What caused Europe’s most catastrophic Power Failure
On the 28th April, the Iberian Peninsula which includes Spain and Portugal with parts of France experienced Europe’s most catastrophic power failure in history.
It only takes 5 minutes
At 12:30pm to 12:35pm several unusual events to the electricity grid left 50 million customers and businesses without power for at least 8 hours. The worst affected waiting 23 hours before regaining power.
The blackout (a prolonged period of no electricity) created a synchronised infrastructure collapse - Power grids, Internet towers, Metros, Rail networks and Traffic Lights were all down. Airports paralysed and flashbacks of Covid with supermarkets rationing the sale of water and many people rushing to ATMs.
The quick non-technical summary
Prior the blackout, Solar energy was providing 60% of Spain’s total 32 GW power requirement. However, within 5 minutes this unexpectedly fell by 56% or 10 GW (a huge number!) but the sun did not suddenly disappear.
Yet to be officially confirmed by the Spanish National Grid (REE, Red Eléctrica Española), it is believed there was a sudden system failure that turned off a large number of solar farms. As this happened, the lack of traditional power sources (coal plants, gas turbines or nuclear) created two additional issues.
All electrically items require a consistent flow of electrical units (in Europe this is 50 per second). If this is disturbed by even 1% it can severely damage the device. In this case, the frequency diverged much higher than 1%. This trigged standard fail-safe protocols in the remaining solar farms alongside, wind turbines, switching them off and amplifying the issue.
Once shut-down, the second challenge was the lack of power to re-start the system. Think about the last time you had to charge a phone with 0% battery compared to when it’s at 20% (it could feel like a lifetime in comparison).
All these factors materialised into the worst blackout in Europe for over 20 years.
For the interested readers, the technical explanation of the problem was the lack of ‘Inertia’ or ‘Dispatchable Spinning Generation’
Inertia, can we live without it?
What is Inertia? Simply, it is stored energy. It can better understood with an example of a bike. Take a bike and place it on a stand where the wheels are free to spin. As you begin to move the pedals, the wheels will start to move. Now, take your hand away. If moved away without disturbing the motion, the wheel will continue to spin. This is inertia, it is the stored energy moving the wheel with no further stimulus.
All traditional power generation assets create electricity by one simple method, heating a liquid (mainly water) until it becomes steam and passing the steam through a turbine to generate electricity. Like in our example of the bike wheel, the turbine will not stop rotating instantly if the heat source is stopped. Instead, the turbine will continue to spin and come to a natural stop - this is called ‘Spinning Generation’.
Solar and to a lesser extent wind has no inertia, it’s either on or off. So when instead of a natural decrease in energy flow the area went from high supply to nothing within minutes. Go back to our bike example, when the hand pushing the pedals is moved, the wheel instantly stops. In other words, the high influx of solar generation exacerbated the system failure.
This is a major challenge facing all grid systems and operators as we transition to higher portions of energy generated by Solar and Wind.
What lessons were learned?
The transition away from fossil fuels is still required and vital to the sustainability of the world. However, governments and grid operators must appropriately prepare for these known challenges to moving to renewable energy sources.
Over the last few years, the Spanish government who controls at least 20% of REE’s budget has been extremely anti-nuclear. Decommissioning many existing assets with no further investment and at the same time not investing in cross-country grid connections such as with France. All energy sources have their pros and cons but we at Meru believe nuclear particularly small-modular nuclear offers the best intermediate solution to transitioning to Solar and Wind energy. Nations can continue to reduce their emissions while, also managing Supply and Demand challenges caused by intermittent renewable energy sources.
References
1. https://theconversation.com/spain-portugal-blackouts-what-actually-happened-and-what-can-iberia-and-europe-learn-from-it-255666 2. https://www.thecommoditycompass.com/p/europes-largest-blackout-exposes?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web3. https://drivetech.partners/360/europes_grid_crisis_lessons_from_the_iberian_bla