Western Europe’s decisions leave its power grid vulnerable
[Hat tip: commenter “Bob Wilson.”]
Yesterday there was a blackout in Spain, Portugal, and parts of France. From Michael Shellenberger:
It was one of the largest peacetime blackouts Europe has ever seen. And it was not random. It was not an unforeseeable event. It was the exact failure that many of us have been, repeatedly, warning lawmakers about for years — warnings that Europe’s political leaders systematically chose to ignore.
The bulk of the essay is for paid subscribers, which I’m not, but there are quotes here:
As countries replaced heavy, spinning plants with lightweight, inverter-based generation, the grid became faster, lighter, and far more sensitive to disruptions. That basic physical reality was spelled out in public warnings as far back as 2017. …
Although political leaders promised that renewable energy would provide stable, affordable power, in practice, Spain grew more reliant on the remaining nuclear and natural gas plants to sustain inertia — even as the government pushes them to close. …
Despite all these warnings, political and regulatory energy in Europe remained focused on accelerating renewable deployment, not upgrading the grid’s basic stability. In Spain, solar generation continued to climb rapidly through 2023 and early 2024.
Coal plants closed. Nuclear units retired.
On many spring days by 2025, Spain’s midday solar generation exceeded its total afternoon demand, leading to frequent negative electricity prices.
The system was being pushed to the limit.
And [yesterday], at 12:35 pm, it broke. …
Unless Spain rapidly invests in synthetic inertia, maintains and expands its nuclear fleet, or adds some other new form of heavy rotating generation, the risk of future blackouts will only grow worse.
There’s much more information of a technical nature at the link, but apparently the problem has to do with the grid being in a “low inertia condition” and “oscillations in very high voltage lines” causing “synchronization failures.”
Modern society is heavily heavily dependent on the generation of power, and the decisions many industrialized nations have made in recent years regarding power generation seem nearly suicidal. Of course, the response of those who made those decisions would be that the goal is to prevent an even more suicidal situation as a result of AGW. But whether or not you buy into the AGW scare, it seems to me that nuclear power would be an obvious answer.
“power grid vulnerable”
Bug, not feature…
The Gods of the Copybook Headings.
The good news is that AI will force the issue of abundant, inexpensive, reliable energy.
The elites won’t do it for the plebes, but they will to power their AI data centers.
They brought the BS with the long foreseen results.
My husband, with a career of decades in the power industry, agrees with Shellenberger. Solar and wind are by definition unreliable and the grid is more unstable the more they are used. They need spinning reserve. If coal is not favored then it needs to be natural gas. A base load of nuclear would be good.
The ideological imperative of the climate change scam will compel Europe’s current political leaders to ‘stay the course’. When future blackouts lead to unnecessary deaths, it will be the activists, as well as the political leadership who will be responsible. Crimes against humanity would be the appropriate criminal charge. Of course the International Criminal Court will predictably rule that the victims have “no standing” before the court. In which case, a paraphrasing of JFK’s warning will apply; “Those who make peaceful
revolutionreforms impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”The UK is on the same insane “net zero” path as are Spain, Portugal, and Germany. This kind of blackout will happen again.
The consequence of schwab and black rock policies
https://x.com/robinmonotti/status/1916856878790754405
One is down the other is not
And of course one recalls the dreaded winter snap in texas some years back even in red states they follow suit at points
Date Mining, Bitcoin, AI, all take a lot of power. Europe doesn’t have it now and will have less in the future. I believe only France is using a lot of Nuke power. And they also have power generation from dams. They may survive.
This might be a wake up call for Italy though.
A lot of people get that there has to be more power put on when the renewables aren’t running, but fewer people get that there has to be power you can shut down when the renewables overproduce.
Pacific Northwest has this problem every spring for decades when the wind is highest and so is the water running through the dams, and also has been having to pay other grids to take the power. As well as build natural gas generation that can be shut down. And so carbon emissions have gone UP since the first major green power legislation in Washington State 20 years ago (hydropower is, according to that law, not green energy).
