Rules and Guidelines
Want to participate in the discussions? Please read our Community Rules and Guidelines. Need some help? Visit Support and Answers.

  • Replies 75 replies
  • Subscribers 27 subscribers
  • Views 10047 views
  • Users 0 members are here
Options
You may also be interested in

Iberien Peninsular Blackout

Roger B

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?

Electricity restored to 90% of Spain and most of Portugal after massive power outage | Spain | The Guardian

The Italien blackout from a few years ago had a definate cause in the tripping of interconnetors from Switzerland during a storm.

  • in reply to padkins

    PDF

    The official communique is here.  "Se presenta el informe del Comité de análisis de la crisis eléctrica del 28 de abril"

  • Many sources in the last 24 hours quoting a Spanish government report, e.g. this from Reuters, but no link to the actual government report.  Has anyone found this?

    Paul Adkins

  • in reply to Philip Oakley

    Yes, it looks like insufficient reactive power support led to voltage rise led to groups of electrically adjacent generators tripping off. The system operator and the generators have already blamed each other, and now the government has blamed them both. I’m waiting for the ENTSO-E report 

  • in reply to Philip Oakley

    Just to say that the BBC say that there's now a government report casting blame around https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c62d8k8edgxo "Spain's government blames huge blackout on grid regulator and private firms".

    I'm sure more discussion will follow Wink

  • in reply to Roger B

    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 

  • in reply to Roger B

    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

  • in reply to Peter Brooks

    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.

  • in reply to Roger B

    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.

  • in reply to Philip Oakley

    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

     

      

Community Rules & Guidelines