Spain/Portugal blackout

[Beelbeebub]

Predictably the Telegraph blames "net zero"...

 

They talk about "experts say" but never really say who the experts are.

 

And then there's this...

 

Wind turbines famously lack any spinning parts.....

[Bonner]

50 minutes ago, Beelbeebub said:

Wind turbines famously lack any spinning parts.....

They do rotate but their moment of inertia is relatively low due to slow speed. If the wind drops they can stop within a revolution due to drag. Large turbines will keep spinning (and generating electricity) for several minutes when cut off, giving operators precious time to switch over to another source.

[Nickfromwales]

Well, the spinny round bits are certainly not sat still! lol. 🤷‍♂️🤦‍♂️

[JohnMo]

1 hour ago, Beelbeebub said:

Telegraph blames "net zero"

 

Isn't the telegraph agenda to blame everything on net zero. So just normal reporting from them. So why bother reading it.

[G and J]

7 minutes ago, JohnMo said:

 

Isn't the telegraph agenda to blame everything on net zero. So just normal reporting from them. So why bother reading it.

I used to read the Guardian, but I realised I was just constantly reading opinions that matched my own, so it wasn’t challenging my thinking, though it was comforting.

 

So there is an argument methinks that runs along the lines that if one reads stuff you don’t agree with it helps develop a balanced world view. 
 

Despite that I gave up on newspapers and now I read buildhub.   Much betterer.  

[JohnMo]

19 minutes ago, G and J said:

constantly reading opinions that matched my own

 

19 minutes ago, G and J said:

now I read buildhub

Maybe still true, but you do get different options and view points on many diverse scopes.

[ProDave]

You do need "spinning mass" to maintain a stable frequency.  Wind turbines yes they spin but they then use an inverter to synchronise to the grid frequency.  So does PV and battery storage.

 

The unknown is when there are no real spinning mass generators, has anyone worked out how to synchronise a grid supplied entirely from millions of inverters, which one is the master for instance?

 

It is not net zero that caused this, but the drive to more and more renewables may be making it harder to re start the grid.

[Nickfromwales]

It's nuts tbh, we're in chuffing 2025 and they can't keep the lights on!?!

[JohnMo]

12 minutes ago, ProDave said:

when there are no real spinning mass generators,

But that isn't going to happen, there will always be steam turbines, either nuclear or hydrogen as heat source, plus hydro etc.

[ProDave]

2 minutes ago, JohnMo said:

But that isn't going to happen, there will always be steam turbines, either nuclear or hydrogen as heat source, plus hydro etc.

I suspect the issue is until now, nobody has practised a cold grid restart.  They are now working out how to do it.

 

[Nickfromwales]

19 minutes ago, ProDave said:

The unknown is when there are no real spinning mass generators, has anyone worked out how to synchronise a grid supplied entirely from millions of inverters, which one is the master for instance?

Wouldn't that have to be from a 'synthetic' metronome that they all listen to?

[Beelbeebub]

15 minutes ago, ProDave said:

I suspect the issue is until now, nobody has practised a cold grid restart.  They are now working out how to do it.

 

Isn't a cold start always problematic regardless of your generation sources? 

 

If anything I would have thought synthetic frequency sources would be easier to cold start as they can synchronise themselves very quickly with the existing grid frequency and phase rather than having to mechanically synchronise.

 

Given inter-connects with the wider euro grid I assume that would be your "master" frequency source.

[joth]

It'll be interesting how developing nations, er, develop over coming decades.

There's a school of thought that having one big nation sized (or multinational) synchronized AC grid is unnecessary and inefficient and more resilience to be had by having many regional islands of AC interconnected by DC.  Just like most international interconnects currently work.

Starting and stopping islands of AC would presumably then be a more known procedure. 

That doesn't help Iberia rn though 

[Beelbeebub]

58 minutes ago, JohnMo said:

 

Maybe still true, but you do get different options and view points on many diverse scopes.

I used to be active on a politics forum where the vast majority of users (and mods) were right wing pro-Brexit ukip/reform types.

 

I wasn't going to change their minds and they weren't ever able to mount a cogent argument that would change mine.

 

The sole reason I stayed on the forum was to get a different viewpoint and try to avoid falling into an echo chamber.

 

[MikeSharp01]

Just to add to the pot of 'issues' with green and power generation agenda's interesting report from the IET today that tells people how much more expensive it is to bury the grid (4.5 times overhead) or keep it under the ocean than it is to pop up pylons everywhere. https://www.theiet.org/media/press-releases/press-releases-2025/press-releases-2025-april-june/29-april-2025-rewiring-britains-future-iet-releases-key-report-in-helping-britain-s-power-grid-reach-net-zero so, as ever you can spend money going 'green' assuming you equate green with burying cables and that's not a done deal either, or not and put up with the pylons, can't see any other way around it unless we find a way of transmitting it about without wires or perhaps we could install Wind turbines locally if we don't want pylons. 

 

Direct link to the full report here: https://www.theiet.org/media/axwkktkb/100110238_001-rev-j-electricity-transmission-costs-and-characteristics_final-full.pdf

 

[LA3222]

Not gonna lie, when I saw what had happened in Europe my first thought was the drive to net zero is behind it. Think it was Spain which only a day or so ago had a days power entirely driven by renewable and then this happens. They are blaming the weather....really. 22 degrees in Spain. Sounds like bullshido to me. 

