By Jo Nova
The cause of the mysterious oscillations and the big Iberian blackout is still a mystery, and it will take six months before the world has forgotten, sorry, I mean before the official report is finished.
In the meantime, baffled Spanish grid managers, who couldn’t possibly speculate on the cause, have cranked up the nuclear power and the gas, and reduced solar generation for no reason in particular. It’s all very odd, because gas is more expensive, and sun is free.
The Minister accidentally called this “Strengthened Mode” . (Didn’t they used to call it pollution?).
Lest we forget — in the hours before the crash, solar power was providing 60% of the energy, while nuclear power was covering 11%, and gas was just 3%.
Net Zero Spain leans on Nuclear, Gas to keep the lights on after historic Blackout
By Oliver JJ Lane, Breitbart
Spain is running its national power grid in “strengthened mode”, using more nuclear and natural gas in place of the renewables it vaunted before last month’s historic blackout, but still hasn’t said what started the outage.
Bloomberg energy industry journalist Javier Blas, who is Spanish, further notes in a digest of Aagesen’s remarks that she also said — without elaboration — in her address to Parliament that the grid operator was now running the system in “strengthened mode”
The people deserve no hypothesis, says the Minister (covering her #$%)
[Minister for Ecological Transition and Energy Sara Aagesen] said: “The government is working with rigour and not making hypotheses, because that is what the Spanish people deserve. Rigour and truth”.
Per the latest data, in recent days, more reliable traditional generation is being used more, with nuclear responsible for between 14 and 23 percent, and natural gas-fired plants accounting for up to 25 percent at times.
It’s just bad luck, you know, that these mysterious oscillations hit Spain. And thus, they have to use CCGT gas turbines for a while, because they can “adjust more promptly to mysterious oscillations”. It’s just a quirk:
Spain Boosts Costlier Gas Power to Secure Grid After Blackout
By Thomas Gualtieri, Bloomberg
Still, energy regulator CNMC head Cani Fernandez told lawmakers that the system is currently working with more expensive backup mechanisms that would adjust more promptly to unwanted oscillations. That’s a good description of CCGTs versus solar.
“It seems that Red Electrica wants to have tight control over the generation mix to stabilize it” said Javier Pamos, an analyst at Aurora Energy Research. “Combined-cycle plants are being included in it even though there are hours of the day when they wouldn’t be necessary as renewable production is enough to cover demand.”
The output of combined-cycle gas turbines, a more steady generation technology than solar, jumped 37% in the two weeks after the outage, compared with the two weeks prior, data from power grid operator Red Electrica show. Their average share of Spain’s power mix increased to 18% from about 12%.
On May 15th the Spanish Government claimed that there were mysterious oscillations right across the continent:
Spanish government provides further details in blackout update
PV-Magazine
Two oscillations in the system variables detected at 12:03 pm were observed, lasting five minutes, during which strong fluctuations in voltage and frequency occurred.
The second, at 12:19 pm, lasted three minutes. This, according to Aagesen, “is more common within the European system, comes from the center-east, and oscillates with respect to the European synchronous system, which, in turn, oscillates with respect to Turkey. The system operator acted to dampen these oscillations.”
After these oscillations, demand was 25,184 MW at 12:30 pm, at which time there was 3 GW of pumping.
Portugal is now blaming France, saying that because France runs on nuclear power it’s been very slack about building interconnectors to Spain. The unhappy Iberians have said for years that Paris was “resisting” the flow of cheap (but unreliable) energy “to protect its own nuclear power plants and maintain its control over the European energy market.” (Which, of course, it was.)
France is 68% nuclear powered, and the last thing they’d want is surges of useless solar and wind power that the nuclear plants would have to dance around. Unreliable solar and wind generators don’t provide France with anything it doesn’t already have, but the surges would make French nuclear plants operate in a less efficient, more expensive mode.
The EU set a target of 10% electricity swaps between countries by 2020, but at the moment it’s only 3% between Spain and France.
Portugal Scapegoats France After Iberian Blackout
By Javier Villamor, European Conservative
France’s electricity grid operator (RTE) denies any obstruction.
Portugal’s Energy Minister, Maria da Graça Carvalho, has not hesitated to describe the lack of interconnections with France as a direct barrier to the European single market. According to Lisbon, systematic delays by the French government in expanding electricity infrastructure across the Pyrenees have contributed to the energy isolation of both Spain and Portugal, multiplying the impact of the recent system collapse.
