🇪🇸🔌☀️ Renewable energy to blame for Spain’s blackouts

Spain’s disastrous national blackout was triggered by solar farms switching off in response to plummeting power prices, an official investigation has found.

A government report into Europe’s biggest power cut found that Spain’s solar farms were generating so much power on April 28, a particularly sunny day, that prices became “negative” – meaning there were no profits to be made in operating them.

Plunging prices triggered a mass switch-off, which sent voltage and frequency fluctuations cascading across the national grids of both Spain and Portugal. Back-up systems meant to guard against such fluctuations were not in effect.

This caused blackouts that left more than 60m people across the Iberian peninsula without power, the Spanish government report concluded.

The power cut caused massive gridlock in cities and left thousands stranded on trains and in elevators across the Iberian peninsula. Several deaths were also linked to the incident.

Experts said in the immediate aftermath of the power cut that a reliance on net zero energy had left Spain and Portugal vulnerable to the blackouts because of the way renewable power is generated. However, Spain’s Left-wing government has repeatedly insisted that green energy was not to blame.

The Spanish report, made public on Tuesday, described how the power cut, which occurred shortly after midday, had been preceded by unusual voltage fluctuations across the Spanish grid from roughly 10am onwards.

Those fluctuations correlated with abrupt reductions in solar generation, which were probably driven by solar farms switching off as wholesale power prices fell. This coincided with other, wider changes such as an abrupt drop in the amount of power being exported to France.

🔗 https://archive.ph/1z7Ie