Iberien Peninsular Blackout

Hello Roger:

Your referenced article is excellent. 

It should be noted that here in the US the price paid for electrical power is controlled at the State Level and not at the Federal level.

As an example in Massachusetts one may pay $0.23 per kWh, while here in Florida it is about $0.11 per kWh.

Peter Brooks

Palm Bay 

This is also dangerous to compare a single figure, as at certain times of day for users who sign up to it, electricity is free..usually at some weekends when demand is lower.https://octopus.energy/free-electricity/  note that there is a funny 'marginal price' mechanism that means the wholesale prices for renewable are scaled by the price of gas..www.goodenergy.co.uk/.../

Mike

The comparison  of domestic electricity prices is difficult as there are various taxes and levies as well as exchange rate fluctuations. The UK is no longer included in the detailed European data. This site appears to give reasonable information:

https://countryeconomy.com/energy-and-environment/electricity-price-household

The UK is slightly cheaper than Spain, 0.2203 € per kWh against 0.2408 € per kWh. The ‘leaders’ in renewable energy sources, Germany and Denmark are the most expensive by far 0.3943 and 0.3763 € per kWh.

Hello Roger:

I haven't seen anything about the cost of the power loss  due to grid component damage (example transformers or switch gear) both within Spain or say France.

One article your referenced, mentioned the benefits that Spain is having due to its extensive use of renewables.

Do you know how the residential electrical power costs in Spain compare to the UK ?

Peter Brooks

Palm Bay FL  

There is still not much information about the blackout, especially anything that could be classed as official.

PV Magazine published this based on Spanish government sources:

www.pv-magazine.com/.../

It seems to suggest some Europe wide instability followed by a cascade failure that could not be stopped by load shedding.

There have been a couple of other graphics of uncertain origin. This one from ENTSOE shows the collapse. At the time there seems to have been a large amount of solar PV generation with the surplus being sent to pumped storage. 

https://transparency.entsoe.eu/generation/r2/actualGenerationPerProductionType/show?name=&defaultValue=false&viewType=GRAPH&areaType=BZN&atch=false&datepicker-day-offset-select-dv-date-from_input=D&dateTime.dateTime=28.04.2025+00:00|CET|DAYTIMERANGE&dateTime.endDateTime=28.04.2025+00:00|CET|DAYTIMERANGE&area.values=CTY|10YES-REE------0!BZN|10YES-REE------0&productionType.values=B01&productionType.values=B25&productionType.values=B02&productionType.values=B03&productionType.values=B04&productionType.values=B05&productionType.values=B06&productionType.values=B07&productionType.values=B08&productionType.values=B09&productionType.values=B10&productionType.values=B11&productionType.values=B12&productionType.values=B13&productionType.values=B14&productionType.values=B20&productionType.values=B15&productionType.values=B16&productionType.values=B17&productionType.values=B18&productionType.values=B19&dateTime.timezone=CET_CEST&dateTime.timezone_input=CET+(UTC+1)+/+CEST+(UTC+2)

There have also been a couple of comments that the proportion of solar generation has been reduced and nuclear and gas have been ramped up, this may however just be a sensible action to take until more information is available. This is of German origin but may have been collated from ENTSO.

Hello Philip:

The original news report appears to be published by Reuters based on US government research.

This isn't the first time major Chinese made equipment has been found to be capable of sending data back home.

Similar things happened with Chinese made container cargo cranes installed at US Ports a couple of years ago.

This might be an updated version of the "Trojan horse" story!

Peter Brooks

The best news report I could see was Reuters, and it's contents suggested to me that someone is being overzealous with the fear mongering (but then it is Chinese..).

Sounds like some kit used a communications module that implicitly had multiple capabilities, of which only one or two were being used in the application - happens a lot in modern electronics - and that the worry mongers (it's there job) have done the usual briefing to ham up the problem. It's no worse that Intel including its own OS and browser inside its own CPUs so they can phone home etc. (other chip makers are available).

It's all a bit of a merry go round.

Hello Mike:

I have been waiting for the past few days for someone in this discussion thread, to mention the news that Chinese Solar equipment (actually the inverters) had been found to contain remote controlled kill switch, which if activated could cause instability in national grids.

I think the Times newspaper had something about this a day or so ago.

Peter Brooks

My rainwater barrels are indeed covered - even the vent holes have a fly mesh screen (intended to keep leaves and other detritus out rather than insects,but it should have the same effect). Not that we have much of an issue with mosquitoes here, not for the moment at least.

   - Andy.

We are well off topic but where I am its topsoil of half a metre or less, and then a gravel sand mix down tens of metres to the water table and then more of the same but wet.  The landscape is really the glacial outwash of the last ice age ( the one that ended about 12,000 years ago, so about twice as far back as the first Egyptian pyramids, for some sense of scale. ), all sorts of junk was dropped when the ice melted, so the south of England soil structure is very variable over even a few km.
In terms of wildlife water butts are covered, and excess goes to soakaway, though the thing folk get in garden ponds is frogs, not so much mosquitoes.

Mike.