Portugal has announced that it will take the case to the European Commission, requesting formal intervention against France for violating the principles of the EU’s internal energy market. The EU had set a target for member states to have electricity import capacity equal to 10% of national generation by 2020 and 15% by 2030. However, the connection between Spain and France barely exceeds 3%.
So the Spanish and Portuguese complaints are undoubtedly true — naughty France.
If only the Iberians had been selling something France actually wanted, it wouldn’t be so hard to make them build the interconnectors.
Image by Greg Montani from Pixabay. | Tunnel by Jo Nova
An engaging overview of the recent outage in the Spanish region.
It’s engaging because in the first two paragraphs there’s special treatment of the official stories; sarc.
The “cause” of the blackout and the inablity of the “baffled” griddies to explain things are highlighted for what they are: duplicitous dissemination in order to hide the real cause of this crash.
For politicians to pretend to ignore the fact that billions of people are using alternating current and nobody knows how it’s generated is almost beyond belief.
There’s money flowing in them there wires and it mustn’t be stopped.
“that is what the Spanish people deserve. Rigour and truth”
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No-one knows or no-one is prepared to say ?
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MFGA by France.
Self interest dictates that they don’t hook up connections to Spain and Portugal.
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Would you? France may be many things but it isn’t stupid. I saw a number of its beautiful nukes last year and thought how wonderful it would be to have them here. The dream was shattered when Bowenasaurus Ignorati was returned to parliament.
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I speculate that an electrical grid based on random weather-dependent wind and solar generation is a metastable system in which very minor fluctuations can be rapidly amplified to a catastrophic level. Much like the Butterfly Effect of chaos theory.
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Why would any idiot depend on weather dependent power in a world in which in their own words ‘will become more chaotic as the planet warms’, it just defies common sense.
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The obvious answer is to use high inertia generators. With inertia, oscillations are cancelled.
My question relates to the use of artificial inertia. Let’s say that I have an inverter and I want to simulate inertia, (which in this instance is a resistance to a change in the AC frequency).
I could use a phase locked loop, (PLL), which is a type of circuit that is designed to apply feedback to a system so that the OUTPUT of the system is only slowly allowed to drift away from the target. It MUST be allowed to drift, if not, then some real event which does move the phase a few degrees would be a major problem, causing the inverter to overload as it fights against the other generators rather than supplying the load.
So the question is…. do I trim the PLL to MATCH the exact performance of the nearest large, (classical), generator or do I pick some random settings and hope? The obvious problem is that if I pick a more responsive set of numbers then the inverter will be able to react quicker and may overshoot, and then realise that error, over correct and undershoot, etc. An oscillation.
So you decide that you need to match the large generator. That leads to some findings which the solar farm may not like. The amount of POWER available in the spinning mass at the classical generator is several orders of magnitude ABOVE the solar farms output. Of course, that inertial power is very short lived but it’s still there. How do you match that? You could incorporate some massive short term energy storage on the DC side of your system and massively over build your inverter but that costs real money. Imagine the size of the battery bank and inverter array to allow an order of magnitude increase in output from the solar farm, (even for just a few seconds), those batteries are going to have to be extremely high current sources.
Of course, a simpler approach would be to use a brushless DC motor to spin up a large spinning generator and take your AC power from it’s outlet, just like the classical units do. Again, this costs money and there are NO grants to do that.
And before people jump up and down about the inefficiencies of this system over an inverter, remember that it’s good enough to run an electric motor and a water pump to send water in a pipe, (hydraulic losses), up a large hill just to let it come back down to turn a water turbine. Refer Snowy 2.
Inertia costs money, the generation company needs to pay for it.
And of course, for those who have soaked this up, EVERY piece of inertia adding equipment has a response function that CAN generate OR dampen an oscillation. When several have or are harmonics of each other, expect the fireworks to go off as they create beat patterns on the grid. Oscillations need to be damped not electrically driven.
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It’s never a good idea to directly connect random sources of power to a formerly stable electrical grid.
It should only be allowed via a battery system to ensure a stable and predictable supply. But, of course, that would be infeasibly expensive, even more so than the inherently expensive nature of wind and solar.
