Over-reliance on Unreliable Wind/Solar Makes Widespread Blackout Nightmares More Likely

Imagine taking the subway to work when the train comes to a sudden halt halfway between scheduled stops. You pull out your smartphone to go online and see what the problem is, but you have no reception – no cell signal, no internet. 

Hours later, rescue workers arrive to extract you and your fellow passengers from the stalled train.

You make your way to the street in hopes of taking a taxi or an Uber.

But without your phone apps and with credit card machines inoperable, you are forced to search for an ATM – only to discover those aren’t working, either.

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You soon realize that everyone else is in the same predicament.

Hospitals operating on emergency backup systems.

People trapped inside elevators.

Traffic snarled due to inoperable stoplights.

Gas station pumps not functioning.

Airport terminals closed.

People in darkened homes desperately searching for candles and battery-operated radios to learn what’s happening. 

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On April 28, the residents of Spain, Portugal and parts of France didn’t have to try to imagine this nightmare scenario.

They found themselves prisoners of it for hours when an unprecedented blackout impacted at least 55 million people after the Iberian Peninsula electric grid system failed. 

The outage, described as one of the worst ever in Europe, “disrupted businesses, hospitals, transit systems, cellular networks and other critical infrastructure,” according to the France 24 news channel.

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Many news agencies, particularly in the U.S., insisted for days that it was too early to say what caused the massive blackout.

Others, though, acknowledged the obvious.

The Reuters news agency reported early on, “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.’”

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While many observers did their best to point fingers at alternative causes, others were more straightforward in identifying the culprit. 

Raúl Bajo Buenestado is a non-resident energy scholar at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy in Houston.

He received a Fulbright scholarship as a graduate student and a grant for young researchers from Spain’s Ministry of Education, and received his Ph.D. in economics from Rice.

Currently, he is “primarily working on the generation investment incentives and capacity markets in the electricity sector. He also conducts research on gasoline retail markets,” according to his online biography.

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After studying the April 28 blackout data, Buenestado authored a commentary concluding that mere minutes prior to the grid collapse, “renewable sources accounted for 78% of electricity generation in the Iberian Peninsula grid system, with solar alone contributing nearly 60%.

By contrast, conventional technologies, such as gas-fired and nuclear power plants, comprised only around 15% of the total generation mix.

This configuration is not unusual in Spain or Portugal, where high shares of renewable generation are common, particularly during sunny and windy days.”

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Buenestado added, “What sets April 28 apart, however, is that, according to Spain’s national electricity grid operator (Red Eléctrica de España), two consecutive generation loss events occurred in southwestern Spain, involving large solar installations.” It is likely the DC to AC rectifiers failed.

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Buenestado noted that “the risk of large-scale blackouts in electricity systems with high shares of renewable energy is well-established.

However, the Iberian blackout of April 28 brings these long-recognized vulnerabilities into sharp focus.”

He explained that unlike conventional power plants, solar and wind installations “depend on a stable grid to function correctly and cannot autonomously support grid stability during disturbances.”

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Any energy systems analyst would know Spain/Portugal-like blackout problems would eventually happen, before a single W/S system were connected to the grid, but naive, woke, technically illiterate enviros do not want to listen to the pros. All wind/solar/battery nonsense must be stopped dead by taking away the generous subsidies.
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The More W/S Electricity on the Grid, the Less the CO2 Reduction/kWh, due to Inefficiencies

Analysis of 2013 data of the island Irish grid showed the CCGT fleet operating at about 50% without wind; at 45.58%, with 17% wind.
At higher W%, the CCGT fleet operates at lesser efficiencies (high Btu/kWh, high CO2/kWh), until no CO2 is reduced.
Fortunately, Brussels paid for major connections to the much larger UK and French grids.