 

To be clear, I believe the whole net zero drive to be the biggest con of our lifetime. I do believe in building houses to high standards and the like, but the rest of it..nah and it's too long and complicated to go into the weeds on this. The world is very polarised nowadays and I don't think people really budge from whatever camp they are in, they just get angry instead if their camp is the one not being listened to/making the decision. 

[JohnMo]

22 minutes ago, LA3222 said:

Think it was Spain which only a day or so ago had a days power entirely driven by renewable and then this happens

Doesn't seem to happen in Scotland, we have lots of renewables only days!

[JohnMo]

26 minutes ago, LA3222 said:

whole net zero drive to be the biggest con of our lifetime

Can't say I fully agree.

 

But if it makes us more self reliant on energy, what's not to like? Better than being at the beck and call of Russia, USA and the middle east, and they decided to do next.

[Super_Paulie]

has anyone considered that the power was diverted to Blue Origin to send Katy Perry into space for 5 minutes?

[Ferdinand]

There are big flywheels, like this. It's a good thread. I am not sure on the overall picture, though.

The Telegraph now being a lobotomised honorary tabloid * which mixes opinion in with invective, and largely ignores the concept known as "news", it's no wonder they jumped on the bandwagon.
 

* I'll never forgive them their front page last year about killer cyclists doing 50mph in thousands of places all over London, using falsified data.

The record short course time trial in the Tour de France is 35mph.

[SteamyTea]

1 hour ago, LA3222 said:

They are blaming the weather....really. 22 degrees in Spain. Sounds like bullshido to me

I think it was a North South temperature gradient, not the countries mean temperature.

The European Grid is like the USA Grid, basically point to point.  If one part fails, it cascades down the line.

Switching off an overhead cable in Germany to allow a large ship to pass, caused a monstrous failure across Europe a few years back.

 

1 hour ago, LA3222 said:

To be clear, I believe the whole net zero drive to be the biggest con of our lifetime.

Going to take a punt here and assume that you think the affects of climate change are not real, or at most, very minor.

[JohnMo]

I did a dicitation on flywheels back in the early 90s. Run them on magnetic bearings and either partial or full vacuum, the losses are miniscule. You can run smaller flywheels at many 10s of thousands rpm. Never wear out either. But if you loose control or they explode there is lots of energy to contain.

[BotusBuild]

5 hours ago, Nickfromwales said:

Wouldn't that have to be from a 'synthetic' metronome that they all listen to?

I see them all sat in front of pianos now

[Beelbeebub]

Apparently the Portuguese utility company quoted as having blamed "extreme temperature gradients" etc are saying they never said that ie. it was a hoax social media post.

 

So we are back to

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c9wpq8xrvd9t?post=asset%3A29c975d4-7442-42f4-98a7-3646f41861b2#post

"Some more comments from Spanish power company Red Eléctrica's (REE) news conference earlier.

As reported earlier, Eduardo Prieto, head of operation services, has explained that on Monday there were two consecutive "disconnection events".

Systems managed to recover from the first event, but Prieto said they couldn't recover from the second, which led to the power outage in Spain and Portugal.

When asked, Prieto admitted it is "very possible" that the affected generation was solar, though he said authorities don't yet have enough information to be sure.

Finally, he said REE restored power to the grid by using hydro and combined-cycle gas, which operate through a combined gas and steam turbine method."

It sounds like something happened to trip out some generating sources and that caused a cascade.

There is no indication if it was 2 separate incidents that happened to coincide or if there was an original event that then caused the second event.

We will have to wait until there is a thorough investigation to find out.

To cause such a large drop in output would require more than just a simple cloud going over a panel or wind turbine breaking.  This level and speed of drop is more likely to be either an actual infrastructure failure like a cable breaking or transformer catching fire etc (I imagine we would have heard about the latter) or a series of cascading automatic trips.

Unless it is shown that the cascade only happened because of a unique characteristic of renewables this isn't really a "net zero" issue.  After all a fuse can blow regardless of whether the power source is coal fired plant or a solar panel.

I did read that the large battery farm in MW Australia (100MW IIRC) made a huge difference to stabilizing the grid and stopping blackouts. If anything, a large battery farm can react even quicker to grid outages than flywheels.

 

 

[Beelbeebub]

1 hour ago, Ferdinand said:

There are big flywheels, like this. It's a good thread. I am not sure on the overall picture, though.

The Telegraph now being a lobotomised honorary tabloid * which mixes opinion in with invective, and largely ignores the concept known as "news", it's no wonder they jumped on the bandwagon.
 

 I'll never forgive them their front page last year about killer cyclists doing 50mph in thousands of places all over London, using falsified data.

The record short course time trial in the Tour de France is 35mph.

Unless the flywheels are connected by an inverter setup their energy storage is limited due to frequency drop

 

If they are connected by inverters then they are simply storage devices in which case it's a simple cost/kwh over life analysis - About 20 years ago when i did a study on high capacity, high power energy storage flywheels were quite attractive given the cost of batteries and capacitors back then.  I think they are about even at the moment at £200-300/kwh but with batteries dropping so fast that may not hold for long.