I’m a retired ERCOT region grid engineer who worked for NERC (Texas Reliability Entity) for several years. I guarandamntee you it was too much renewables. Renewables suck for this reason among many others. They’re promoted bc they’re least threat to fossil fuel. Nuclear is the correct choice. It can be done safely and cost effectively.
PS… renewables are also promoted I’m guessing because rich folks own a lot of land and want to make money off that land. Renewables take a lot of land per megawatt.
You’re close to correct but not quite. I’m a subject matter expert. Im an engineer in Texas. I’m retired from a transmission company that specializes in renewable interconnections. I negotiated connections with wind and solar generators. They’re relatively wealthy ranchers and farmers… they’re guys with a lot of acreage who are sophisticated enough, greedy enough and can afford to boot up to do a deal like this (hire attorneys, engineers, developers). The tiny guys… it’s not on their radar much if any and besides a deal wouldn’t work for them due to scale.
Why can’t we immediately (and correctly) attribute this to over-reliance on renewables? The corrupt climate research cabal and their toadies in the media never show patience in their immediate attributions of any weather event to man-made sources.
After a generator failure the the angular momentum of other rotating turbine-generators (oddly named inertia) can supply electric energy to the grid for ~3 seconds as its frequency decays from 50 Hz to 49.95 Hz. Then such turbine-generators disconnect to save themselves from vibrational resonance damage. These few seconds give time for other generators to increase their power contribution to the grid.
Automatic increases in nuclear power are PROHIBITED in Spain (and the US!) where only trained operators are allowed to change power generation. Such nuclear power plants can't step up to save the grid from collapse in Spain (or the US). On the other hand, owners like to run them steadily at 100% power to maximize revenue. Such automatic load-following is allowed in France.
The claim that wind and solar "load follow" is mistaken. They frequency-follow, providing power matching the grid frequency. They don't store nor provide more energy.
Most modern nuclear power plant designs, such as the Terrapower Natrium and Thorcon 500 can load-follow to support a varying grid demand.
There is no way to get around that renewables like wind and solar, need to be backed up 100% by reliable, dispachable generation as renewables of this type can go to zero at any time. And no, batteries cannot supply power at grid scale for any meaningful time.
Give this reality, countries end up building essentially two systems, one that handles 70-80% of the load at times and close to zero at other times, and one that can run near rated capacity all the time. It’s very expensive to build and maintain two essentially parallel systems.
The net zero and pro-renewables crowd refuse to acknowledge this reality. Which is why I have a natgas generator at my home in Texas.
Great report. Sad though it may be, a real terrible outage like all across Europe during a severe winter cold spell might be needed to wake the people up to what is being done. Or course they would likely immediately blame it on Putin-Russia, which also happened in this case.
Good on you for raising this question. A minor but important correction: Eduardo Prieto is Red Eléctrica's (in English) 'Head of System Operation Services', not CEO. The CEO is Roberto García. That according to Red Eléctrica's website <https://www.ree.es/en/about-us/who-we-are>. Prieto is lower down and more technical. When I did my first pass at a classic forensic investigation <https://willbates.substack.com/p/sleuthing-spanish-solar> Prieto's initial (Monday 28 April) statements were about the only source of inside technical information. I suspect that since Prieto has been told to cool it by his higher-ups Red Eléctrica and their government ministers pals. I assume they hope that by the time the eventual ENTSO-E report appears the news cycle will have moved on, and anyway be too technical for reporters to understand.
Ok,good post, renewables were certainly a major cause of this outage, let’s hope the root cause analysis is not politicized and the real causes are well documented.
What’s up with that graph of “frequency “ that is clearly labeled as Volts?!
I think this captures oscillations in voltage due to the grid's response to the frequency instability. When frequency fluctuates, the system activates frequency control mechanisms, like governor responses or load shedding, to restore balance. These actions can cause fluctuations in power flows, which in turn affect voltage across the grid. For instance, if generators or inverters inject reactive power to support voltage, but the frequency continues to deviate, the interplay between active power (tied to frequency) and reactive power (tied to voltage) can lead to observable voltage swings.
Good point, they tend to happen together when there is a very large transient on the grid like what happened in Spain.
I just thought the graph was misleading. Frequency never bounces like that over several days. Voltage fluctuates constantly, but not frequency, at least not in northern California and the whole WECC.
Great, thanks for writing. I do expect in the end we will have a fairly objective analysis. Lots and lots and lots of people are paying increasingly close attention and yes it is totally politicized.
Yeah for sure. I am studying grid inertia at the moment, in some detail, ROCOF, inertia constants, FFR, PFR etc etc to see how it can be better modelled. Synchronous condensers are all the rage at the moment, Siemens has a model with an added flywheel, I am sure Vernova does too. Grid forming inverters are getting a lot of attention, as BESS for FFR. It is certainly interesting. I have some professional background in power related controls system from RR, so its all very relevant and interesting to me.
I’m a retired ERCOT region grid engineer who worked for NERC (Texas Reliability Entity) for several years. I guarandamntee you it was too much renewables. Renewables suck for this reason among many others. They’re promoted bc they’re least threat to fossil fuel. Nuclear is the correct choice. It can be done safely and cost effectively.
PS… renewables are also promoted I’m guessing because rich folks own a lot of land and want to make money off that land. Renewables take a lot of land per megawatt.
Probably not a lot of rich folks. Just a lot of ordinary folk farmers who would rather become rich by allowing panels and windmills on their land.