However, if Leftoids want to buy wind and solar electricity because they believe their own lies that it’s cheaper and good for the planet then let them. Smart metering is able to allow a consumer to purchase only solar and wind electrons. In Australia Red Energy already does this with what they claim to be renewables.
But the Thinking Community shouldn’t be forced to pay for the lies of the Left. Let us buy coal, gas, real hydro (not SH2) and in proper countries, nuclear electricity.
Let the Left pay for their own ignorance and lies. Don’t force thinking people to subsidise their electricity. If they are right and it really is cheaper, then why wouldn’t people buy it anyway? Others wouldn’t neee to be forced to buy it, market forces would do that.
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Maybe someone in the background hit a little red button as a test run of what could happen to any country now. O but Australia must go net stupid err zero!
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China has already done that for us with the master off switch in solar panel inverters.
Albanese (PM) just needs to call his comrade Emperor Xi to ask him go try that.
(Jo reported on Chicomm back doors in solar inverters a few days ago.)
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I have watched in amazement for two decades as politicians and politicians alone decided that they have to cripple Western democracies with this utter nonsense. And the money flows to China. The UN is driving these societies over the cliff, on behalf of their friends. The Wuhan Flu was obviously from Wuhan, but China controls the WHO.
Spain, Italy, France, Germany, UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the US are just victims. 5% of the world’s populations. And their leaders are all complicit, active and willing and devious participants in the robbery. Or just cowards. It’s not just ‘misinformation’, its all lies, non science, “The Science”, science perverted.
And the IPCC, the UN political committee is a total disgrace. Apparently there is no prediction of crisis at all in the last report, but who cares? The anti carbon dioxide steamroller is crushing everyone. Whole countries have blown up their means of production.
The fact that it is not true is just ignored. And anyone who speaks out is also ignored or crushed, so you have only a lot of old retired scientists crying out that it is a total fraud. And everyone else is intimidated into silence. As with DEI, ESG, BLM, Covid, LGBITQAA++, Gaza, Trump.
And in all this the UN has acted faithfully as a willing agent of China. And Hamaz, Hezbollah, ISIS, Houthis as agents of Iran.
Meanwhile Russia and Ukraine have agreed to start ceasefire talks. And the leaders of Hamas are history. Thanks to Trump. Drill, baby, drill.
As for man made CO2 driven Climate Armageddon, the atmosphere has almost zero fossil fuel CO2. 2.0%. So there never was a problem. That was proven in 1958. Fossil fuel CO2 goes straight into the ocean, as was also known in 1958.
Why are politicians deciding science? Why isn’t there a Royal Commission? Why are all the massive and illegal climate payments cunningly hidden from the public?
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TdeF – Lunacy in Australia – Carbon war: it’s the offset firm versus green activists
A major carbon player has joined dozens of corporates walking away from the federal government’s flagship carbon offsets scheme.
Industry giant GreenCollar attacks green activists as big business abandons carbon scheme
GreenCollar, the country’s largest environmental markets investor, abandoned the government scheme, known as Climate Active, on May 5, marking one of the highest-profile corporates to shut the door on the offset program as the sector battles integrity accusations.
Pressure is now growing on the federal government to scrap the program after dozens of big businesses walked away. The rift over carbon credits, bought by polluters to offset their emissions, threatens to derail a key plank of Labor’s bid to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.
The co-founder of GreenCollar, James Schultz, said the government program had become too risky for businesses, with activist groups tarring the carbon credit scheme as a greenwashing front for fossil fuel producers. “Climate Active has been attacked and attacked and attacked. Here is our best opportunity to actually change things around, and we’re blowing it up,” Mr Schultz said.
“The debate has been entirely captured by a group of organisations that want to paint everything through a lens of good and bad. Offsets supporting fossil fuel industry equals bad.”
GreenCollar, backed by Canada’s $400bn Ontario Teachers Pension Plan, develops carbon projects, including revegetation, soil carbon development and savannah burning, to reduce carbon levels on behalf of Australian companies and investments. The company has 300 projects and manages more than three million hectares of land across Australia.
Labor is already juggling a raft of contentious calls on the broader issue, with green groups telling new Environment Minister Murray Watt he has a mandate to block Woodside Energy’s $30bn North West Shelf gas plant extension in Western Australia.
