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From: "Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid>
Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design
Subject: Re: The Physics Behind the Spanish Blackout
Date: Tue, 10 Jun 2025 11:13:33 +0200
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On 2025-06-10 10:53, Jeroen Belleman wrote:
> On 6/10/25 02:11, Carlos E.R. wrote:
>> On 2025-06-09 22:44, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
>>> Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 2025-06-09 21:54, Don Y wrote:
>>>>> On 6/9/2025 12:29 PM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
>>>>>> On 2025-06-09 21:14, Don Y wrote:
>>>>>>> Why were the hydro and nuclear plants IN THE AFFECTED SPANISH 
>>>>>>> REGION so
>>>>>>> poor at providing that "inertia" (even if only to allow THAT part 
>>>>>>> of the
>>>>>>> country to safely "island"?)  Why were they among the last 
>>>>>>> sources to
>>>>>>> come
>>>>>>> back online?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Hydro was the first to come back online.
>>>>>
>>>>> When did fossil fuel and nukes come back into the mix?
>>>>
>>>> fossil somewhere in the middle, nucs last of all. Gas turbines I think
>>>> entered second.
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>> Islanding can happen if there is generation of the needed size in the
>>>>>> region, of the same power as the power usage. And that did not 
>>>>>> happen,
>>>>>> specially with solar/wind. Nor with nuclear.
>>>>>
>>>>> The coverage seems to suggest the region had an out-sized supply
>>>>> relative to
>>>>> it's demands.  I.e., if not for the influence of the rest of the 
>>>>> grid, it
>>>>> likely could have come back as an "independent operation".
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> From:
>>>>> <https://www.carbonbrief.org/qa-what-we-do-and-do-not-know-about-the-
>>>>> blackout-in-spain-and-portugal/>
>>>>>
>>>>>       “​​The world didn’t walk away from fossil-fuel and
>>>>> nuclear power stations because New York suffered a massive blackout in
>>>>> 1977. And it shouldn’t walk away from solar and wind because 
>>>>> Spain and
>>>>> Portugal lost power for a few hours.
>>>>>
>>>>> [Note that there were also blackouts in 1965 and 2003 -- I don't know
>>>>> about other parts of the country as I wasn't living in those places]
>>>>>
>>>>>       “But we should learn that grid design, policy and risk 
>>>>> mapping
>>>>> aren’t yet up to the task of handling too much power from renewable
>>>>> sources.”
>>>>>
> 
>>>>>
>>>>> OTOH, we're sticking with other technologies (fossil fuels -- coal 
>>>>> -- and
>>>>> nukes) despite obvious and yet to be solved problems INHERENT in their
>>>>> technology.  Adding "inertia" synthetically to a network is a 
>>>>> considerably
>>>>> more realistic goal than sorting out how to deal with nuclear waste or
>>>>> the consequences of burning carbon.
>>>>
>>>> Solar and wind can be made to impose a gigantic inertia with 
>>>> appropriate
>>>> electronics. You can fixate the output at 50Hz, locked no matter what.
>>>
>>> Only if the surplus energy is available to supply the necessary current.
>>
>> Not needed.
>>
> 
> Why not?

Think about it. Inverters can be locked in frequency to any timing 
source. No matter what's the tendency of the network, the inverters, 
which are millions, can keep the frequency they supply at, undisturbed. 
Locked in frequency and phase to a given time source. Infinite inertia. 
With whatever power they have at the moment, which in Spain was 70% of 
the total when the blackout happened.

Rotating masses can be pushed to change frequency by the load. Inverters 
can't, if so programmed.

-- 
Cheers, Carlos.