The massive power outage in Spain was the worst power grid failure in any developed country in modern times and it seems to be "taking its toll".
This is reported by the British media "The Telegraph", according to which sources in Brussels have told that the authorities were conducting an experiment before the system collapsed. The article highlights that the Spaniards were testing the limits of reliance on renewable energy sources, seeing this as a problem for the Iberian country's plan to abandon the use of nuclear reactors by 2027.
Confidence in the current investigation has reached an all-time low among the Spanish people. Pedro Sánchez's socialist government is trying to buy time with explanations that either make no technical sense or lead to absurdity, while the company Red Eléctrica, which runs the grid, is accused of obstructing everyone.
The government appears to have conducted testing carelessly, before making the necessary investments in a sophisticated 21st century smart grid capable of handling it.
One remembers the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986, which began as a test to simulate what happens to a cooling reactor under power outage conditions. Operators ignored warnings that reactor number 4 had too little power, and this caused a steady failure.
If it is proven that the power outage was a controlled experiment gone wrong, and if this information was kept secret from the public for almost four weeks, the Spanish Left faces an electoral shock.
The government has de facto control over Red Eléctrica through a golden share (in violation of EU norms). It put a socialist politician and party loyalist at the helm, even though she had no experience in the field and faced harsh criticism at the time. Her salary in this excellent job is six times higher than that of the Spanish prime minister.
The previous mayor resigned in protest of political interference and even accused the government of pushing its green agenda forward with "messianic" zeal, but without taking the accompanying steps necessary to realize it.
The Spanish Association of Electricity Companies appears to have lost patience. It almost called the investigation a travesty in a scathing statement this week.
The way this saga is unfolding has implications beyond Spain. Old Energy and the global Right have jointly exploited the episode to prosecute and condemn renewable energy production in court, hoping to drive a wedge into the heart of net zero emissions.
“ Spain reminds us that intermittent energy sources cannot replace reliable baseload energy provided by fossil fuels or other sustainable sources ,” Republican Senator Steve Daines said at a hearing on Capitol Hill this week.
AELEC, which includes Endesa, IBM, Iberdrola and Schneider Electric, said authorities had reversed the possible chain of causation.
It turns out that it wasn't the generators that failed to supply consistent power to the grid, but rather the grid that failed to manage it and then automatically shut down the generators, whether solar, wind, nuclear or gas.
This is exactly what José Donoso, head of Spain's photovoltaic association, had previously said. " We were victims like everyone else. They just cut us off. We haven't been told anything yet ," he said.
AELEC said authorities had essentially limited the investigation to a 20-second period on April 28, deliberately ignoring the most important thing: a series of wild voltage fluctuations that began days earlier and exceeded "emergency" levels across the peninsula for two hours before the power outage.
The voltage increased from 220 kilovolts (kV) normally to extremes of 250 kV and this caused safety shutdowns.
The agency said the authorities had presented nothing to support their claim that it all started with a sudden drop of 2.2 gigawatts of power supplied to the grid and that this in turn caused the chain reaction, while noting that the system can withstand a drop of three gigawatts in any case.
One suspects the government is trying to deflect attention from its responsibility. Bank of America says Spain has invested in the grid at a ratio of 0.35 to renewables spending over the past five years, compared with 0.8 in Germany and the UK.
“ Years of underinvestment have left the grid struggling to keep up ,” said Tancrede Fulop, an analyst at Morningstar. Revenues allowed by regulated electricity grids have consistently failed to keep pace with inflation.
Claims have been made - and denied - that there was a lack of inertia in the grid shortly before the power outage, causing the frequency to drop below 50 hertz. Gas and nuclear power plants store kinetic energy from spinning rotors for several seconds after power loss, which provides a critical shock absorber.
Andries Wantenaar, from Rethink Energy, says that “ Spain was simply negligent .”
In Spain's case, Pedro Sánchez might do better to stop waging guerrilla warfare against his nuclear industry. Foro Nuclear said Spain's seven reactors have an average age of 47 years and can safely be extended to 60 years or more.
Until we know why the tension worsened before the power outage, it's impossible to know what really happened, and Sánchez and his friends seem determined to prevent us from finding out.
According to "The Telegraph", it is the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party that should go to political trial for this fiasco. (A2 Televizion)
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