Any thoughts/information on what happened? Was it a lack of spinning reserve?
Was it " The Portuguese operator, REN, said the outage was caused by a “rare atmospheric phenomenon”, with extreme temperature variations in Spain causing “anomalous oscillations” in very high-voltage lines."
as is written in the Guardian?
The Italien blackout from a few years ago had a definate cause in the tripping of interconnetors from Switzerland during a storm.
Thanks for this Roger
However, I disagree: It doesn't suggest that renewables were the cause.
The document is a factual report describing the sequence of events; it explicitly states that the root cause analysis (including determining whether the network operators' actions contributed) is a next step i.e. the cause is not addressed in this report.
Instead the report defines the event as starting at the time that things started tripping. The first things to go were indeed embedded generators. These were mostly renewables, and the actual cause of the trip is not explicitly known, but subsequent trips were due to overvoltage then overfrequency and RoCoF. Because distribution network voltages tend to flap around more than transmission, it is perhaps unsurprising and likely by design that they went first. This does not mean that they were the cause.
(Disclaimer: Obviously I haven't had the chance to read the report in full as it is very dense detail and it was only released today)
The next report from ENTSO-E on the Iberian blackout has now been published:
This suggests that the cause was a large quantity of various renewables going off line.
'Several important generation trips occurred from 12:32:00 onwards. Between 12:32:00.000 and 12:32:57.000, there was a loss of 208MW identified distributed wind and solar generators in northern and southern Spain, as well as an increase in net load in the distribution grids of approximately 317MW, which might be due to the disconnection of small embedded generators <1MW (mainly rooftop PV) or to an actual increase in load or to a combination of both. The reasons for these events are not known. From 12:32:57.000 until 12:33:18.020, major disconnection events occurred in the regions of Granada, Badajoz, Sevilla, Segovia, Huelva, and Cáceres, which resulted in an additional loss of generation of at least 2GW (the effects of frequency deviation suggest a loss of even 2.2GW).'
The reasons for for the trips are not stated.
Hello Paul:
I guess we will have to wait until there are multiple new power system failures before we get to the real root cause of this problem.
Peter
Sorry Peter, I have no knowledge of the Spanish network. Simply trying to relate the various reports which have emerged, and what lessons are to be learnt for the operation of the grid in other countries.
Regards, Paul Adkins
Hello Paul:
Do you know which company manufactured and installed the inverter systems at the Province of Badajoz Photovoltaic Plant A?
Peter Brooks
Palm Bay FL
System operator's report which adds more meat to the government report Mike linked to previously:
Translation by DeepL here
Rgds Paul
In a sense, the "reactive power" phrasing can be a red-herring of a vague assertion that presumes certain aspects of rotating plant, rather than being clear about the grid forming/following, lead-lag, 'instant' power aspects that (IIUC) were/are not being implemented on the wind and solar plants.
In a sense the old codes were playing King Canut against the rising tide, and we are now between a rock and hard place of old control techniques and modern (quire new) electronic mechanisms that were being disallowed (i.e. not having grid forming on those mandated wind/solar supplies).
One has to separate the lead-lag control part of the synthesised sine-wave(s) from the harmonic aspects (esp 3rd) to be able to discuss the wider wicked issues of the blame game.
What is always more interesting is what they are not saying or in other words the ‘Elephant in the Room’ A few points seem to be clear:
Due to the cost of shutting down wind and solar power plants the grid operators are obliged to take all that is available and shut down the rotary plants instead. These Constraint payments are an artificial political requirement not a technical requirement.
The grid had been showing signs of voltage instability previous to the blackout. This was put down to a lack of reactive power control. The effect of the high level of ‘synthesised’ sine waves from wind and solar rather than ‘pure’ sine waves from rotating machines has not really been mentioned other than saying that the grid operator should have been running more gas plants, which goes against the previous financial points.
"The government report also found that REE failed to switch on thermal power stations, which would have helped stabilise the system"
Blaming the grid operator for not running enough gas plants is a tacit admission that they were running too many renewables on cost grounds. No one really seems to want to say that.
This represents the typical response for this type of event, that is (1) Finger pointing to each involved party and (2) The need more funds to fix problem.
End result: They need to raise the rates for electrical power!
Peter Brooks
Palm Bay
More reading on this:
System operator's report which adds more meat to the government report Mike linked to previously:
(Notably it dismisses the voltage oscillations that had been apparent all morning)
A bit of a rebuttal from a local utilities trade association:
(Both links from Energy Institute article:
From a brief review, at face value, it sounds like the immediate trigger was a control system instability at a generating plant (which then led to a cascade of disconnections) but the network voltage had been oscillating all day 'til then and planned responses didn't operate as expected throughout.
From my point of view I hope the cause of the generator-originated instability is allowed to come to light, as well as the voltage oscillations on the system, but these reports read like defences (granted through Google Translate so nuance might be lost or distorted).
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