As a result, most of the ups and downs of wind output disappeared in the noise of the large grids.
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/fuel-and-co2-reduction...
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Expensive Wind/Solar Systems
The over-taxed, over-regulated taxpayers and ratepayers are paying at very high rates, c/kWh, for: 1) electricity, and 2) Heat Pump heating/cooling, and 3) EV driving.
There is no way such high-cost electricity would increase standards of living and increase the GDP.
Businesses and skilled people would move to low-energy-cost states.
These businesses and people are tired of paying for:
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1) Highly subsidized, expensive W/S systems that disturb the grid with weather-dependent, variable, intermittent electricity, which has caused expensive brownouts/blackouts, as in Spain/Portugal, California, Texas, New England, etc., and many other places, over the years.
2) Grid expansion to connect all these far-flung wind/solar systems to the grid,
3) Grid reinforcements to ensure the grids do not crash during periods with higher levels of W/S power
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Here are some operational realities of W/S systems that are at the core of their problems:
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Synchronous Rotational Inertia, SRI, Stabilizes the Grid
Closing down traditional plants (nuclear, gas, coal, hydro), with rotating generators that provide SRI, de-stabilizes the grid; a death sentence for the grid.
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Wind/solar systems provide ZERO SRI to help stabilize the grid, because their variable outputs are digitized, then reconstituted into an artificial sine wave with the same phase and frequency as the grid.
Super expensive battery systems provide ZERO SRI.
Battery systems can provide virtual inertia, at very high c/kWh, by means of their back-end DC to AC power electronics (which failed in Spain/Portugal), which can quickly counteract voltage/frequency drops for a short time.
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Connections Between Grids
Almost all grids have connections to other grids for import and export purposes.
About 50% of such connections are high-voltage, direct-current lines, HVDC
Such DC connections transfer power, but transfer ZERO SRI to other grids.
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Reactive Power
No AC grid can function without positive reactive power; say power factor of 0.8
Wind/solar systems take reactive power FROM the grid; say power factor of -0.8
All traditional power plants are automatically set up to provide positive reactive power TO the grid.
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Synchronous Condenser Systems
The weather-dependent, variable/intermittent, wind/solar feed-ins to the grid often create transmission faults.
Those faults are often minimized with synchronous condenser systems that provide positive reactive power TO the grid.

Blackouts
In case of too much W/S power, it needs to be curtailed.
Owners usually get paid for what they could have produced.
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In case of too little W/S power or a W/S outage, reliable, quick-reacting CCGT plants, in Hot Synchronous Standby, HSS, mode, would provide:
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1)) Instant SRI to the grid for "ride-through" to give switches time to switch, and
2) Provide power to the grid, within seconds, to counteract voltage/frequency drops due to W/S outages, 24/7/365; if battery systems were used, they would be empty after a few hours, with no prospect of a black grid to refill them.
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Spain/Portugal would have needed about 10,000 MW of CCGT plants in HSS mode to avoid its recent blackout.
They would operate at 50% output throughout the year, and quickly provide up to 5000 MW, in case of a W/S outage.
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Black Start Procedure for a 100 MW CCGT Power Plant
Initial Power Source: The on-site auxiliary generator is started. It provides power to critical plant systems, including control, safety, and communication systems.
Plant Startup: The auxiliary generator then powers the CCGT plant's essential systems. This includes cooling systems, fuel handling systems, and starting the gas turbine.
Connecting to the Grid: After the CCGT plant is spinning at 3600 rpm at the same phase and frequency as the grid, it can be connected to the grid to supply power to its section of the grid. That section powers another power plant, etc., until all sections are up and running. Only then, grid-destabilizing W/S systems are connected.

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Before President Trump reversed the previous administration’s war on fossil fuels, President Biden had committed the U.S. to reaching “100% clean electricity” by 2035 – a goal that seriously imperiled our own infrastructure.

Biden’s corresponding attacks on affordable and reliable energy sources like natural gas were idiotic and unpopular.

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Likewise, Spain is “currently aiming to phase out fossil fuel and nuclear generation in favor of renewables,” with a goal of renewables comprising 74% of total output by 2030, under the plan.

The insistence on replacing affordable, dependable energy with more expensive and unreliable alternatives is both idiotic and impractical.

Natural gas remains the most cost-effective, reliable and increasingly clean fuel choice in the world.

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Despite the Spanish government’s anti-fossil fuel rhetoric, the U.S. recently became the main supplier of liquefied natural gas to Spain.

Much of Europe – mimicking extremist climate change rhetoric – publicly decries America’s continued production and use of traditional energy, while simultaneously gobbling it up. 

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Will the disaster of April 28 make European leaders think twice about abandoning our most reliable energy sources? Hardly.

Following the devastating blackout, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said his government would not “deviate a single millimeter” from its plans to transition to so-called renewables; he is totally woke, like PM Starmer of the UK, which has achieved the highest household electricity rates, c/kWh, in Europe, along with a stagnant GDP, and stagnant real wages.

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It is worth noting, oil and gas powered diesel-generators were used to gradually restore the grid from Black Start conditions, and restore electricity to about 50 million people in Spain, Portugal and parts of France.