watching a slow train wreck since that time. I live in Texas and work in the upstream oil and gas business-- we are heading down the same path here and have been for almost the same amount of time. I already have my natural gas fueled Generac generator at the house.
Your natural gas fuelled generator isn't going to do you much good if your gas supply is from a gas distribution system because compressor stations rely on electrical power to operate.
The gas transmission used to run on engines and turbines burning some of the gas being transported to propel the rest, just some small low voltage electrical loads easily powered by emergency generators usually diesel.
But because nonsensical climate emergency bs we are busy electrifying those big compressors meaning yes indeed the gas network is becoming dependent on the electric and vise versa
An incredibly stupid and short sighted thing to do.
Thanks for the enlightening reply. Perhaps you should consider getting yourself a large LPG storage tank and converting your generator to run on propane.
I found it amazing that on the 16th April 2025 it was said that Spain was using 100% renewable energy and 12 days later they have a major outage due to .“a rare atmospheric phenomenon” ie Sun and or wind decide to change quickly - like weather does regularly!
Reality really is a b**ch when it teaches you a lesson that quickly!
Yeah, they lied about "100% renewable energy". Their nuclear plants were still running, as they should be.
And it sounds like they're heavily reliant on their interconnect to France. Notice, their grid didn't go down until the connection to France cut out. I suspect that French inertia is the only thing keeping Spain synchronized.
Oh, so that's why they want to build more interconnectors... instead of taking care of their nuclear power plants.
Once again it appears to be a question of "kicking the can down the road" and hoping that there is a technological breakthrough that will vindicate their indecision.
This seems to be the operating conditions that all of the "climate nuts" adhere to. When will they realise that the laws of thermodynamics, physics, chemistry and other sciences do not have "feelings" and they are pretty much set in stone.
There may be a breakthrough in future but we have to live with conditions prevalent today!
This is the reason that I've taken to always adding "Magic" in preface to the word "batteries" when discussing power and the grid.
In ancient Athens there was a period when generals, judges, and other important officials were elected by a vote of the citizen body. (Native Athenian men of military age only, of course).
Officials were usually elected for just one year at a time. They could always run for re-election on the strength of their record.
One catch: at the end of their year, the same citizen body voted on their reward - or punishment. They could get a vote of thanks, a bonus, a statue, a fine, exile, or execution. Many generals simply never returned at the end of their year.
That's a system we would do well to adopt. Whenever a politician is responsible for serious harm, he or she should be tried and, if appropriate, punished. Some would deserve hanging. At the moment there are only rewards, which is grotesquely wrong.
It could be. I was speculating above, hence the, "it sounds like".
But it seems like a pretty good hypothesis so far.
I have posted this brilliant remark often recently, and expect to go on doing so.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away".
- Philip K. Dick, I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon
Maybe they should do some geoengineering to block out the sun and reduce the "rare atmospheric phenomenon."
That's been ordered & will be delivered soon.....🤡
They’re already on to it in the UK with a £50 million grant for research.
My God no!
I haven’t watched network news in decades but I wonder if they covered this in between the Terrible Trump stories yesterday? It seems rather news worthy to enlighten the apathetic masses on the true dangers of “green energy”
Your mistake is believing the media believes its role is to in any way educate the peasantry - we have seen yesteryear's "ink stained wretches" (as reporters in the day referred to themselves) become haughty "journalists" whose goal is to vilify the enemy (nowadays, of course, that's The Donald) and maintain the narrative impoised by their masters of the Marxist left.
"...nowadays, of course, that's The Donald..."
And Putler. And anyone educated.
This "rare atmospheric phenomenon" happens in Alberta with considerable frequency, it's called a Chinook.
And never causes a trip
Just FYI for those not from Alberta, Chinook means a warm adiabatic wind a la the great scientific mind Leo DiCaprio.
We can have deep cold winter high pressure systems here and when warm weather noses in from the southwest over the mountains the temperature change is extreme, i personally have seen -35 to +10 C in 1 hour, 45C change, causes migraines in people, as well as lots of car accidents. Imagine roads and bridge decks at -35 and then warm air passes over, frost forms just like fog on glasses when you step inside.
