If a system requires human heroics, or even human intervention, to survive, it is doomed to fail. That’s not an original thought on my part. It should be the guiding principle of every system engineer.  Therein lies the problem with “net zero” schemes. They are not inherently stable systems and as such, will require panicked operators to intervene from time to time in a desperate bid to rescue them.

The truth is starting to emerge about what brought on the recent massive blackout in Spain and Portugal. Spain’s national grid operator, Red Eléctrica Nacional (REN), said it had identified two incidents of power generation loss, probably from solar plants, in the country’s south-west. These incidents caused instability in the electric system and led to a breakdown of its interconnection with France and subsequent collapse of the Iberian power grid.

The initial story that attributed the failure to “induced atmospheric vibration” caused by extreme temperature fluctuations in central Spain has lost credibility. As I pointed out in my article in yesterday’s American Thinker, prior to the outage, Spaniards were experiencing a picture-perfect spring day. 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).

Although, the proximate cause may turn out to be the loss of power generation from a solar plant, it is the brittleness of the overall system that is the fundamental problem. In particular, it is a system design flaw which allows a relatively small failure in one part of the system to propagate throughout the whole. Good system design incorporates feedback that automatically compensates for any perturbation in a system. In conventional power systems, massive rotating generators with large moments of inertia serve that purpose. A power system that is heavily reliant on renewables is missing that element and as such susceptible to cascading failure.

It is obvious that Spanish politicians do not understand this salient point. In a statement on Tuesday afternoon, Pedro Sánchez, the Spanish Prime Minister, said the blackout was not due to a lack of nuclear power, rejecting claims by far-Right party Vox which opposes Madrid’s planned nuclear phase-out.

He is quoted as saying, “Those who link this incident to the lack of nuclear power are frankly lying or demonstrating their ignorance.”

However, it is Mr. Sánchez who is showing his ignorance. Nuclear, along with oil and gas power plants provide the needed system stability that “renewables” cannot offer. He must have skipped systems theory while pursuing a Business Studies degree. However, to be fair, he is not alone in his ignorance. Throughout the ranks of Western elites, one finds dreamers like Pedro. They have embarked on a crusade to rid the world of nuclear and “fossil-fuel” power and want to cut off all avenues of retreat from their march to net zero nirvana. However, as the recent blackout shows, they are not prepared for the consequences of their vision quest.

Image generated by AI.