What Spain Has Learned Since The April 28 Blackout
By Frank Bosse (Klimanachrichten)
We reported here on the circumstances that caused the Spain Blackout last month: oscillations in a controlled system that were built up and contained too few integrative components, which had previously prevented this from happening.
This is mainly due to the increasing number of inverters that photovoltaics (PV) are introducing.
They have practically no inertial elements, as was the case before the many PV with rotating masses of large turbines. This is the obvious and, from a control perspective, completely clear indication of “too many” inverters synchronized only to the 50 Hz of the power grid. There are also technical solutions that prevent this: An external frequency standard as a “target frequency”, phase-locked at all feed-in locations (regardless of how the generation takes place) and “disciplined” with GPS. Such an arrangement is described here.
Of course, retrofitting is not cheap and takes time. However, the electricity grid would be more resilient and a possible “black start” after a blackout would be much easier to manage and much quicker.
To date, we have heard many opinions and “snap judgments” about the cause and future prevention of such incidents.
We reported here that there is a political focus on more electricity storage in Spain. Something like this will also take decades (if the required quantities ever become sufficient) and by then a bomb will be ticking.
Now, political decisions are simply political and initially do not help the electricity grid at all. That’s where control technology comes in and it has no convictions or party memberships.
So what would a technician do if it was clear that too much PV (with the associated inverters) was one of the causes of the blackout? Correct, he would reduce the share of electricity production. Anything else would be illogical.
What was actually done? The daily data from here can help. A look at the share of PV and nuclear power in daily electricity production in Spain around the time of the blackout on April 28th:
Share of power generated, nuclear (Kernkraft) and solar.
For PV (solar), the average share was 27% until April 27, and only 20% thereafter.
The downward trend is highly significant. In contrast, the share of nuclear power increased slightly, but has an upper limit: its installed capacity. Almost everything that was available in terms of integrating components (= inert masses) was activated. The “fast” inverters were reduced. The total PV output fell from an average of 182 GWh/day to 127 GWh/day. PV was therefore reduced by around 30% after the blackout in Spain. This is logical and speaks for itself.
All (political/ideological) attempts to blame something else for the blackout in Spain must be dashed by these clear realities. So no matter what little soup is tried to be cooked, technology can neither be persuaded nor fooled.
” … and contained too few integrative components,”
I do not know what an integrative component is.
“I do not know…”
Do follow the link !
10 day trend vs the following 11 days is data mining
Solar energy output can vary significantly from week to week due to weather conditions, such as cloud cover and precipitation.
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