And yes, the grid doesn't trip when this happens.
Now this IS an extreme temperature change. I can't even imagine how it must feel. Funny how your grid doesn't trip from it. Very interesting, thank you!
The heroes of these happenings on the Iberian peninsula to me are the responsible engineers who - somehow, magically - managed to get a black start going in under a day with whatever baseload blackstart capacity they have had at their disposal. Imagine them not being able to do it in other "green energy"-transitioned but way more densely populated countries... oh, like Germany for example. Imagine if teenagers don't have WiFi to check the latest tiktok trends. O M capital G.
The claimants of "atmospheric anomalies" can only hope that people remain dumb/hypermorally pumped enough not to look up the term anywhere. It seemingly did not exist according to google search trends before it was somehow ... creatively brought into existence... as an "explanation" to yesterdays' power outage.
Yes. I think these are the unsung heroes of such events. There was a failure of the baggage handling system at Heathrow a few years ago and I remember thinking that there's some poor sap sweating at a keyboard somewhere trying to get it running again and behind him there's queue of managers who every five minutes keep asking him "How long are you going to be?" I have some experience of this.
Ineptocrats breathing down our combined necks are really the bane of all remaining sane operations, indeed. I can attest.
Wish I could like this twice
Monty Carlo,
Absolutely spot on!
This is very true. The people actually doing the work rarely get any credit and they should, plus a bonus for having to clean up the messes created by green idiots.
Sounds like "atmospheric anomaly" might be from Ghostbusters.
Next thing we know the Marshmallow Man will destroy our solar panels!
Great post, Irina. You nailed the highlights and pulled in the Angwin, Bryce, and Blas highlights from my timeline. One other interesting post I found that you might find valuable: https://x.com/damienernst1/status/1917149784164495717?s=61&t=UUhV8why2cxiMSu6TnaGyA
Thank you. The more I read about this blackout, the worse it looks.
Induced atmospheric vibration will get you every time.
Yes, "Not a lot of people" have been covering this who also linked to a New Zealand substack called newzealandenergy who came to similar conclusions. Or at least not conclusions but likely causes. It was ironic about them celebrating the 100% renewables thing but they didn't mention that Spain has one of the highest electricity prices in Europe or so the internet tells me. The thing with a lot of the renewable technology is that it's complicated, lots and lots of high power electronics converting dc to ac and ac to ac. And these electronic devices can and do fail. The New Zealand guy suggested that it might have been started by an interconnector between Spain and France failing and then the domino effect occurs and everything comes down. There have been interconnector failures between UK and France. One in 2023 and another in 2018 when a ship collision severed the link.
I was interested to read today that the EU doctrine is more and more interconnected grids spanning the whole of Europe. Does this help or will it mean Europe-wide blackouts? That would be true harmonisation.
It means much higher risk of blackouts, I believe, in light of their other priority of more solar, more wind, whatever else happens. But you're right, it will be harmonious.
It is reported a forest fire near Narbonne took out some overhead HT lines which could have affected the power via the Franco-Spanish interconnector.
Thank you Irina,
My reaction to the "rare atmospheric phenomenon" was total disbelief. I've reduced this to significant disbelief due to reading this: https://theconversation.com/did-induced-atmospheric-vibration-cause-blackouts-in-europe-an-electrical-engineer-explains-the-phenomenon-255497
No doubt there's much of interest to emerge. Did the grid require a "black start" - a term recently new to me?
On a point of detail, there's no such thing as noon in Iberia - if it's noon in Spain it's 11am in Portugal. The two nations have lived in relatively peaceful harmony for some hundreds of years: I did once hear in a broadcast "We Portuguese live with our backs to Spain". Perhaps this has helped.
I sent the following quote to friends under the subject "Recognising genius when one comes across it", from Politico Europe: "Freak disappearance of electricity triggered power cut, says Spain PM Sánchez". "How do such imbeciles get elected to high office?" I mused with my wife. Came the response: "Because there are enough imbeciles to elect them".
Re your wife’s response - Canadian election result.
Who'd a thunk?
