Its prime minister said renewable energy had nothing to do with the catastrophic blackout in Spain, but insisted that the real culprit was a rare technological failure that had nothing to do with the country's green energy transition. [emphasis, links added]
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez went further, reiterating the government's opposition to nuclear energy, which he said was not a solution.
But, as I pointed out on Monday The root cause of the power outage is the lack of “inertia,” a physical buffer provided by traditional power plants that use heavy rotating machinery to stabilize the grid during sudden fluctuations.
Our electrical systems are based on power plants that rotate huge metal shafts with thousands of rotating rotating per minute, while also providing power.
The role of rotating mass is like a shock absorber, which automatically resists sharp fluctuations in supply and demand. When a system fails or suddenly drops, inertia buys precious seconds to make the control system respond and isolate the operator the problem.
In contrast, solar panels and most modern wind turbines rely on inverters that lack physical mass and cannot buffer these shocks.
Indeed, grid managers have not identified a specific cause of the outage, with both Red Eléctrica in Spain and REN in Portugal warning that a complete root cause analysis could take weeks.
On the day of the power outage, nearly 80% of Spain's electricity comes from the inverter's solar and wind energy sources…
The preliminary report describes “very powerful oscillations” in the network and suggests that the event begins with unexpected interference, which may be related to a sudden drop in power generation or equipment failure.
But this does not change the fact that the Spanish grid lacks inertia, which can avoid or at least include blackouts if there is more inertia in the system.
Inertia is not a theoretical benefit, it is the physical properties provided by heavy generators like natural gas, coal and nuclear power plants that naturally resist sudden changes in frequency.
On the day of the power outage, nearly 80% of Spain's electricity comes from inverter-based solar and wind energy, which do not provide such stabilization.
Since there are few traditional plants online, the grid has little buffer to absorb some slight shocks. When disturbing impact, the frequency drops, and The system is disassembled in seconds.
Unlike older meshes built around the rotational mass, Spain’s modern, hyperlight grids simply cannot withstand sudden imbalances.
Spain's grid operator admitted on a conference call yesterday “Massive” losses from renewable power generation triggered a power outage and said the initial interference was from solar energy.
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