AC electrical systems operate at a specific frequency: US 60 hertz and Europe 50 hertz. Large generators maintain the stability of that frequency with the shear mass of the generator: large pieces of metal spinning at a specific speed/rpm. Changes in load on the system will affect the spinning but large generators anchor the frequency of the system and help maintain it with changes in load via their rotational momentum. Solar and other small distributed generators adjust to the frequency and phase of the system. Too little mass spinning and the system frequency can destabilize. A sudden change in load can then cause the frequency to deviate sufficiently to start tripping mainline breakers or create interference. In an AC system, it is important for generators to be in sync: operating not just at the same frequency but in phase. Out of phase waves can cancel each other out. AC (alternating current) is a wave of current. Although control technology has gotten better for integrating Solar (which generates DC power that must be converted to AC at a specific frequency and phase) and lots of wind turbines to the grid frequency and phase, it has limitations and must still be anchored with large momentum generators so as to have a stable reference for matching. In an AC grid, there are limits to how much solar and wind you can have without the risk of frequency destabilization: at least with today’s control technology. Clear as mud?
Thanks, Keith!
We take power grids for granted, until there is a catastrophe. California should have learned to pay better attention many years ago, and was reminded when the disastrous Palisades fire erupted in January. It appears that the proximate cause of that episode was human error in managing a vulnerable power grid , although that tends to get overlooked in the media. Despite dangerous wind warnings, many wind driven faults were detected on the grid–and it was not shut down by the operators as has become the procedure of late. Honest discussion would focus on why, in 2025, the transmission system is not hardened to sustain the recurring extreme wind conditions.
I know that the above does not relate directly to the issues in Europe; but it does highlight that people need to become aware of how their power supplies are managed and insist on good planning and competent operation.
As to AGW, I actually seldom see specific evidence of inegative effect other than frantic pointing, without historical context, at cyclic events, such as severe storms or droughts. So often when the actual data are reviewed one finds that the characteristics of a year that arecited as evidence of climate change, formerly known as AGW, due to the number of extreme weather events turns out to be average or better when compared to the record.
Another popular cause for alarm is the process of receding glaciers. What we never hear discussed is the clear evidence that glaciers once covered huge expanses of the present world, before receding long before recorded history, leaving behind the Great Lakes, Minnesota’s ten thousand lakes, or the lake country of New York, among similar features around the world. That was true climate change. Such obviously massive cycles, which occurred without human influence, are to be ignored.
The overreliance on wind and solar is not only a problem for Western Europe. It is a problem with the leftist states here in the United States.
N.C. Points out the problems in Washington state in the spring. Here in California, we have a problem during summer afternoons. The state has subsidized rooftop solar installations so now we have an oversupply of solar power on summer afternoons. The state has to pay nearby states to accept the power. Then when the sun goes down, the solar power decreases, but there’s still a big demand for power for air conditioning in the still hot areas. This has led to brownouts to try to balance the supply and demand.
This mismatch has gotten so bad that even the rabidly anti-nuclear California Democrats were forced to postpone the closing of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant that provides nearly 10% of the power for the state.
Niketas Choniates is right. In the Pacific Northwest, Bonneville Power Administration kicks renewables off the grid in May and June when wind and solar production competes for space on the grid with hydropower. There is only a certain amount that the dams can divert over spillways before the oxygen level in the Columbia rises to amounts lethal to fish, therefore the flow must go through the turbines. When BPA hits that limit, they start booting wind farms and solar off the grid.
Oldflyer comments on AGW are spot on. The problem is that its a religion to the entire Left.
huxley near the top) notes a class disconnect – but I see instead a proper class interest alignment: “The elites won’t do [reliable energy] for the plebes, but they will to power their AI data centers.”
But Google clicks that recently grew 8% a year are now down to 1% a year.
Where is the web search demand going? The young are rapidly adopting AI search tools, just as they leave traditional internet search data.
For example, in the Czech Republic, a fresh poll shows that High School students are using AI weekly at over 50%. Other countries show even higher rates of adoption of AI.
Thus, an apparent conflict between electricity production and reliable consumption is resolving into more demand for more production, regardless of class.
Shirehome…”I believe only France is using a lot of Nuke power. ”
France gets something like 70% of their electricity from nuclear. Their original motivation in the project was energy independence rather than environmentalism.
TJ…”Where is the web search demand going? The young are rapidly adopting AI search tools, just as they leave traditional internet search data”
I’m not all that young, but I now use Grok rather than google, etc for any but the most trivial searching. It’s more effective and less irritating.
Keith Eubanks: thanks for the explanation.
“ In an AC grid, there are limits to how much solar and wind you can have without the risk of frequency destabilization: at least with today’s control technology.”
It seems that wind and solar systems require traditional fossil fuel power plants as backup but the backup system price is never included in the overall cost calculations.
