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> Recently there was a Spain/Portugal outage that caused loss of 60% of those countries overall power needs and those countries relied on solar. The outage had

by piva00 1y ago

> Recently there was a Spain/Portugal outage that caused loss of 60% of those countries overall power needs and those countries relied on solar. The outage had nothing to do with solar though, no idea why you brought it up.

firesteelrain 1y ago
https://enode.com/blog/evolving-energy/the-iberian-blackout-why-activating-flexibility-is-now-critical-infrastructure https://enode.com/blog/evolving-energy/the-iberian-blackout-... “ Two sudden disconnections at solar generation sites in southwestern Spain triggered a rapid frequency drop. Historically, fossil fuel plants would have provided inertia to dampen the swing and limit disruption. But that day, renewables made up nearly 80% of supply. The energy feeding the grid was clean, but inflexible.” Texas has chosen to add a non renewable backup option as a reasonable choice. The article there advocates for a complex battery option that is more decentralized from the main power grid. That’s one option but it requires deploying millions of dollars in batteries and things like natural gas turbines simply perform better with today’s technology in these situations.
- piva00 1y ago
  There has been no conclusive post mortem, the issue is still under investigation[0], this is a blog post by a tech company, not an authoritative agency with findings, basically speculation being used as a marketing article... This article [1] also calls out the rumor mill about renewables being a cause: > Political groups such as the far-right VOX – which has historically pushed back against climate action such as the expansion of renewables – also pointed to the blackout as evidence of “the importance of a balanced energy mix”. > However, others rejected this suggestion, with EU energy chief Dan Jørgensen telling Bloomberg that the blackout could not be pinned on a “specific source of energy”: > “As far as we know, there was nothing unusual about the sources of energy supplying electricity to the system yesterday. So the causes of the blackout cannot be reduced to a specific source of energy, for instance renewables.” > Others have sought to highlight that, while it was possible solar power was involved in the initial frequency event, this does not mean that it was ultimately the cause of the blackout. It's all inconclusive and the narrative that solar is the culprit is being pushed by anti-renewables, let's wait until there's an official conclusion to the investigation instead of peddling bullshit. [0] https://www.entsoe.eu/news/2025/05/01/iberian-black-out-entso-e-congratulates-red-electrica-and-ren-for-the-rapid-recovery-of-the-electricity-systems-of-portugal-and-spain-and-establishes-an-expert-panel-to-investigate-the-incident/ https://www.entsoe.eu/news/2025/05/01/iberian-black-out-ents... [1] https://www.carbonbrief.org/qa-what-we-do-and-do-not-know-about-the-blackout-in-spain-and-portugal/ https://www.carbonbrief.org/qa-what-we-do-and-do-not-know-ab...

by piva00 1y ago

firesteelrain 1y ago

https://enode.com/blog/evolving-energy/the-iberian-blackout-why-activating-flexibility-is-now-critical-infrastructure https://enode.com/blog/evolving-energy/the-iberian-blackout-... “ Two sudden disconnections at solar generation sites in southwestern Spain triggered a rapid frequency drop. Historically, fossil fuel plants would have provided inertia to dampen the swing and limit disruption. But that day, renewables made up nearly 80% of supply. The energy feeding the grid was clean, but inflexible.” Texas has chosen to add a non renewable backup option as a reasonable choice. The article there advocates for a complex battery option that is more decentralized from the main power grid. That’s one option but it requires deploying millions of dollars in batteries and things like natural gas turbines simply perform better with today’s technology in these situations.

piva00 1y ago
There has been no conclusive post mortem, the issue is still under investigation[0], this is a blog post by a tech company, not an authoritative agency with findings, basically speculation being used as a marketing article... This article [1] also calls out the rumor mill about renewables being a cause: > Political groups such as the far-right VOX – which has historically pushed back against climate action such as the expansion of renewables – also pointed to the blackout as evidence of “the importance of a balanced energy mix”. > However, others rejected this suggestion, with EU energy chief Dan Jørgensen telling Bloomberg that the blackout could not be pinned on a “specific source of energy”: > “As far as we know, there was nothing unusual about the sources of energy supplying electricity to the system yesterday. So the causes of the blackout cannot be reduced to a specific source of energy, for instance renewables.” > Others have sought to highlight that, while it was possible solar power was involved in the initial frequency event, this does not mean that it was ultimately the cause of the blackout. It's all inconclusive and the narrative that solar is the culprit is being pushed by anti-renewables, let's wait until there's an official conclusion to the investigation instead of peddling bullshit. [0] https://www.entsoe.eu/news/2025/05/01/iberian-black-out-entso-e-congratulates-red-electrica-and-ren-for-the-rapid-recovery-of-the-electricity-systems-of-portugal-and-spain-and-establishes-an-expert-panel-to-investigate-the-incident/ https://www.entsoe.eu/news/2025/05/01/iberian-black-out-ents... [1] https://www.carbonbrief.org/qa-what-we-do-and-do-not-know-about-the-blackout-in-spain-and-portugal/ https://www.carbonbrief.org/qa-what-we-do-and-do-not-know-ab...