When I read mainstream media accounts of the blackout in Spain and Portugal, I immediately saw that they were leaving out an important part of the story. They reported verbatim the claim made by the Spanish grid operator Red Eléctrica Nacional (REN) that a rare atmospheric phenomenon occurred in Spain yesterday, leading to a massive power outage across Spain, Portugal, and parts of southern France. REN went on to state that the blackout began at 12:33 PM local time and was attributed to “induced atmospheric vibration” caused by extreme temperature fluctuations in central Spain. These fluctuations induced oscillations in high-voltage transmission lines, disrupting synchronization across the interconnected European power grid.

Mainstream media failed to mention that REN was getting more than half of its power from solar arrays at the instant that the blackout occurred. This reminded of mainstream media’s complicity in giving credence to the Chinese authorities’ false claim that COVID-19 originated in a Wuhan wet market and not a lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

The same purposeful lack of inquisitiveness is going on with this blackout story. Over the past couple weeks, REN has gleefully reported that solar energy has been providing the grid with most of its electricity (at least during the day). Then yesterday, a little after noon on a clear spring day, the system suddenly crashes, and REN attributes it to some rare temperature fluctuation in central Spain. Now that should be enough to alert anyone’s bulls**t radar defense. However, mainstream media is content with parroting the official story. Why is that? Could it be that they have been shamelessly promoting renewables for almost two decades and now with this colossal grid failure they are caught with egg on their face?

Here is the question that they refuse to ask themselves. What is it about renewables that they fail when put to the test of providing the lion’s share of grid power? The answer has to do with the stored energy that’s available to the grid. Electricity is a unique commodity in that supply must match demand in real time. The stability of the grid is dependent on this happening and the grid frequency is a measure of that stability. In a conventional grid setup, massive rotating generators with large moments of inertia provide stability by acting as an energy buffer that reacts instantaneously to external perturbations in the system (like an externally induced imbalance in high-voltage transmission lines).

Both wind and solar do not possess this property. (Although wind turbines rotate, their frequency is variable and not synchronized with grid frequency). Engineers, to the best of their ability, have tried to replicate this inherent property of rotating machinery when renewables power a dominant share of the grid, but to date they have provided more of a band-aid than a practical solution. In the end, that’s what it boils down to. Renewables are not a practical solution for powering a grid and yesterday that was demonstrated in Spain.

Apologists will do their best to excuse the inherent flaws in renewables. They may try to stick with REN’s initial assessment that a once in a lifetime meteorological phenomenon caused the blackout and no system, conventional or otherwise, could have withstood its effects. However, prior to the outage, the weather in Spain was characterized by hazy sunshine and mild spring temperatures. In Madrid, the high reached 74°F (23°C), while Seville experienced a high of 83°F (28°C). They might even tell us that an occasional blackout is a reasonable price to pay for the virtue that we derive from having a low-carbon grid. Either way, I feel the bull**t blitz will be coming.

(See also “Spain’s big blackout came less than a week after it went full green on electricity” by Monica Showalter.)

Image: Free image, Pixabay license.