By Jo Nova
The latest news is that power has been restored in Spain, Portugal and parts of France, but the economic loss of a blackout that affected up to 55 million people for half a day is estimated at 2-4 billion Euro. Even Red Electrica, the Spanish Grid manager now says the initial event was a sudden power loss that was “likely solar”. And to top it off, the group that own the Spanish grid manager warned in February that with so many “renewables” the grid faced the risk of disconnections.
Meanwhile the billion-dollar-ABC is so far behind the times, on prime-time news tonight they were still saying the blackouts in Spain were a complete mystery — and did not mention renewables once, even though energy experts had warned this would happen for years, and were asking that question yesterday.
We are three days from an election and the ABC are running cover for the Labor-Greens party, and hiding from Australians that too many renewables and a lack of stable thermal or nuclear power plants were a front running cause. Even yesterday we knew that solar was supplying 60% of the Spanish grid, and that there was almost no spinning inertia on the Iberian Peninsula. If Spain had hosted the Olympics this week, the ABC-BBC-CBC agitprop units would have raved about it being “78% renewable”. But when it’s an Olympic-size blackout, crickets.
The ABC has a whole “science unit” but one blogger with no government funding is two days ahead of them. Will they catch up tomorrow, or will they continue to put their own personal voting preferences and juicy career prospects ahead of Australian voters?
Spanish grid operator added that it was “very likely” (“muy posible”) that the 1st event was solar generation. But also said it was lacking data to say it conclusively. https://t.co/5DVQQhMYIy
— Javier Blas (@JavierBlas) April 29, 2025
A renewables-dominant grid has many points of failure and very few points of stability
It sounds similar to the South Australian blackout of 2016. Once a few wind or solar generators trip out for some reason, the voltage or frequency shocks in the system cause other generators to drop out and interconnectors to disconnect. There is no inherent stability in the system because they lack the heavy spinning turbines. Our entire national grids were designed around heavy 500 ton turbines which spin at 3,000 revolutions per minute (or 3,600 RPM in the USA). That’s an awesome amount of inertia, and all that stability was “free” — it was just part of the grid. But the subsidized market, and the pagan fixation on “renewables”, because they supposedly stop storms next century, guarantees that reliable turbines get pushed out of the market. The crazy-balloon has filled the room.
Spain, Portugal switch back on, seek answers after biggest ever blackout
Reuters
Will the real cost of solar and wind power please stand up?
The 2-4 billion Euro bill plus the expenses for Big-backup-Batteries and extra interconnectors must now be added to the electricity bill estimates of solar and wind power. All the past costs per kilowatt of magical Spanish solar power were all obviously fantasy underestimates. People thought solar was cheap, but it was all an illusion.
Negative prices are not a free lunch. The toxic prices due to the solar glut at lunchtime, means that reliable power flees the grid, lest it get shafted with a big bill.
An excess of solar output could have contributed to the incident. Spain has reported an unprecedented number of hours with negative power prices in recent months as more solar and wind power gets injected into the grid. Still, the oversupply of power hasn’t previously caused blackouts in the country.
The speeding car hadn’t crashed til it crashed, officer. How were we to know?
This was a system on the brink
In El Confidential, in Spanish we hear that excess solar pushed out the nuclear power and things were so unstable there were fluctuations on the grid in the hour leading up to the crash.
Red Eléctrica rules out a cyberattack, and everything points to overconfidence in solar energy.
Something that has already caused problems recently. The Repsol oil company’s refinery in Cartagena, one of Europe’s largest diesel producers, had to shut down a few weeks ago due to power problems. The blackout occurred at 12:32 p.m., but the system began to fail at 11:30 a.m. With the sun shining, operators began to notice fluctuations in the grid with photovoltaic production at full blast. This excess sunlight caused the gas-fired combined cycle plants to reduce their production to make way for photovoltaic power.
In that sense, nuclear power didn’t enter the market to avoid losing money, and there was no need to rely on hydroelectric plants to avoid water loss. Without firmness technologies, the voltage became more fluctuating and vulnerable than ever. And then the incident happened. The 5-second voltage drop is an eternity in the electrical system and tripped the “system differentials,” shutting down everything at once: the photovoltaic, the cycles, the four remaining nuclear plants.
The industry insists we were lucky because the transformers didn’t burn out, which would have caused a blackout lasting more than 24 hours. ” Red Eléctrica miscalculated the risks and allowed the closure of three nuclear power plants that would have provided stability (voltage) to the system ,” the industry claims.
