A Severe Disruption in Europe’s Electric System

By Lazy_Bear @Adobe Stock

Why Abandon Net Zero

Spain, as reported by Reuters, is one of Europe’s biggest producers of renewable energy, relying on wind and solar for 43% of the total, well above the global average, data from think tank Ember shows. Last week marked the first sweeping electrical outage on a grid largely powered by wind and solar energy. Spanish Red Electrica, the grid operator, has not yet determined what caused the outage. At Manhattan Contrarian, Francis Menton explains, as best he knows, the feasibility of a 100% renewable-electricity system.

Today, Mr. Menton discusses the validity of this week’s intermittent generation from wind and solar being the cause of widespread electricity blackouts across Europe.

Menton: Climate skeptics for years have warned that expansion of intermittent renewable electricity generation on the grid will, sooner or later, lead to frequent blackouts. The reason behind this waning is easy to understand:

The grid has some rather exacting operational requirements that the intermittent renewable generation technologies cannot fulfill. Primary among these requirements: first, minute-by-minute matching of electricity supply with electricity demand and, second, grid-wide synchronization of the frequency of the alternating current. When wind and solar provided relatively small portions of the electricity consumed, other generation sources, particularly thermal (fossil fuel) and hydro, would fulfill these requirements. But as wind and solar come to dominate generation, the problems become much more difficult to solve. 

Q; Mr. Menton: I don’t remember reading much about this on your website. It seems like you have stayed clear of this situation. You must have a reason?

A: Menton: Although I understand the main issues, I am certainly not a grid engineer. … many smart people are engineers, whose job is to “balance” the grid to keep it consistently up and running in the face of the challenges of intermittent wind and solar generation. Maybe they can succeed. I, however, have my doubts. But I definitely have wanted to avoid “crying wolf,” predicting over and over that frequent blackouts are imminent, only to find that the engineers have come up with solutions that seem to work reasonably well.

Q: As of today, there doesn’t seem as though there is a definitive answer to the cause of the blackout. Is it possible that the increasing penetration of wind and solar generation in Spain is the most important part of the problem?

As noted in the Daily Mail, Spain’s state electricity network operator, known as Red Electric, reported that today’s problem began with “‘a very strong oscillation’ in the electrical network [that] caused Spain’s power system to ‘disconnect from the European system.’” 

The initial cause of the “oscillation” is only speculation. Proposed causes range from “extreme temperature variations along very high-voltage power lines in Spain,” to a hacking attack. Why did the Spanish system lack the ability to respond sufficiently to keep the power on?

A: Menton: The Daily Mail puts forth a very plausible explanation of grid instability resulting from heavy reliance on wind and solar generation. The Mail attributes the theory to “some analysts” (unnamed):

[S]ome analysts have suggested that the Spanish grid operator’s reliance on renewable energy sources to supply the majority of the nation’s electricity could have led to the blackout. Traditional generators, like coal and hydroelectric plants or gas turbines, are connected directly to the grid via heavy spinning machines.  When turned on, these massive machines are in constant motion and the inertia created by their weight and momentum acts like a shock absorber, helping to insulate the grid against a sudden disturbance – for example, in the event of a transmission failure.  

Solar and wind power do not provide the natural inertia generated by these so-called ‘spinning machines’, leaving the grid more vulnerable to disruptions and subsequent oscillations in the electrical frequency. 

Q: Well, Mr. Menton, you mention wind generation? Would you comment on your analysis from Yahoo News?

Spain has one of Europe’s highest proportions of renewable energy, providing about 56pc of the nation’s electricity. More than half of its renewables comes from wind with the rest from solar and other sources. That means Spain’s electricity supplies are increasingly reliant on the weather delivering enough wind to balance its grid. For much of the last 24 hours, that wind has been largely missing. The website Windy.com, for example, shows wind speeds of 2-3mph, leaving the country reliant on solar energy and old gas-fired power stations.

