The Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez says that the recent Black -out of Spain was not caused by surplus renewable energy sources or a lack of nuclear energy. He claims that the government will reform the grid, seek an independent report from Brussels and start a national investigation.
The power outage that occurred on Monday at 12:25 pm (CEST) in Spain was the result of a significant mismatch between supply and demand, said the Spanish grid operator Red Elétrica de España (roe), stating “a loss of generation” greater than the system.
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said that “at 12:33 This morning 15 GW of generation was suddenly lost by the system. This has never happened before.”
According to REE data, more than three-quarters of the generated electricity of renewable energy came during the recovery of the diet. By the evening the share of photovoltaic energy naturally decreased and gas and steam plants were brought online. Coal and nuclear power stations remained completely eliminated.
Sánchez denied that the malfunction was due to a lack of nuclear energy and said during his speech at noon on Tuesday that when the incident took place, “there was nuclear energy and it went offline; it was no more resilient than other sources. The decision of the generating companies themselves because they are currently not competitive with renewable energy.”
In the meantime, some houses and companies never lost the electricity thanks to solar panels and backup solutions on batteries.
“We are one of the few companies in Galicia and Spain that operated completely normally in their offices yesterday, thanks to our headquarters that is completely off-grid, using 100% Galician-made technology,” said a spokesperson for the Spanish energy company Norvento Energia PV -Magazine. “Our Cine building has a Microgrid that has been disconnected from the electric grid, so that it can continue to work autonomously at all times, because it produces energy at the point of consumption from renewable sources and a battery storage system that works synchronously to guarantee a constant food.”
The spokesperson for Norvento Energia explained that the company uses wind, photovoltaic, biomass and battery storage systems, driven by intelligent power electronics converters, all designed and manufactured in Lugo. They also noted that, in contrast to infrastructure with backup diesel generators, who enter the zero energy mode before they connect to the grid, their system never goes into zero energy mode.
Streetlights and traffic lights equipped with solar panels continued to work.
Eduardo Prieto, director of operational services at Red Eléctrica, said that although “these are not definitive conclusions”, there are indications of two episodes of the “generation of disconnection”, which took place at 12:32 pm and at 12:00 pm.
“The first was in a system that was compatible with the loss of generation in the southwestern region of the peninsula, which was overcome, and a stable system was reached,” he said. “A year and a half later, another event took place, also compatible with the loss of generation, and this led to a blackout 3.5 seconds later, that is, a five-second window, incompatible with the functioning of the electrical system. The system succeeded in recovering from the first of these events, but not from the second.
Prieto noted that the system could not resist the extreme disruption, which led to zero voltage, and emphasized that the cause of the loss of generation is still being investigated. He did not specify the location of the second event, but acknowledged that it is “very possible”, the solar generation was hit. He added that they are awaiting information from generation control centers to analyze the disruptions, whereby some early data provide, while others still have to do this.
Luis Marquina, president of the Battery Storage Association (Aepibal), said PV -Magazine That “What Ree says will seem acceptable to us, given that the problem is very complex, and every statement based on little information makes little sense.”
He added that battery storage in the future, as seen in regions such as South Australia, could tackle this problem efficiently, in particular by managing renewable energy sources, maximizing their integration into the grid and accelerating raster reactivation.
“Take advantage of the situation to give more support to gas and even coal, because we hear, it does not seem reasonable to us: renewable energy sources cannot be reversed, but we have to understand that a massively renewable generation of support technologies needs to help the system retain its reliability and security of delivery,” Marquina said. “This is the role of batteries, and this episode should serve to speed up their implementation and to increase awareness of the damage that Hoaxes on the basis of fake news about batteries do with us all. In short, batteries, yes, and the sooner the better.”
Sánchez also said that “the government has two clear priorities: the first to consolidate the recovery of our electrical system to 100%, and to achieve this, countless teams are used on the site and the system will be managed in an intermediate, failure way, with synchronous generation. If there is to come up with an origin to come again.”
Ree -technicians still analyze the system and expect results within a few hours or days. Meanwhile, private generating companies assess telemetry of their production and management centers to understand what happened during the five seconds that caused the system failure. These findings will help strengthen the electrical system to prevent a repetition of the incident.
Sánchez also noted that private operators will, if applicable, be held responsible and the establishment of a committee of inquiry led by the Ministry of Ecological Transition.
“The Technical Analysis Committee has been established and the CNMC will be present in the study,” Sánchez said, adding that the government will ask an independent report from Brussels to obtain a “more accurate picture” because “we are part of a European network.”
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