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Opening disclaimer: I don't know much about electricity or grid management.
I do have it on good authority (sources in these articles: here, here, here, here, and here) that renewables and grids don't work well together. When the share of electricity generation from solar and wind hit 10-20% of a given grid, problems emerge: blackouts, price hikes, volatility.
But maybe I'm wrong... I'm just a monetary guy, after all.
Knut Svanholm, a Spain resident, offered some intriguing candidates:
So, here's this bazooka of an FT piece
What triggered the frequency to fall in the first instance is not yet clear. On Tuesday, Eduardo Prieto, director of operational services at Spain’s grid operator Red Eléctrica, blamed an unexpected loss of generation in south-west Spain, home to a lot of solar plants. Other theories include electricity cable damage.
Is this the equivalent of renewable energy lab leak stuff? "It is not yet known, we don't know what happened, it's racist to blame the Chinese..."
“Sometimes in policymaking, we focus on adding more wind and solar, which is great. But you also need to add the backup,” said Javier Cavada, chief executive for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at Mitsubishi Power. However, there is always a balance between the high cost of installing new cables, and risk.
Also: confession time!
Some 55% of Spain's electricity came from solar panels around the time of the collapse... so:
  • we have mechanism
  • we have opportunity
  • and we have the guy at the crime scene...
but did he actually pull the trigger, or was it some alien fluke?!
also, this quote is nice -- cheers to the nerds!
“The grid has been thought of as something for nerds and engineers, but that’s not the case,” said Javier Pamos Serrano at Aurora. “We have to have secure and reliable grids moving forward.”

In a sense, I hope it's the renewables. Probably not for the same reasons most coal and gas fanboys do, though~~
This will be the perfect opportunity to improve the network's ability to respond to the unpredictability of renewables. In the long run, this will be beneficial for the future of renewables. Gotta stress-test it...
As for the premise of your article, I don't think we'll know for sure any time soon. And when I say "we", I mean the public, the plebs. Depending on the actual cause, some people might have reason to keep some level of secrecy.
EDIT: Paradoxically, my sister in Madrid was thankful to have her own solar panels as this is what gave them electricity during the blackout~~
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The last note is interesting. Sometimes I wonder if solar is just a technology that's better suited for decentralized usage like that, at least in most current instances.
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For sure.
And probably a good thing to aim for some level of self sufficiency in terms of energy generation.
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You just want electricity so you can get your hair cut! We're trying to save the planet here, you sociopath.
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yes. I sociopath; you mean lean green killing machine
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Damn, you fluff.
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Aren't they the lean green killing machines?
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🤣
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17 sats \ 1 reply \ @Arceris 23h
I'm way out of the loop, but I honestly have no idea why a British chef would be responsible for a power cascade failure in Spain.
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me too... I didn't even ask, just assumed it was some new nonsense
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14 sats \ 1 reply \ @abhishandy 23h
There's a good book on fragility of grids which also addresses wind and solar
Shorting the Grid: https://a.co/d/11mRNyM
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YES! I first started learning about this from Meredith during 'rona the plandemic
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29 sats \ 0 replies \ @quark 30 Apr
I'm would not be affected by this, being off grid with solar panels. :D but I understand the challenge that using solar energy in a national grid.
This is what I think has happened: Solar energy is less stable than other generation systems. Sometimes there is sun, sometimes not, therefore they must be injected into the grid in such a way that they synchronize with the existing frequency generated by more stable sources like nuclear or gas plants. The problem was that during the blackout, 80% of the electricity generated came from solar sources, while nuclear and gas plants were offline. It is possible that oscillations in frequency or voltage within the systems responsible for maintaining the base frequency triggered a cascading failure, causing all solar panels to disconnect simultaneously. I believe this happens to protect the equipments. So if 80% suddenly goes out, the other generation systems don't have time to react. And starting it all again from a blackout is not easy.
I think this situation will teach electrical engineers valuable lessons. To mitigate such risks, greater investment in advanced inverters and robust battery storage systems may be necessary to ensure solar energy can integrate more effectively with the grid. You cannot simply put some solar panels and connect them directly to the grid without significant battery systems. Maybe that's the problem. But who knows?
The government has yet to issue an official statement regarding the causes of that blackout. It is rather unfortunate that they are not even providing any information, let alone clarifying whether the situation could occur again today or tomorrow.
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Infowars speculates based on evidence that the collapse of the Iberian Peninsula grid is because of over reliance on green energy, which provides little in the form of excess power or resilience.
I tend to agree, but we need more data to confirm what seems to be obvious.
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @MANI 30 Apr
You may call it a cospiracy theory but Spain declined an arms deal with Isreal and this cyber attack/blackout was a retaliation response from them.
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nice one!
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