So there were plenty of warnings that things were going wrong.
If only the media in Europe had mentioned the 2016 SA Electricity crisis, people in Spain would have known:
People saw The South Australian (SA) black out coming. There were warnings that the dominance of renewables made it vulnerable. Then when it came, it all fell over in an instant — Three towers, six windfarms and 12 seconds to disaster. Ultimately the 40% renewable SA grid was crippled by complexity. The AEMO Report blamed renewables: The SA Blackout was due to lack of “synchronous inertia”, they said. The early estimates suggest the blackout costs South Australia at least $367m, plus their normal electricity is twice the price. Welcome to the future of unreliable electricity: More bad luck for South Australia, yet another blackout followed the first one, 300 powerlines down, 125,000 homes cut off. By 2019, things still weren’t secure, SA was offering $6,000 subsidies to buy batteries but people didn’t want them. In 2020 SA is still at risk of blackout, one third of solar PV “switching off” to save state, and they need a $1.5b interconnector bandaid to NSW. In 2022, they suffered more blackouts. South Australia was Islanded, flying by the seat of their pants, afraid of a solar surge on a sunny day. By 2023 the Renewables Star state “urgently” wants to force two diesel plants back to stop blackouts.
The pain of bad decisions never ends, unless they admit they were stupid.
I wonder how King Island is going with all those Windmills and back up diesel generators?
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LOL. Here is the Real Time Dashboard –
https://www.hydro.com.au/clean-energy/hybrid-energy-solutions/success-stories/king-island
96% diesel………………………………………………………………….
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Currently 97% diesel.
Battery sitting on zero, as usual.
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Has anyone ever seen the battery at anything but zero?
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It hasn’t got much better –
This is the BS –
The King Island Renewable Energy Integration Project (KIREIP) provides a glimpse of what’s achievable in renewable energy.
You’re seeing in real time the dashboard for our King Island renewable energy solution. It is based on contributions from wind and solar and the enabling technologies that improve system security and reliability, such as battery, dynamic resister, flywheel and demand side management.
Here it is – The Reality –
https://www.hydro.com.au/clean-energy/hybrid-energy-solutions/success-stories/king-island
‘Back Up’ Diesel at 93%
Wind – 3%
Solar – 4%
Battery – OFF
Other? – LOL
Paging Blackout Bowen, paging Blackout Bowen…………
50
Flinders island is at 80% diesel and a flat battery.
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Flat battery or full but not used for generation in the snapshot when you looked? I wouldnt expect to see the battery doing much in normal operations.
30
I am watching the wind since morning (must have my bike ride today!) At 1:15 pm AEST it is the same 20km/h – not enough for egg-beaters?
30
Don’t need the battery when the diesel is operating.
20
They have a flywheel for shocks and resistors to dissipate excess electricity from solar and wind. However, most of the time the diesels are running so when solar or wind drop out full load can be maintained. The solar and wind do save some cost of diesel but the capital cost of the solar, wind, battery, flywheel, resistors and control equipment will never be recovered.
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Mad Media is obfuscating / playing dumb here too, despite Occam’s Razor proving its worth (yet again) by midday yesterday. They’re still regurgitating that atmospheric heatwave oscillation thingy what’s it excuse. Or it was Putin. Or Trump.
All on the same day a huge solar pharm is switched ‘ON’ down in the South Island… the very same day a YELLOW SNOW WATCH alert is issued for the same region tonight (see Wednesday comment #12).
One step forward, two steps backwards…
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Yeah, a “heatwave”…LoL.
As someone posted yesterday it was no more than 23C (73F).
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More likely a unplanned, uncontrollable and unpredictable (therefore not their fault) cloud.
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Alice Springs power was lost when a cloud came over their solar system.
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Graeme, Alice Springs gets most of its electricity from natural gas fueled diesel generators. Gas used to come from the Palm Valley field but in 2015 a newer Dingo field 50 kms away was developed.
30
This is Spain following the Sth Aus playbook.
Obfuscate
Point fingers at anything but the elephant in the room
Quietly introduce an upgrade package (Gas turbines and batteries) to regain stability (play up the batteries, only mumble about turbines)
Spin this as a bold initiative rather than what you should have done in the first place
Never talk about baseload generation you destroyed
Adjust timing to suit election cycle
Cross fingers
This is exactly where Bowen is going.