The Climate Change Authority is also weeks from finalising its advice on an upgraded 2035 emissions-reduction target, which will be more aggressive than Labor’s current 2030 pledge to slash emissions by 43 per cent.
Parents for Climate, a registered charity, last week successfully argued that EnergyAustralia’s promotion of its Go Neutral product gave consumers the impression they were meaningfully reducing emissions
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Meanwhile – Energy bill rebates must end: Albanese’s welfare experts
Members of Anthony Albanese’s welfare working group are pushing Labor to end its $6.8bn power bill rebates and instead funnel taxpayer money into solar panels and renewable batteries for poorer Australians, reducing power prices more sustainably and reining in the deficit.
Economists, including those on the Prime Minister’s Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee – which itself has called for radical welfare spending in the past – want the rebates scrapped.
However, Jim Chalmers has refused to rule out extending them beyond the end of the year, saying: “From budget to budget, we see if we can do more.”
The one-year, $300 rebate announced in last year’s budget was set to expire on June 30 but will be extended to the end of this year, adding $150 in support for every home in the country.
The Treasurer, who was not able to keep a pre-election promise of cutting power bills by $275, said the highest priority of the Labor government in the first term was to get on top of inflation and that “electricity bill rebates are an important part of that”.
While the rebates have reduced headline inflation, the unwinding of state government rebates led to a spike of 16.3 per cent in electricity prices in the first quarter of this year, adding 0.30 percentage points to inflation.
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This all proves yet again why politicians and Leftist activists shouldn’t be allowed to make scientific and engineering decisions, especially designing power grids, a fundamental infrastructure element of modern Civilisation.
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Thought the main photo (at top of post) was the new statue of ex-Caesar Andrews from Vicdanistan, then realised it was just another blob of bronze covered in seagull guano.
First Spain, then Victoria?
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David,
there was a comment in The Australian Article above – A major carbon player has joined dozens of corporates walking away from the federal government’s flagship carbon offsets scheme.
The public can surely see right through this dangerous carbon dioxide climate change myth and if you ask them they would say they do not want to pay for this bulldust particularly while they are flat out simply making a living.
No the Public have been brainwashed by Education, including my Kids & Grandkids on Global Warming/Climate Change
Last Night 9 Year Old Grandson read to my Wife & Myself, speech that he had composed for School re Leaders covering Internationals like Nelson Mandela, unfortunately he then went onto Greta Thunberg Climate Change – he did follow that up with Teachers etc, and then moved onto how your own inner self can be a leader, by looking to befriend someone sitting by themselves etc
However the Climate Change Religion was reinforced by Education throughout the lives of my Kids & Grandkids
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They know. They are just pretending lest the truth get out, and voters get Red Pilled.
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And in the meantime Spain is increasing its use of gas and cutting solar.
Portugal is complaining that the French are being uncooperative by not increasing more connections so the (stable) nuclear plants would be less stable.
The French are saying nothing, possibly because they are still counting the Euros from supplying electricity to those who want to sabotage their own.
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At Callide it has taken a lot longer than 6 months.
A modern power station taken out by lack of maintenance or worse.
Should have been a police investigation from day one. There are people in the community who would regard sabotage as an act of heroism.
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Don’t forget it was fake conservative Howard that set Australia on the road to economic destruction with expensive and unreliable electricity when he introduced the Renewable Energy Act, signed us up to Kyoto and allowed random generators to connect to the grid.
Also see https://jennifermarohasy.com/2023/07/wind-turbines-are-not-windmills-and-john-howard-is-not-an-environmentalist/
Just think if the billions of dollars literally thrown to the wind on “renewables” had been spent on something feasible and useful like drought proofing and flood proofing Australia and irrigating desert areas. We probably could have done that for much less than this wind and solar insanity.
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How is SA coping?
Yesterday NEM reported 2pm generation in SA was solar 74%, wind 21%, gas 5%.
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Peak solar? What was it at 4pm
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Good Point!
It’s all about the interconnectors to Victoria!
SA sheds its excess ruinable electricity to Victoria at peak times and is stabilised by the brown coal generators. Victoria takes on the risk that France is refusing to do.
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Flinders Island is on 100% diesel @ 07:45.
