| Work Detail |
The massive blackout that devastated the Iberian Peninsula last Monday, April 28, has echoes of a similar event in an Australian state in 2016. The solution in both cases appears to be the same. While the series of events that led to the crippling blackout that hit Spain on April 28 has yet to be analyzed , the disastrous power system failure bears the hallmarks of a similar calamity that befell an Australian state in the mid-2010s. And while much smaller in scope, this latest blackout could point to both the cause and the solution to the European blackout. Although the exact causes of the April 28 blackout in Spain, Portugal, and parts of France will only be revealed over time, the impact was profound. An estimated 50 to 60 million people were affected by the power failure, which caused a collapse of the Iberian electricity grid at 12:38 a.m., according to Eduardo Prieto, director of Red Eléctrica. Power restoration across the affected region did not begin until mid-afternoon and continued throughout the night. The Guardian quoted the Portuguese grid operator, REN, as saying the outage originated in Spain and was the result of a rare atmospheric phenomenon. REN said: Due to extreme temperature variations in inland Spain, anomalous oscillations occurred in very high voltage (400 kV) lines, a phenomenon known as atmospheric induced vibration. These oscillations caused synchronization failures between electrical systems, resulting in successive disturbances across the entire interconnected European grid. Frequency regulation failure Without delving into atmospheric causes, it seems likely that the system failure was triggered when grid frequencies dropped significantly below 50 Hz. An expert at Bruegel, a Brussels-based think tank, said the frequency disturbance then led to cascading power plant shutdowns. Unsurprisingly, Spain and Portugals transition from fossil fuel electricity generation to renewable energy was one of the possible causes of the blackout. Traditional generators, such as gas, coal, and hydropower, can play a role in regulating grid frequencies, while renewable energy plants, such as wind, typically do not. Wind farms have been implicated in power system failures in the past, most notably in South Australia in 2016, when they disconnected from the states power grid, exacerbating a frequency event and causing a statewide system failure. However, in the case of yesterdays much larger outage on the Iberian Peninsula, renewable energy generators were likely not to blame, according to Leonardo Meeus, a professor specializing in electricity at the European University Institute, speaking to Politico. Meeus said that updated grid connection codes starting in 2016 would prevent wind and solar from disconnecting from the grid, which would have amplified a frequency event. Energy consultant and investor Gerard Reid told ESS News that he believes grid operators in Spain lost control of the electricity grid after an interconnector with France tripped. There was too much energy in the system, as you can imagine when there are negative prices, Reid said. I think the Spanish grid operator panicked and isolated the system without any way to convert the energy. They ran into problems and lost control. Reid noted that more will be known over time, but initial impressions indicated this was a likely scenario. If you look at the morning when the system went down, 90% of the energy in the system was renewable. Spain had a 500 MW cogeneration plant, and the rest was nuclear in slow mode. They probably miscalculated the amount of renewables in the system, cut the interconnections, and lost control. South Australian precedent In 2016, a blackout left 850,000 people without power after a storm knocked down 23 electricity transmission towers in South Australia, which formed part of the states connection to another neighboring state. Although the event caused significant political repercussions, as renewable energy opponents blamed the state for its reliance on wind power, it also led to the rapid construction of the initial 100 MW/129 MWh phase of the Hornsdale Power Reserve and a virtual power plant (VPP) program in Adelaide, the state capital. At the time of its completion in 2017, Hornsdale was the largest lithium-ion battery system in the world. In this way, Australia could very well point the way forward for the Spanish electricity grid. Although Spain has more than 45 GW of solar energy, according to SolarPower Europe, its BESS capacity is far behind. At the beginning of 2024, again according to SolarPower Europe, Spain had around 800 MWh of grid-connected batteries, although auctions are expected to add about 800 MW to that capacity this year. For Reid, adding BESS capacity—as in Australia last decade—is the obvious solution. “That’s what needs to be done here too,” he says. And with its rapid deployment capability and ability to respond to frequency issues in fractions of a second, it’s very likely to be an important part of the solution to the frequency problems Spain has faced this week. |