180
That is like here in the Southern Tablelands NSW a couple of months ago. The BOM had for this district on the same day a “Low Intensity Heatwave” warning and a Sheep Graziers warning for losses of sheep due to cold going at the same time and place.
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I noticed this article late in the day. It’s not playing the ignorance card as much as MSM- which is depicting this event as a complete mystery.
I noted some odd grammar in this article, it wouldn’t be a surprise if the author (as opposed to a journalist) uses an AI program.
A key point to take away from it, the proposed solution to the Iberian blackout is batteries. Oddly, it mentions that Spanish companies have supplied batteries to Australia in SA yet they seemingly don’t have any in Spain to bolster their power grid. Nor does it mention that the SA government demanded reactivation of 2 diesel powered plants in recent years.
“Energy experts say it is too early to make a definitive call on what happened in Spain, but one of Australia’s foremost grid experts, Bruce Miller, couldn’t resist having a go at interpreting what was meant by “atmospheric oscillations” cited by the Spanish grid operator.”
“Ok – whilst the dust has still not settled – this is my “guess” as to what happened,” Miller wrote on LinkedIn.”
“This caused a few faults which can be seen in the frequency traces and eventually resulted in the interconnector to France tripping. Power imbalance then caused the Iberian system to collapse. Looking forward to reading the actual postmortem report (if it is made public) to see how accurate or inaccurate this guess is.”
Note Miller’s hyphenated “guess”, despite him reserving his judgement subject to the“ actual post-mortem report”.
https://reneweconomy.com.au/spain-reached-100-pct-renewables-a-week-before-blackout-some-big-batteries-might-have-kept-lights-on/
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Batteries will not solve the problem of too little – to no – inertia on the grid. Still, unlikely to stop them pissing away taxpayers money to find out.
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The simpleton politicians who have “designed” modern ruinable electrical grids along with the morally corrupt and/or ill-educated or indoctrinated “engineers” that go along with the scam need to be held to account.
Also, as I have mentioned before, these simpleton politicians would be unlikely to be able to write “million” or “billion” in numerals, let alone put together a simple electrical circuit of a battery, wires and a light bulb and yet simpletons like Australia’s anti-Energy Minister Chrissy “Blackout” Bowen is allowed to make multi-billion dollar economy-destroying “engineering” decisions.
Contrast the simpleton Bowen with engineering (and in other ways) geniuses like Sir John Monash who built Victoriastan’s electricity system, back in the day. He would be appalled at what’s been done to his creation.
https://collections.museumsvictoria.com.au/articles/2145
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They are not stupid or simpletons. Those pollies know exactly what they are doing . And it is not for our benefit. Sustained decisions and actions over 30+ years that all go one way to very slowly break down the excellent and cheap power grid we had don’t happen by accident. The gradual breakdown of the grid is being done on purpose , and in a way that can’t be undone. Note how they blow up the functional power stations instead of mothballing. Draw what conclusions you like from that. Don’t waste your energy calling pollies stupid. That is a distraction from the truth.
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It sounds like Spain needs a few synchronous condensers in the grid. Basically they act a bit like a giant capacitor in a DC circuit which smooths the power. In the absence of sufficient inertia from massive spinning generator-sets you need something to deal with the variations or reactances when solar kicks in or out.
Synchronous condensers are generally quite large and expensive but so is the society cost when the grid wobbles and auto-trips such as in Europe yesterday. The Au grid operator (AEMO) is perpetually monitoring our grid for phase stability and power. It has the ability to up- or down-regulate big coal units like Mt Piper NSW, from its central office. A 2 second excursion from 50Hz can rapidly become a problem and requires instant response.
Perhaps an electrical engineer could explain this to us because there must be someone in Canberra reading this blog who would benefit from being educated about the folly of high percentage solar/wind grids. It distresses me that so many in the political arena are technically illiterate and promoting Pythonesque day-dreams.
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Synchronous condensers are large spinning masses that emulate the frequency and phase regulating functions of the large spinning masses of a turbo generator in a proper power station. You might as well have the power station.
Static synchronous compensators do the same thing but with very expensive large-scale power electronics. You might as well have the power station.
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Rotating mass has inertia but the real problem is a voltage drop. Musk’s $100Million battery accidentally solved the problem for South Australia. Quite unexpectedly as the government invested in huge diesel generators at Eliazbeth so they could keep the taxes flowing, which is why they exist. The battery countered a voltage drop instantly, so any windmill could turn off and not cause a chain reaction. Spain could do the same thing.