A: Menton: When the “oscillation” occurred, what is going to keep the grid steady on its 50 Hz frequency? From Michael Schellenberger today on X:

[A]ll of Europe appears to have been seconds away a continent-wide blackout. The grid frequency across continental Europe plunged to 49.85 hertz — just a hair above the red-line collapse threshold. The normal operating frequency for Europe’s power grid is 50.00 Hz, kept with an extremely tight margin of ±0.1 Hz. Anything outside ±0.2 Hz triggers major emergency actions. If the frequency had fallen just another 0.3 Hz — below 49.5 Hz — Europe could have suffered a system-wide cascading blackout.

You point out, Mf. Menton, that there were multi-hour blackouts in many places today. “A random “oscillation” of some sort, which could have been easily handled in a world of fossil fuel power plants, became a huge problem when wind and solar generators could not respond to it appropriately.” It must have been frightening to those people stuck for hours in elevators or subway trains; traffic lights went dark; banking and cell phone networks stopped working; and so forth. But luckily, within hour it was business as usual. What now?

A: Menton: This was really a big deal. As Schellenberger points out, with just “a hair” more frequency variation, it could have been far worse. Will that happen sometime soon? I’m not going to pretend I know.

But I do know that the electricity system in most of Europe and many U.S. states is in the hands of crazed fanatics who have no idea what they are doing. My own bet would be that there are many far worse blackouts to come, until this idiotic “net zero” thing is abandoned.

Below, valued reader, weigh in on Mr. Menton’s article:

One follower of Francis Menton comments on the use of “crazed fanatics.” The writer believes the system is being dangerously impacted by affirmative policies that jeopardize its reliability. More intermittent renewables plus fewer dispatchable generation sources equal a less reliable system. Bad things this way come.

Another reader recommends the “great writing” on these topics at Substack. Robert Bryce, Doomberg, Irina Slav, Energy Bad Boys, Alex Epstein, Roger Pielke, Jr. (“The Honest Broker”), Chris Keefer (Decouple), Leen Weijers (Sr. Engineer Liberty Energy), Meredith Angwin (“The Electric Grandma”), and our friend Trevor Casper. All these complement Mr. Menton’s work.

There are undoubtedly several factors involved. #1 is that nuclear provides 20% of Spain’s generation, but 40% of the plants were offline, and the others shut down when they lost external power.

Bottom of Form

REN, the Spanish electrical Company, explains that another MC follower attributed the crash to “induced atmospheric vibration” caused by extreme temperature fluctuations in central Spain. It is a relief that wind and solar power were not destabilizing the grid.

When one reader was an electrical engineering student, he had mandatory courses on power generation and homework problems on grid stability. It’s not like these problems are brand new. Incidentally, he grew up in New Mexico, which experiences extreme temperature fluctuations. So why, hw wonders, didn’t NM have these power outages?

PS: Redeia, which owns Red Electrica, warned in February in its annual report that it faced a risk of “disconnections due to the high penetration of renewables without the technical capacities necessary for an adequate response in the face of disturbances.”

Another reader hopes the whackos running Europe can get their act together to realize that while power engineers can do a lot with a little, they are still stuck with the laws of physics.

Who Banned Fracking

The Netherlands and much of the rest of Europe have gas reserves that could be accessed by fracking, reports another reader. Who engineered bans on fracking in Western Europe?

It has been reported that lots and lots of euros were lost during the blackout. Another reader of Menton’s Manhattan Contrarian asks readers to look on the bright side:

Think of all the polar bears that were saved by the reduced emissions will the blackout induced reductions in energy use. 

Things We Do Know 

• Ruinables are unreliable due to the vagaries of the winds and clouds.
• Power demand is highly variable – dependent on weather, time of day, day of week, the state of the economy.
• The sun doesn’t shine at night, and the wind doesn’t blow when it is extremely hot or cold.
• Power demands tend to be highest when it is very hot or cold.
• Coal/gas/nuclear power plants have inertia-based storage capabilities and have the reliability and flexibility to be controlled to satisfy fluctuating power demands due to weather, time of day, time of week, and economic fluctuations.
• Bureaucrats, environmentalists, and their media cheerleaders are mandating renewables and electrification while trying to ban fossil fuels and nuclear power. They are idiots. If they did know something about technology, energy, economics, or climate, they wouldn’t be trying to mandate unreliable wind and solar power and power-thirsty EVs while trying to ban gas, coal, and nuclear.