This article explains why a high percentage of power generated by wind and solar could have caused the power outage. In a separate post, I explained that Spaniards don’t worry about what could happen. That would explain the lack of backup power and the total disruption from the outage.
Power in Europe is at a frequency of 50 Hertz. That means 50 beats per second. In America, it’s 60 Hertz.
The entire grid in Spain and Portugal has to be synchronized, so each beat occurs at exactly the same time. Nuclear, natural gas and coal, generate steam to turn massive turbines. It takes time to change the speed of a big turbine, so once they are synchronized, nothing changes very fast.
Wind and solar electricity is converted to alternating current that matches the frequency of the power grid.
If wind and solar are generating the electricity, the massive turbines aren’t. There is nobody keeping the beat.
Watch this entertaining video from Soul Train, and imagine how the dancers could synchronize their movements if the sound system suddenly cut off. They could watch each other, but the movements wouldn’t be as crisp.
And that is from 1973, when Spain was still ruled by the dictator, Francisco Franco.
Simplified, the electricity on the grid is supposed to look like this.
As more energy production is added, the wave should look the same. If electricity generated by solar and wind, are synchronized properly, the grid starts to falter.
The result is the grid frequency of 50 Hz can start to change and the effective voltage delivered will degrade.
In the US, some states have net metering, allowing customers with solar panels to sell electricity back to the power company. Their power meter is essentially running backwards. The customer’s system has to properly synchronize their electricity to the grid.
The problem of frequency drift from running an all solar power grid is solvable. Rather than each source synchronizing to the power grid, all sources could synchronize to an external signal. GPS uses time so precisely, relativistic effects are considered because the satellites are moving so fast. Making sure each source matches the beat to within a thousandth of a second is achievable.
The Iberian Blackout was an interesting event that will drive renewable energy to be more reliable.
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