But it is absurd in Australia where we have hundreds of years of free coal, free shale, free fracking and free offshore gas.
Of course so does Spain “Spain has significant coal reserves, with estimates of 1.308 billion tons in 2016. However, the Spanish government has been actively transitioning away from coal-fired power plants, aiming to phase out coal use by 2030 and potentially even earlier. ”
It’s net zero madness. As if the weather in 2005 was so much better than in 2025?
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The battery did not solved the problem. The recently installed synchronous condensers are essential to SA grid stability if they want to avoid running gas generators for rotating inertia.
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I was not aware of this. How recently?
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I have spoken to someone in a state grid control room, and he said synchronous condensers were just there to give them time to do managed blackouts rather than an uncontrolled one. His was dismissive of their ability to keep the grid going for long. But they may be useful bandaids for microsecond disruptions.
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As far as I can see batteries are only able to buy time – very expensively – for other generation to be brought online. Before the insanity came along the UK built a hydro storage plant in Wales that could deliver instant generation and used the output from a nearby nuclear plant overnight to replenish the headwater lake. Nuclear plant has gone now.
10
Then a large battery as in SA would be much better. It can actually carry the grid for minutes, much more than a single short event. And reacts instantly. A reactive synchronous condenser can only supply energy equivalent to the kinetic energy of the rotor and only a fraction of that before the rotational velocity and voltage drop. But you are comparing a $5M device against a $100M one.
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Pythonesque WET day-dreams. And the political crumbs in the UK are contemplating funding a “sun-blocker” UK scientists are to launch outdoor geoengineering experiments as part of a £50m government-funded programme. We are truly unblessed with idiots who think they can control the sun!
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Slartibartfast to the rescue and Planet Forming – Lol.
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Maybe the war on currents was declared too early. Synchronisation is a legacy of Tesla’s early win, which has served us well for over a century.
Edison’s era may be ahead of us. Already long distance power transmission is dominated by DC link with the return path through the earth.
DC links overcome the challenge of phase syntonisation. Many appliances now convert the incoming AC to DC and then an array of frequencies to suit the device. Look at how LED lights have used electronics to eliminate the high material count of floursecent lights with their heavy ballast. Inverter fridges, freezers and air-conditioners are now standard. Much less material intensive technology.
Switching DC used to be challenging but modern electronics have simplified that issue.
The need for rotating inertia would be eliminated by adopting DC power grids.
I started my career in Broken Hill when 40Hz power was still used throughout the mines. It was a technology legacy from mining in Europe, The US standardised on 60Hz in 1891. There is no global standard for frequency but DC dominates in the high power transmission stakes now.
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24 V DC fridges work really well. Some have 4″ thick walls and double row door seals and consume <100W while running. My cheapish 12 volt ARB camping fridge starts up slowly, drawing only 1.3 Amps for a while.
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“We must not rush to (conclusions) and (commit) errors through haste,” Sanchez said on Tuesday.
They all rushed to conclusions and committed errors with the rapid push for ruinables but now they are urging caution.
Methinks the horse has bolted
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Note here that all 0f this happens so quickly, sometimes in only seconds, so fast that grid operators have virtually no time at all to react, still wondering ….. ‘what the hell just happened’, and before they even realise and attempt to react, it’s all over.
Here in Spain it was five seconds, similar in South Australia, similar when Callide failed, and similar in the U.S. with the Great Northeast failure of 2003.
That one in the U.S. has an amazing timeline shown at this link. Note how there’s some early lead in that controllers look to handle, and then, when it becomes almost overwhelming, it crashes in seconds. Look down the timeline to 4.10.34 where the major failure started, and then it’s all over in 23 seconds, so humungously large that no one had any time at all to even begin to do anything.
Now that one was before the time of renewables, but it’s a lesson to learn from ….. that things like this happen so quickly, it’s beyond recovery.
And all that happens then is, quite literally, political, as talking head political party appartchiks look for anyone to blame that’s not the ‘guy’ looking back at them in the mirror.
I’m sure that there are Electrical Engineers on the Grids everywhere saying ….. “Hey, wait a minute, you can’t really DO this.”
Politicians don’t even consider listening to what is being said, and then, when it crashes so instantaneously, those same Electrical Engineers wear all the blame, with the Dorrie Evans response ….. “why wasn’t I told!”.
Umm, please excuse my cynicism here.
Tony.
