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From: Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org>
Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design
Subject: Re: Grand Apagon - Electricity (not) in Spain
Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2025 17:05:12 +1000
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On 30/04/2025 1:59 am, john larkin wrote:
> On Tue, 29 Apr 2025 11:27:24 -0400, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:
> 
>> On 4/29/2025 10:57 AM, john larkin wrote:
>>> On Tue, 29 Apr 2025 13:24:46 +0100, Martin Brown
>>> <'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Spain suffered a very spectacular near total loss of its national grid
>>>> yesterday taking parts of France and all of Portugal down with it. This
>>>> is an unprecedented failure of a supergrid system by cascade failure.
>>>>
>>>> It seems likely they had got the effect of widespread solar PV has on
>>>> load shedding wrong (much like happened in the UK) and so it failed
>>>> completely. Two events a second apart delivered the coup de grace.
>>>>
>>>> They seem to have ruled out cyber attack and the electricity company is
>>>> now trying to blame "the wrong sort of temperature variations"...
>>>>
>>>> Their 400kV lines seemed to be taking the blame with the national power
>>>> company blaming exceedingly rare atmospheric phenomena due to "large"
>>>> temperature differences in central Spain. They claimed that the magical
>>>> sounding "induced atmospheric vibration" was to blame.
>>>>
>>>> https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/apr/28/spain-and-portugal-power-outage-cause-cyber-attack-electricity
>>>>
>>>> Another marginally plausible explanation given was that different
>>>> impedances on cables at radically different temperatures on different
>>>> paths messed up the phasing (but the numbers don't look right to me).
>>>>
>>>> Anyone have any idea what actually happened?
>>>>
>>>> The only one I am aware of that can take 400kV supergrid down is cables
>>>> clashing together in older pylon configs where they are exactly one
>>>> above the other and resonance effects allowing large amplitude standing
>>>> waves to build up in the spans can occur in 70+mph winds.
>>>>
>>>> Most UK ones now have a longer central pylon spur so that the lines are
>>>> more widely separated and up-down motion cannot allow them to touch.
>>>>
>>>> They do sing quite impressively in a gale though. The little weights at
>>>> each end are apparently there to prevent such standing wave resonances
>>>> damaging the pylon structure. Without them some pylons did fall down in
>>>> the distant past during the most extreme of winter storms.
>>>
>>> Spain is a leader in renewable power, shutting down nukes and fossil
>>> fuel power plants. One theory is that local lack of sun and wind can
>>> be overcome by huge long-distance inter-state and inter-country
>>> networks. "The wind is always blowing somewhere."
>>>
>>> Politicians are not usually good electrical engineers.
>>>
>>> Go green, go dark. Germany is de-industrializing too.
>>>
>>
>> In 2005 there was 5 GW of photovoltaic solar capacity installed
>> worldwide, 5 GW is now what's being installed worldwide this year every
>> 72 hours.
> 
> And most of the world goes dark every night.

About 40% of new roof-top solar power installations in Australia include 
a Tesla Powerwall (or something similar) to keep the lights on at night.

It adds appreciably to the capital cost, but pays for itself in a couple 
of years. Australia's feed-in tariffs aren't generous.

Africa and India use this approach because nation-wide grids are 
expensive. Only the moderately rich can afford it. but that's still 
quite a few people.

>> The only place significant new nuclear is being built is in China, I
>> believe they built about 40 GW in the past decade. The US built way less
>> than that I see why it's even less popular here, venture capital likes
>> making money.
> 
> Making money implies efficiency. And vice versa.

Far from it. Ponzi schemes make some people a great deal of money.

Spending money on advertising is totally inefficient,but can let you 
make a great deal on money. Look at the fossil carbon extraction 
industry, which spends millions on the lying climate change denial 
propaganda that you re-cycle here.

-- 
Bill Sloman, Sydney