In a prior article that I wrote for American Thinker entitled, “Reaping the harvest of seeds sown”, I discussed how renewable energy mandates, which require energy providers to supply a minimum share of energy from renewables, can result in perverse outcomes. Foremost of those, is the difficulty operators have in recouping costs on thermal power plant assets. In fact, this looks to be the reason why Spain’s national grid operator, Red Eléctrica de España (REE), got into trouble.

With the absence of adequate alternative means for stabilizing its solar power plant, REE was relying on generation from its fast-dispatchable systems, i.e., natural gas combined-cycle plants, to provide the necessary inertial stability. But just prior to the blackout, combined-cycle plants represented only 3% of the total. This was insufficient to absorb fluctuations and provide stability to the entire system. Even worse, at the time of the incident, many combined-cycle gas plants were in cold shutdown, and it took hours to restart them.

I can only conjecture as to why REE would have allowed such a situation to develop, but one possibility comes to mind. REE may not have been sufficiently incentivized to keep natural gas combined-cycle plants running. With the price of electricity near zero, REE shut them down, regardless of the safety of the system. It sounds cynical but it is what happens when those in charge end up discounting and demonizing oil and gas generation. They become blind to the practical aspects of their job.

This could be why REE’s head, former Socialist minister Beatriz Corredor, told Cadena SER radio that it was wrong to blame the outage on Spain’s high share of renewable energy.

“These technologies are already stable, and they have systems that allow them to operate as a conventional generation system without any safety issues,” she said, adding she was not considering resigning.

It seems that she is trying to convince others that her righteous zeal to run carbon-free did not lead her to ignore an obvious safety risk.  However, I think that she now realizes her mistake and will not operate in the future with such a low safety margin.

With enough thrust, even pigs can fly...that is, until they come crashing back to Earth.

Image generated by AI.