290
Saw Elbo on the box come out with Bowens “statement of idiocy” declaring that electricity was just like water, it gets stored somewhere and when you turn the switch it comes out “like we turn the tap on”. I think Dutton tried to point out that the best back up batteries only last a maximum of 4 hours, but was cut short by who ever was running the interview. Maybe someone could point out to Elbo that even when no rain falls for months water still comes out of a tap, electricity, not so much.
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Spaniards are destroying themselves in at least two ways.
1) Ruinables.
2) Allowing the re-invasion by the Moors whose original expulsion took about 770 years and famously involved Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar (El Cid) around about the middle of that occupation in the 11th century.
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The Re-re-conquista.
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It was very nearly much worse. It came dangerously close to being a continent-wide blackout.
https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2025-4-28-have-the-intermittent-energy-blackouts-begun
60% of the Iberian peninsula dropping off the grid caused a frequency blip on the EU grid that was nearly, but not quite, large enough to trip shutdowns across the continent.
If I were living in Europe, I’d be calling Hank Hill and dropping some cash on a propane generator and propane accessories. I might even pull an Obama and sink a 2500 gallon propane tank in my back yard.
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There are a few outages in NE USA as well – towards the Canadian border – coincidence?
https://poweroutage.us/
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November 9, 1965 – Northeast blackout of 1965 – Wikipedia
The northeast blackout of 1965 was a significant disruption in the supply of electricity on Tuesday, November 9, 1965, affecting parts of Ontario in Canada and Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont in the United States.
No TV. 9 months later, there was a baby boom. LOL.
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Portable generator with lights in the university gymnasium…. Vermont
Fun was had by most
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Hope it’s not a fake photo Spain at night
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Looks similar to North Korea at night.
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And all the while, our media fail to point out the seriousness of this situation.
What is not being pointed out by the authorities and the media, and is therefore poorly understood is that, just because, this time, the European grid is more or less fully operational again, that doesn’t mean that the threat has gone away. It remains ever-present. While all that renewable complement remains connected, retaining control of the grid remains an ongoing, permanent, nightmare.
And, as others have said, the same applies here in renewables-land, Australia.
Paul Miskelly
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If parties unknown chose to drag a figurative “anchor” across a power cable somewhere in Spain just to see what would happen, then they have an answer.
Imagine being able to bring down an interconnected European grid so easily.
50
I did read somewhere the solar wind got through a crack in the earths ever weakening magnetic field and this could have/did cause fluctuations in the power systems leading to the blackout.
This really should not be a surprise to anyone, so not only do we have to deal with a fragile power generation system but now we have to deal with space weather affecting that fragile power generation system. It would seem the magnetic field will continue to weaken and therefore events like this should continue and probably get worse, so much so even the Albanese Bum Covering organisation will not be able to ignore it.
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This was discussed on WUWT yesterday. At the time of the blackout, there was very little happening from the sun that could have affected the system.
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This was discussed on WUWT yesterday. At the time of the blackout, there was very little happening from the sun that could have affected the system.
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There was a solar wind stream connected to earths magnetic field centred over that part of Europe.
You don’t need solar flares to have space weather and WUWT is not infallible and is not the be all of everything.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYuPQ2NbkwA
Ben Davidson from suspicious observers explains it here
Cheers
21
But then
“Interesting… I’d seen videos about “high solar activity” over the last week or two and just assumed it was still the status, but these folks say it’s quiet:
https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/report-and-forecast-solar-and-geophysical-activity ”
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2025/04/28/iberian-power-outage/#comment-176712
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And more in comments down stream from that
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That comment must have been uttered by a Spanish Bowen just after the Albo-Tross crapped on him!
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I saw that solar wind theory too but it was just internet bollox.😎
All those wind turbines standing still though, even if they’re shutdown they can still spin.
Confucius say – if alternator not spinning, battery not charging and car will soon stop working.
40
It’s not internet bollocks John, the earth’s magnetic field is collapsing and therefore fragile power systems like wind and solar will be affected it’s basic physics. Just another “unknown unknown” not considered in the Labor nut zero planning
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If it was a solar wind stream then why did it only impact the Spain/Portugal Grid and not other places that were in daylight across the World at the same time?
Also, why only an Electricity Grid and not Satellites, other communications, etc, etc,………….
No.
This is what happens when you do not allow Electrical Engineers to design/run/maintain an Electricity Grid.
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For the love of God why do I even bother commenting here. You need to understand how space weather works and I am not spending the next 2 hours explaining things to you when you can simply watch the you tube clip. If you are too lazy to do that then that’s your problem.