You’re close to correct but not quite. I’m a subject matter expert. Im an engineer in Texas. I’m retired from a transmission company that specializes in renewable interconnections. I negotiated connections with wind and solar generators. They’re relatively wealthy ranchers and farmers… they’re guys with a lot of acreage who are sophisticated enough, greedy enough and can afford to boot up to do a deal like this (hire attorneys, engineers, developers). The tiny guys… it’s not on their radar much if any and besides a deal wouldn’t work for them due to scale.
Why can’t we immediately (and correctly) attribute this to over-reliance on renewables? The corrupt climate research cabal and their toadies in the media never show patience in their immediate attributions of any weather event to man-made sources.
How dare you try to impose the same standard for preferred vs out of favor narratives! It's almost as if you believe in being fair and consistent. /s
my kryptonite. Apologies.
Indeed. Spain crowed about achieving 100% power from renewables … 4 days prior to ‘lights out’. The plot of voltage fluctuations supports that theory.
After a generator failure the the angular momentum of other rotating turbine-generators (oddly named inertia) can supply electric energy to the grid for ~3 seconds as its frequency decays from 50 Hz to 49.95 Hz. Then such turbine-generators disconnect to save themselves from vibrational resonance damage. These few seconds give time for other generators to increase their power contribution to the grid.
Automatic increases in nuclear power are PROHIBITED in Spain (and the US!) where only trained operators are allowed to change power generation. Such nuclear power plants can't step up to save the grid from collapse in Spain (or the US). On the other hand, owners like to run them steadily at 100% power to maximize revenue. Such automatic load-following is allowed in France.
The claim that wind and solar "load follow" is mistaken. They frequency-follow, providing power matching the grid frequency. They don't store nor provide more energy.
Most modern nuclear power plant designs, such as the Terrapower Natrium and Thorcon 500 can load-follow to support a varying grid demand.
There is no way to get around that renewables like wind and solar, need to be backed up 100% by reliable, dispachable generation as renewables of this type can go to zero at any time. And no, batteries cannot supply power at grid scale for any meaningful time.
Give this reality, countries end up building essentially two systems, one that handles 70-80% of the load at times and close to zero at other times, and one that can run near rated capacity all the time. It’s very expensive to build and maintain two essentially parallel systems.
The net zero and pro-renewables crowd refuse to acknowledge this reality. Which is why I have a natgas generator at my home in Texas.
There is one way to have a system of 100% renewables.... It's called "a model". Works every time. 🤣
We can have all renewable energy run the world ...in books. 🤪
Great context Robert. Thank you.
I expanded this at https://hargraves.substack.com/p/alara-vs-resilient-power-grid
Great report. Sad though it may be, a real terrible outage like all across Europe during a severe winter cold spell might be needed to wake the people up to what is being done. Or course they would likely immediately blame it on Putin-Russia, which also happened in this case.
Excellent. I added an excerpt from this to my ongoing post "The Pain in Spain" with credit to you.
Thank you All. Much appreciated!
Good on you for raising this question. A minor but important correction: Eduardo Prieto is Red Eléctrica's (in English) 'Head of System Operation Services', not CEO. The CEO is Roberto García. That according to Red Eléctrica's website <https://www.ree.es/en/about-us/who-we-are>. Prieto is lower down and more technical. When I did my first pass at a classic forensic investigation <https://willbates.substack.com/p/sleuthing-spanish-solar> Prieto's initial (Monday 28 April) statements were about the only source of inside technical information. I suspect that since Prieto has been told to cool it by his higher-ups Red Eléctrica and their government ministers pals. I assume they hope that by the time the eventual ENTSO-E report appears the news cycle will have moved on, and anyway be too technical for reporters to understand.
Thank you for the correction Will. Your "sleuthing" piece is really excellent - I'll restack it!
Ok,good post, renewables were certainly a major cause of this outage, let’s hope the root cause analysis is not politicized and the real causes are well documented.
What’s up with that graph of “frequency “ that is clearly labeled as Volts?!
Am I missing something here?
I think this captures oscillations in voltage due to the grid's response to the frequency instability. When frequency fluctuates, the system activates frequency control mechanisms, like governor responses or load shedding, to restore balance. These actions can cause fluctuations in power flows, which in turn affect voltage across the grid. For instance, if generators or inverters inject reactive power to support voltage, but the frequency continues to deviate, the interplay between active power (tied to frequency) and reactive power (tied to voltage) can lead to observable voltage swings.
Good point, they tend to happen together when there is a very large transient on the grid like what happened in Spain.
I just thought the graph was misleading. Frequency never bounces like that over several days. Voltage fluctuates constantly, but not frequency, at least not in northern California and the whole WECC.
Doarn Jews always attacking Spain's power grid! Its a story as old as time. :P
lol someone who reads the footnotes :-)
Great, thanks for writing. I do expect in the end we will have a fairly objective analysis. Lots and lots and lots of people are paying increasingly close attention and yes it is totally politicized.
There will be more spin on this than on a flywheel 🤣
Yeah for sure. I am studying grid inertia at the moment, in some detail, ROCOF, inertia constants, FFR, PFR etc etc to see how it can be better modelled. Synchronous condensers are all the rage at the moment, Siemens has a model with an added flywheel, I am sure Vernova does too. Grid forming inverters are getting a lot of attention, as BESS for FFR. It is certainly interesting. I have some professional background in power related controls system from RR, so its all very relevant and interesting to me.