Did Over-Reliance On Solar & Lack Of Grid Inertia Cause Spain’s Blackout?

An electrical engineer told me “it’s highly likely” that Spain’s reliance on solar energy contributed to the power failure.

Photos published on social media show people being evacuated from trains in Spain. Credit: Daily Mail.

Less than two years ago, climate activists in Spain celebrated after a utility announced it would close the country’s largest coal plant, the 1,468-megawatt As Pontes facility. According to an activist at Beyond Fossil Fuels, the closure of the coal plant was demonstrating “how much renewables are outperforming fossil fuels on price, energy security, and desirability.”

Earlier this month, renewables looked good. On April 16, Spain’s electric grid ran on 100% alternative energy. And on April 21, as David Blackmon noted on his Substack earlier today, solar production in the country set a new record of 20,120 megawatts, which, for a few hours, met nearly 79% of demand.

That was last week.

Today, Spain, Portugal, and other parts of Europe were hit by a massive blackout that Red Electrica, Spain’s state grid operator, is blaming on a "very strong oscillation" on the electric grid. The outage has resulted in “transport chaos” as traffic lights went dark and subway and train service was halted. Mobile phone networks went down. Spain has declared a state of emergency and some regions are now begining to restore power. While it’s too early to blame any particular cause, there is reason to believe that Spain’s electric grid, which now produces the second-most solar energy in Europe (after Germany), has been weakened by its heavy reliance on solar. A few minutes before the blackout, some 60% of the electricity on Spain’s grid was coming from solar.

Understanding how solar and wind energy weakens the grid requires understanding the physics of electricity, grid inertia, and what a University of Queensland professor has dubbed the “pressure cooker” effect of renewables.