In a nut shell solar and wind power networks are very fragile and it does not take much to dysregulated them and with the mag field continuing to weaken this type of collapse may/will become a regular occurrence.
15
Keep up the ‘Teacher Mode’ and pretentiousness. It quite becomes you. Are you one of those ‘God Oracles’ perchance?
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Its not a matter of teaching John its a matter of educating.
For example the power company stated there was an “atmospheric event” that triggered the power network collapse so the question then becomes “is there any evidence of this event”?
According to Ben Davidson from Suspicious Observers there was is evidence of an atmospheric event that could have triggered the power network collapse so in the end we have two competing theories based on (as yet) anecdotal evidence.
1, A solar evident in the general area if Spain/Portugal induced electromagnetic fluctuations into the power network and could have triggered the collapse of the renewable energy systems due to a lack of spinning inertia., or
2, I don’t know why the Spanish grid collapsed and I don’t care all, what’s more I have no interest in discussing possible reasons as to why it collapse and I will move heaven and earth to shut down anyone who wishes to discuss why it collapsed. All I know is renewables in Spain are as sh$t3 as they are here and lets leave it at that shall we.
Like i said its not teaching its educating.
24
A sensible future for Australia requires at least:
The wide acceptance that “renewables” in an overall setting are more expensive than coal or gas electricity generation by a factor of 2 or more when they operate normally.
When renewables do not operate normally, lack of spinning inertia can cause (and has caused) serious and expensive blackouts.
There is no future reason for mandated favour of using renewables first.
Renewables are not renewable except by description by advocates.
Renewables cause excessive, rarely mentioned harm to birds and insects and from clearing of land for generators and larger transmission grids.
Electricity generation design has to be done by qualified experienced engineers with little or no political/ideological input.
There is no scientific basis supporting net zero carbon ideology.
In any case, cessation of hydrocarbon fuel generation has a trivial effect on atmospheric CO2 levels.
Atmospheric CO2 has beneficial effects that outweigh alleged harms, so that a proper “social cost of carbon” is correctly positive.
Nuclear electricity is, to date, the safest major technique in terms of deaths and injuries per unit of electricity produced.
Hydrocarbon fuels cannot be discontinued because chemically, they are needed for making other products like urea and ammonia based fertilizers.
The present global yield of major food crops is steadily increasing, not being harmed by change in atmospheric CO2 as alleged.
………
There are many more truisms to add to this list.
The big one that I suggest for major criticism of present ways is that the mass media have been telling climate change porkies for decades. Those voters concerned for Australia’s future have to campaign strongly to bring media into the realms of truth. At the very least, send a Letter to the Editor or the equivalent every time there is an untruth published.
Geoff S
150
In Australia, large scale outages due to ruinables will be less bad than northern Europe and northern US and Canada because we don’t tend to get the extreme cold that they do therefore people won’t die from cold.
There’s not much industry left to worry about so power outages won’t affect mostly non-existent industry.
Keeping things refrigerated will be a problem though, at home, at the supermarket in food warehouses and most importantly in pubs where non-chilling of some of the world’s most highly taxed beer would be considered unforgivable.
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But of course if this inertial synchronicity is a well known issue then why hasn’t it been factored into the grid design?
It’s like consumer grade inverters, there’s 2 types:
1. Way cheap HF inverters.
2. More expensive LF inverters. A good LF unit will have a beefy toroidal transformer and can handle surges 5× Pmax for 30 sec, but a HF for a pathetic 0.2 seconds.
ie startup (inrush) currents can trip HF units easily but are no problem for LF units.
Beef matters!
A domestic grid needs an Arnie Schwarzenegger not a Mr Bean.
So what’s next? Renewables are it, no going back now, blackouts will happen so the masses will have to cut back on everything so it doesn’t happen again?
The WEF will be pleased…
80
The fundamental insanity in net zero is that it is about CO2 emissions, without anyone proving they have any impact on CO2 itself which is incredibly close to constant from pole to pole, year to year. The very slight growth of 0.4% p.a. is less than the ’emissions’ of 1%, so the ‘climate scientists’ tell us that half stays in the air and half stays in the water. Why is a mystery.
If you look at CO2 itself, the culprit for man made CO2 driven Global Warming, it is incredibly close constant, pole to pole, year to year within 1%. But we are told it’s unprecedented by people who infallibly measured this stuff thousands of years ago. Apparently.
But even emissions for net zero have an ideal of 2005. And I would love to know how this year was chosen as ideal, perfect, desirable at any cost.