The fundamental problem is that we need energy when it’s 1) dark and 2) cold, exactly the times when neither wind nor solar energy are available. Which means you have to have ‘back up’ power generation capacity essentially equal to the amount provided by solar and wind. The only benefit provided by solar and wind is satisfying Leftist demand for less carbon-based fuel use so power company execs can be invited to the right parties.
Thus, an apparent conflict between electricity production and reliable consumption is resolving into more demand for more production, regardless of class.
TJ:
My point wasn’t that the working/middle-class won’t benefit from scaling up the grid, but that the elites are doing it to power AI, not for ordinary people.
Where is the web search demand going? The young are rapidly adopting AI search tools, just as they leave traditional internet search data.
Good point.
Is there a way that central and eastern European countries could cut the grid connections on short notice if they really had to?
As a side note, I recall reading about connected oscillators in a non-linear feedback system in a book by Norbert Wiener. Grok suggests Nonlinear Problems in Random Theory, which sounds right, it was a book I read. I think he mentioned the frequency stability of connected generators as an example, they worked together to keep the generator frequencies locked to each other and more stable than one might expect.
Now comes solar and wind. Where has the stability gone? Gone with the wind.
Update….
https://instapundit.com/717049/
Clownshow on railroad tracks
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/04/28/claim-drag-queens-can-use-comedy-to-inform-about-the-climate-crisis/
Honestly what alternate earth are we on
Continued…
“Power Restored In Spain, Portugal As Net-Zero Becomes Headache For Brussels”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/power-restored-spain-portugal-net-zero-becomes-headache-brussels
So Chuck is suggesting that wind and solar needs to be separated from the grid by a storage and buffering system. Musk and Tesla are probably already working on one.
I used to work as a test engineer on a large motor/drive system. The drive would input 3 phase medium voltage (in our case ~12,000 volts) which it then converted to a DC bus voltage and then converted to a 6 phase output at variable frequency to power the motor.
The system had to match grid frequency, we used three phase 440 VAC to power the system ands then match the frequency and phase of the incoming medium voltage. If it was not closely matched the system would crash.
Chases Eagles on April 29, 2025 at 12:10 pm said:
So Chuck is suggesting that wind and solar needs to be separated from the grid by a storage and buffering system. Musk and Tesla are probably already working on one.
They already have battery systems for grid storage but it will be extremely expensive to fully implement, to such an extent it isn’t practical.
Also that doesn’t make up for the lack of spinning mass.
I have been telling the Omaha Public Power District for years that it needs to repeal its net zero carbon policy. I’ve told them that the Center for the American Experiment has modeled net zero for many states (e.g. CO, MN & WI) and the models show blackouts in January.
The OPPD Board has ignored me.
I will tell the OPPD Board that if the blackout of April 28, 2025 doesn’t convince them that it needs to repeal its net zero policy, nothing will.
But the Board won’t act as the Board is full of Green Zealots.
@Chases Eagles:Chuck is suggesting that wind and solar needs to be separated from the grid by a storage and buffering system. Musk and Tesla are probably already working on one.
Pumped storage (essentially, pumping water back behind a dam) is cheap and effective and does not need to be invented, but you don’t get government money for cheap and effective and already exists. Wind and solar will not get tax credits for power not put on the grid, and they don’t make money without tax credits, and there’s the perverse incentive to keep them on the grid.
@ Niketas > ” there’s the perverse incentive to keep them on the grid.”
That is not the only government program with perverse incentives.
With our shortage of honest bureaucrats and auditors, the beneficiaries of acting perversely will always do so.
@AesopFan:That is not the only government program with perverse incentives.
Had I attempted to list them, it would have been too long to read… but in this case the perverse incentives are working as designed, the problem is not that people are cheating. Honesty and auditing wouldn’t do any good when everyone is following through on a program that is designed perversely.
If the people who run wind farms took the money to build them and then absconded to Grand Cayman, the grid would have been better off. If they fraudulently took the tax credits and only pretended to put their power on the grid and got away with it, the grid would have been better off.
Mark Steyn used to write about this: a corrupt system lets people off the hook for not following crazy rules, and at least you can get some things done if you pay off the right people. But a system that’s not corrupt and has crazy rules, we all follow those rules right off the cliff. There’s a set of books by Phillip K. Howard on this starting with The Death of Common Sense in 1995 and has just finished his seventh in 2024, so you can see that not much progress has been achieved.