Apparently the Canadians want a UK lifestyle...
Yes
Many of us really are that stupid
I wish Spain had hit the wall a week ago, would have stimulated conversation here
My condolences on the returns.
You're married to a very smart woman. And wise, too. I had no idea they had a time difference. People are weird.
Also, interesting read, until I came to this point: "Continuing to rely on centralised grid structures without fundamentally rethinking resilience puts entire regions at risk — not just from technical faults, but from environmental volatility." Sounds like cheerleading for decentralised grids and this sounds risky to me. Case in point, the Canadian Chinook phenomenon from above.
Thank you Irina. Yes I am a lucky man: my wife is indeed smart and wise.
I shall be watching with great interest discussions about the development of electricity grids, which seems to have received insufficient attention, and about which I know almost nothing. I can see micro-grids working if reduced to the absurd point of each home going off-grid and having a generator. I have one myself for emergencies and I expect Mr Miliband will cause me to need it before too long. Thanks again.
I wonder how many blackouts will be blamed on "a rare atmospheric phenomenon" before the utility customers exclaim, in unison, "These grid operating bobbleheads don't know what they are doing!" Fantastic post!
🤘😎🤘
Inertia is my nemesis. It has prevented me from sloping off into my garage to replace my bike's brake pads. Mind you, it is pretty hot out there at 95 degrees, so it was probably climate change all along.
Thank you so much for the clarity
“ The ability of power generators to respond to imbalances between supply and demand for electricity in the blink of an eye if not less.”
A better way to look at it is that it doesn’t change in the blink of an eye, it resists change and therefor frequency decrease for long enough that the generator governor can react and add fuel before the frequency decays to trip point.
Wind and solar have zero capabilities
A simple fact - succinctly put - completely beyond the ability of Net Zeroids to comprehend.
Yes, they wave their hands and say that grid forming inverters are on their way, as we sit with no electricity.
How about no more wind and solar until the grid forming not grid following inverters are available at scale, proven and reliable.
If this happens here on the canadian prairies at -40, as it almost did jan 13 2024, then a lot of people are going to die.
How is that black start going to work at -40?
Thanks for the clarification. That's one big problem of wind and solar that hadn't drawn any attention until now.
Some may remember when Germany asked its residents to leave lights on at night because the wind output was so high. Electricity is not stored on the grid - it is simply a delivery vehicle, which makes the balancing of supply and demand so critical. When that is not in balance, the voltage swings, which damages equipment and, as we see, can take down the entire grid.
Which is why we now have to match our demand to supply instead of vice versa.
It is very probably we are seeing the future of the European power grid - increasing risks of blackouts as RES penetration grows. In addition to negative prices (which discourage investment in traditional non-subsidized generation assets) this has the potential to ruin our party...
The sooner, the better, I'm afraid.
Nice choice of using bold font (you are welcome).
Who could possibly have predicted this could happen!! Per Wimmer in his book "The Green Bubble: Why Alternative Energy Is Not The Answer To Our Future Energy Needs", published in March 2015 predicted this very issue in Spain ten years ago. This was the first time I was made aware of how intermittent power impacts grid stability and have been watching a slow train wreck since that time. I live in Texas and work in the upstream oil and gas business-- we are heading down the same path here and have been for almost the same amount of time. I already have my natural gas fueled Generac generator at the house.
Your natural gas fuelled generator isn't going to do you much good if your gas supply is from a gas distribution system because compressor stations rely on electrical power to operate.
Yup
The gas transmission used to run on engines and turbines burning some of the gas being transported to propel the rest, just some small low voltage electrical loads easily powered by emergency generators usually diesel.
But because nonsensical climate emergency bs we are busy electrifying those big compressors meaning yes indeed the gas network is becoming dependent on the electric and vise versa
An incredibly stupid and short sighted thing to do.
And I sell big electric vfds and motors
I make $$$ off selling them
And I say it’s stupid.
That’s my cred.
Thanks for the enlightening reply. Perhaps you should consider getting yourself a large LPG storage tank and converting your generator to run on propane.
if we can't fix the grid then that would be the next step