Is the weather in 2025 so much worse? Why not keep moving the reference year until we actually have a problem. Then Net zero would always be true. At no cost.
120
So they claim, but as we all know, it’s ultimate purpose is the destruction of Western Civilisation. As is the purpose of all other policies of the Left.
120
At my age, I remember back to Whitlams reign and the Lima Declaration that he signed us up to and that pathetic Fraser ratified, which was the downfall of Australias’ Footwear and Textile industries.
It may have started before then, I don’t know.
70
My point is that man made CO2 driven Global Warming is NOT about ’emissions’. It is about TOTAL CO2 which shows no human input at all. So TOTAL CO2 is never mentioned because it is clearly not affected by fossil fuel or anything else, like the world wide shutdown in 2020.
And there is the question of scale. ‘Emissions’ are only 1% of CO2 in the air which is 2% of CO2 in the water. The very idea that we are sensitive to a TOTAL CO2 increase of 0.02% is madness. Or that CO2 in 2005, the base of Net Zero, is also madness.
Here’s CO2. It’s a 10% difference in TOTAL CO2 between 2005 and 2025. And 500,000 giant windmills and billions of solar panels have had no effect.
As taxpayers and the victims of theft in this CO2 game, shouldn’t the government have to report on the actual success in lowering CO2? That is the entire point of the exercise, not decreasing Australian fossil fuel use.
40
On the plus side, at least El Blackout occurred on a beautiful day (when a proper power grid would have been relaxing on its banana lounge).
40
We male folk are going to have to refrain from drawing male genitalia on our ballot papers, some say that’s how Bowen got elected.
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The only things that saved Spain are:
1. An interconnector to France
2. 38% of Morroccan generation.
Spain didn’t save itself. It was bailed out.
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The proponents of renewables keep promoting “the larger the grid , the more stable it is” . What they don’t say is the bigger the grid the worse the failure . Europe is all interconnected and when the crash happens it will be epic . Steve (8) is right on the money. As our grid becomes bigger we are all at risk – backup power is becoming necessary….
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Here is the link to the open letter on energy concerns published in today’s metropolitan newspapers (for those who haven’t seen it already):
OPEN LETTER TO ALL AUSTRALIANS ON OUR ENERGY PREDICAMENT, full page in the Wednesday 30 April 2025 print editions of the Courier Mail, the Daily Telegraph, the Herald Sun, The Advertiser, the Northern Territory News, the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the Australian Financial Review and the Australian. See: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gIyXzAWBTFldx4fFyg7TJnFA0My88QAr/view?usp=sharing
There’s a QR code to get the full letter and here is the web link to that
https://www.rainforestreserves.org.au/open-letter
The link gives you the full letter and the full signatory list.
Letter by 50 Australian energy professionals, engineers, scientists, economists, environmentalists, industry leaders, and community advocates who believe current policy is being driven by ideology and vested interests.
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It’s not a mystery as suggested by their ABC. The phenomenon is likely due to Spain’s reliance on almost 100% weather driven renewables like solar and wind which employs Inverter Based Resource (IBR) power systems. These are used to convert DC from wind turbine farms & solar farms to AC for the grid. IBR systems are delicately balanced and susceptable to EMP interference, for example, from solar flares and rapid temperature fluctuations. Since Australia has a similar climate to that of Spain this heralds a warning to us that should we be careless enough to vote Labour and end up as Bowen’s renewable energy suparpower we can expect to suffer the same potential for grid collapse and prolonged blackouts currently experianced by Spain & Portugal.
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Renewables, you know, the way of the future, replacement for ancient coal fired power, eh!
For the sake of comparison here, we have 91 wind plants, and they generated a total of 504 GWH across the whole of last week.
The two largest coal fired power plants, Eraring and Bayswater delivered 620GWH to the same grid.
So just those TWO coal fired plants with a total Nameplate of 5500MW (only 41% of the Nameplate for those 91 wind plants) delivered 23% more power than those 91 wind plants.
Now solar power plants. 104 of them, Nameplate 10.7GW, delivered 313GWH to the grid last week.
Now Rooftop Solar with a Nameplate estimated to be 25GW, delivered 495GWH to the grid.
And these three renewables of choice we were told, were supposed to be a replacement for what are now ancient coal fired clunkers, and just those two I mentioned are both now approaching 50 years of operation.
Imagine a nightly news reader quoting those stats on the news, eh!
Tony.