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Strange Wind Pattern in https://www.ventusky.com/?p=-33.2;154.4;4&l=feel&t=20250520/0100
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It seems the Spanish authorities are hinting ever so slightly about the cause of the instability problem, as they are using more rotating generation such as gas turbines.
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“Per the latest data, in recent days, more reliable traditional generation is being used more, with nuclear responsible for between 14 and 23 percent, and natural gas-fired plants accounting for up to 25 percent at times.”
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I’m only lukewarm on nuclear for Aus and this passage explains why:
While ruinables get preferential/predatory market access more conventional base load generation will suffice.
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BURN COAL AND EXIT NET ZERO
It is time to plan to exit net zero and we are suffering from paralysis by analysis, dissecting the entrails of a system that is simply not fit for purpose. The Energy Realists of Australia have been explaining for years that the so-called transition is not happening, won’t happen, and it was never going to happen due to the conjunction of wind droughts and lack of grid-scale storage.
It is a matter of simple observation that trillions of dollars have been spent around the world and incalculable damage has been inflicted on the planet to obtain electricity which is ever more expensive and unreliable.
In Australia, most of the cost is still to come, and blackouts on windless nights will be inevitable when we lose one more coal burner. It is less stable in frequency and voltage which can cause crippling malfunctions of equipment in households and industry (see South Australia.).
Expectations for the energy transition should collapse like a punctured balloon when there is widespread awareness of the number of times when breakfast and dinner would have to be served cold without coal power in the grid to provide heat. And also light and all of the other things like trains, traffic lights, coffee shops and lifts that you might encounter on the way to your unlit office, where the computers are not working.
People are advised to regularly check the NemWatch widget at sunrise and sunset to see how much green (wind) you can find alongside the black and brown (coal) on the bars representing the power supply in each state.
https://www.nem-watch.info/widgets/RenewEconomy/
Imagine, if you dare, the multiples of the current number of windmills that would be required to turn the black and brown into green in that picture!
For the alternative energy futures in Australia, see the paper by Holland and Tunny that provides the skeleton of a program to get cheaper power in the near future and save some sticks of industrial furniture for the time in a decade or three when nuclear becomes competitive with coal.
https://rafechampion.substack.com/p/slowing-the-rise-of-power-prices?r=5c3gj
Starting at the bottom with 100% renewables, calling for $332 billion in investment. Retail electricity prices will rise by up to 70% and there is no guarantee that it is achievable.
Number three is the current policy pathway with an Investment of $261 billion. Retail prices are expected to rise by 30 to 69% while the destruction of forests and farmland continues.
Number two is the technology-neutral pathway or “all of the above,” including nuclear energy, with a capital investment of $163 billion.
Retail prices could rise 35% in the short term with the possibility of a 4% decrease in a decade or three. Again, forests continue to be trashed while toxins in solar panels become the asbestos of the future.
Option 1 is “No net zero” with cheap and reliable power from new coal burners. Capital investment is $103 billion with retail prices potentially decreasing by 25%. Pillage of forests and farmland stops.
We urgently have to fast-track a reliable and cost-effective energy supply that is not captive to the scientific illiteracy and ideological obsessions of the Greens and their fellow travellers in the major parties.
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The cost of building a high-efficiency, low-emissions (HELE) coal-fired power plant in Australia has been estimated. According to the Minerals Council, a modern 1,000 megawatt HELE power station could be built for approximately $2.2 billion.
Vs
Snowy Hydro Cost and Capacity
The cost of the Snowy 2.0 Pumped Storage Power Station has significantly increased, rising from an initial estimate to $12 billion as of August 2023. The project’s construction cost was initially reported as $4.8 billion, but this figure has since been revised to reflect the higher costs.
The project is designed to deliver an additional 200MW of generation capacity when operational, bringing the total capacity to 2,200MW (2.2GW).
It will be connected to the grid via the HumeLink transmission line. The construction of overhead power lines by TransGrid has faced opposition from community advocacy groups.
The project is currently 40% complete,
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Spain and Portugal should be very grateful to the French for helping to restart their grids via the interconnector so quickly or more than just 8 people might have died.
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Huh! Why am I reminded of Atlas Shrugged.
You know ….. if they have it, then they are obliged to give it to those who don’t have it!!
Tony.
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Shades of ‘The Ant and the Grasshopper’ or ‘The Little Red Hen’.
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