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Now Rooftop Solar with a Nameplate estimated to be 25GW, delivered 495GWH to the grid.
while I agree with your basic position on grid level effectiveness of solar power generation, at the household level supplying grid power was NEVER going to be the objective/benefit.
Avoiding the costs associated with using grid supplied power was always going to be the major part of the ROI analysis.
The question which has been added recently (unfortunately depending mostly on battery prices) is upgrading the domestic roof top system to mitigate grid power outages worth the costs.
Suburban develop projects should have to separately state the cost of grid access for each lot. Might explain why housing is so expensive?
YMMV
50
This needs pointing out here.
Rooftop solar power does not feed back to the grid.
What it does do is.
It means that the grid DOES NOT need to deliver power to those residences with the rooftop panels in place.
Tony.
30
The Viewer’s eyes would glaze over as they would be waiting for the Sports News.
40
It hasn’t got much better –
This is the BS –
The King Island Renewable Energy Integration Project (KIREIP) provides a glimpse of what’s achievable in renewable energy.
You’re seeing in real time the dashboard for our King Island renewable energy solution. It is based on contributions from wind and solar and the enabling technologies that improve system security and reliability, such as battery, dynamic resister, flywheel and demand side management.
Here it is – The Reality –
https://www.hydro.com.au/clean-energy/hybrid-energy-solutions/success-stories/king-island
‘Back Up’ Diesel at 93%
Wind – 3%
Solar – 4%
Battery – OFF
Other? – LOL
Paging Blackout Bowen, paging Blackout Bowen…………
70
Amazing how for the last 5 years all the “experts ” are baffled. How the absolute bleeding obvious is apparent to the average joe (or above average Jo), yet seemingly unfathomable to those in white coats or shiny suits.
50
And now in The Australian
“Spain’s blackout is the first of the clean energy era
Solar energy was powering the grid in Spain and Portugal on Monday — until it wasn’t, leaving tens of millions without electricity.
by Matthew Dalton”
I find it hard to believe this was written by an Australian. Perhaps South Australia does not exist?
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“This week’s blackout in Spain and Portugal confronted authorities with an unprecedented event: the first mass electrical outage on a grid largely powered by wind and solar energy.” What rubbish.
He fails to say this experiment on an entire nation has lasted less than 2 weeks before total failure.
And he fails to say that people died as a direct consequence.
40
This explains succinctly and clearly why NetZero can never work.
Physics. And this layman never got a handle on physics. As a school child, Pure Maths was bliss, a language I was clearly born speaking fluently. Practical Maths and Physics? Uh? No compute
Yet this article is clear as a bell
I have sent it to Ed Miliband’s department asking that he reads it and replies.
10
In the UK the pressure is mounting on the escapee from the asylum that has somehow been put in charge of our energy as the Spanish blackout has shown how fragile a grid of unreliables is as well as former Prime Minister Sir Tony the Liar has chirped up and said Net Zero is a problem. Our non-fascist news channel GB News – constantly under threat from the censors – was openly pointing the finger of blame at unreliables and this morning had a guy on the explain how our combined retards desire to be ‘world leading’ is driving down everything here except for the costs. Tomorrow is election day in parts of the UK – my area had the election stopped as the Tories here in the south fear Reform as much as Labour does in the north – and if Reform can surge in spite of its leader – or more correctly owner – then Labour will be under more pressure. So hints that Siliband is for the chop as having successfully tanked the economy due to her incompetence and lack of experience in economics, Rachel from Accounts sees u-turning on banning oil and gas as a way to bring some of the growth she has killed off.
10
And it has dawned on the UK Government that China only bought what’s left of the UK steel industry so they could shut it down. Even so Britain no longer makes steel. They only melt old steel. But the good news is that all that dirty old coal electricity and CO2 from removing O2 from Fe (smelting) is now in China. I find it hard to believe that people think that has changed anything for the better. CO2 NIMBYism. As in Australia. You would think that CO2 was actually toxic instead of the gas from which all life is made.
10
The UK has off-shored it’s reduction of CO2 emissions to China, along with most of the ‘green’ jobs.
At present wind is providing 0.82GW out of a demand of 33.32GW, and we are importing 20% of our electricity demand.
Thank goodness it is warm and the sun is shining, so is providing some electricity until this evening.
Have we got enough reliable generating capacity to meet demand in the winter in similar wind conditions and very little solar.
The foreign generators will have us over a barrel as to pricing of imported electricity, even if it is available.
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