Link: https://www.fpcs.es/en/blackout/
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Blackout
del Pino Calvo Sotelo
May 9, 2025
The incompetence of the Spanish government was laid bare a few days ago when the country suffered a total blackout for several hours and was plunged into unprecedented chaos. Fortunately, it happened on a mild spring day and not in the middle of a snowfall or heatwave.
The population was not informed, and no one knew what was happening or how long it would last. The lights went out; elevators stopped, trapping their occupants; trains and subways came to a halt in the middle of the countryside or in dark tunnels; gas stations stopped pumping; communications went silent, and electronic payment methods became useless junk. Worst of all, patients whose lives depend on mechanical ventilators endured hours of anguish. People died.
The reasons for the blackout
What happened? To understand this, we must stop focusing on the primary incident that led to the destabilization of the system (a breakdown, a disconnection…), which is irrelevant. In fact, a robust electrical system should have been able to cope with limited damage in
Fernando
terms of time and scope: electrical grid suffers hundreds of breakdowns every year that go unnoticed by consumers.
The problem is that our electricity system has lost its robustness and has become unstable and fragile due to the excess of renewable energies. This is the root cause of the blackout, as the foreign press quickly identified[1] (throughout this article, renewables will mean wind and solar power, excluding hydroelectric power, unless otherwise specified).
Therefore, responsibility for the blackout lies with the incompetence and green fanaticism of PM Sanchez and his former minister Ribera, and, by extension, with the poster-child energy policy pursued since 2004 by former PMs Zapatero and Rajoy. Today, 52% of the installed electrical capacity in our country is wind and solar energy, a percentage that continues to grow due to ideology and electoralism, rather than the national interest and the common good. This means that our electrical system relies on intermittent and unreliable sources, which has made it fragile.
A fragile system
Fragility is a tricky concept to grasp. If you drive without a seatbelt, you increase your fragility, but you may not notice it for a long time. However, if one day you have an accident, not wearing a seatbelt can cause irreparable damage instead of just a minor scare.
Similarly, renewables may have a large share of the generation mix and nothing may happen for a long time, but if a serious incident
occurs, the probability of a total blackout increases exponentially. The president of Spain’s National Grid (REE), who neither resigns nor apologizes, seems unable to grasp such a simple concept, but of course she is not in her job because of her resume, but because of her political affiliation to the Socialist Party.
Why does renewable energy increase the fragility of the system? Explaining this in three paragraphs is not easy, as Physics is not intuitive (which contributes to public confusion, much to Sanchez’s delight).
The first thing to bear in mind is that electricity production and consumption must always be in balance. This balance keeps the heartbeat of the electrical system (the frequency) constant. But when production and demand become unbalanced, the frequency ceases to be constant: if more electricity is generated than is consumed, the frequency rises; if generation falls below demand, the frequency drops. The problem is that, unlike the heart (which can beat at 60 beats per minute and also at 120), the electrical system only tolerates small frequency oscillations within a very narrow range. When the oscillations exceed these thresholds, neither the electricity production elements (a power plant) nor the consumption elements (your refrigerator) can function properly.
Thus, if the system becomes destabilized, a kind of arrhythmia occurs that can lead to cardiac arrest (the blackout), which is the cascading disconnection of generation sources for self-protection. To prevent this, every good power grid has an effective dual self-regulating system that restores normal frequency (the heart rate).
First, energy sources with mechanical inertia (with rotating turbines) 3
provide stability to the system in the event of minor incidents. It is the same inertia that keeps a car or a boat moving even after the engine has stopped. Inertia resists rapid changes in frequency and gives the operator time to respond to contingencies and has been used to stabilize electrical grids since 1882.
Second, if the energy source is controllable and adjustable, the operator can increase or decrease electricity production at will, just as we turn up or down the volume on a radio. Energy sources that allow this are called “regulating” sources and include hydropower, combined cycle, coal, and gas.
The renewable energy fiasco
Well, renewables are neither regulating nor do they have usable inertia. Therefore, the greater the weight of these energies in electricity generation, the fewer tools the system has to correct imbalances and the greater the likelihood of a general blackout.
But there is more. Renewable energies are intermittent, as they depend on the wind blowing or the sun shining. They may produce electricity when demand is low or stop producing it when demand is high. At peak winter demand, PV produces very little, as there are few hours of sunshine, while at peak summer demand (due to air conditioning), wind power produces less, as there is less wind.
In fact, wind and solar production varies from minute to minute due to gusts of wind or passing clouds, which leads us to wonder what sense it makes to use volatile sources to meet a stable electricity
demand.
The intermittency of wind and solar power means that they have low performance with a capacity factor of 22% and 16%, respectively, according to REE data. In other words, a photovoltaic plant will produce only one-sixth of what it could produce if it operated every day of the year (24/7). In comparison, the capacity factor for nuclear energy is 82%.
The problem of the poor performance of renewables has been exacerbated as installed capacity has grown, since the first wind and photovoltaic plants occupied the locations with the highest wind and solar radiation, while the others have occupied areas with less suitable technical conditions. The overall efficiency can only get worse if new plants continue to be added.
Furthermore, the contrast between the stability of electricity demand and the instability and intermittency of renewable energy production means that traditional generation sources must always be available as a backup for when the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine (i.e., at night). For this reason, the expression “100% renewable” is misleading. Traditional sources are always behind the scenes.
Renewables increase electricity bills in two ways. On the one hand, they require doubling or oversizing the installed capacity. On the other hand, requiring traditional sources to start and stop continuously at the whim of the sun and wind instead of operating at their normal operating regime increases their maintenance costs and shortens their lifespan, just as a car consumes much more fuel in the city—starting and stopping constantly—than when driving on the highway at a constant speed. In short, the entire system must be forced to
artificially integrate inefficient sources that are there for fundamentally political reasons.
Finally, the environmental damage caused by renewables is obvious: in terms of the land they occupy, wind and photovoltaic plants require 28 and 18 hectares, respectively, per MW installed, compared to 5 hectares/MW for a nuclear or gas power plant. In addition, wind farms cause direct damage to wildlife and photovoltaic plants produce a heat island effect by increasing the local temperature, not to mention the aesthetic damage caused by seeing the countryside ravaged by these ugly scarecrows.
A step backwards
In short, renewable energies have been less of a scientific advance than the result of a political fad showered with generous subsidies at the expense of consumers and taxpayers, initially for plant construction (which continues today for self-consumption) and later via tariffs and dispatch priority. Had technical reasons prevailed, renewable energies could have been a complement, but never the basis of our electricity system.
Wind and photovoltaic technologies (and the myth of the electric car that accompanies the same ideology[2]) do not bring us closer to the future, but take us back to a technologically outdated past. Indeed, forcing a country to be lit by sunlight and windmills is like going back to lighting houses with candlesticks or returning to steam engines on trains or sailboats for shipping. These are energies that, in general, have characteristics that make them inferior to traditional sources of generation.
It is therefore not surprising that, as a Spanish analyst reminded us[3], two recent studies by US institutions (referring to the US market) rate wind and photovoltaic energy as the worst possible sources of electricity generation[4].
Technological progress has always been a response to humanity’s attempt to control its destiny without depending on the tyranny of nature, the elements, the seasons, the time of day, or geography. To consider “progress” a return to dependence on such elements says little about the collective IQ of 21st-century societies.
The experts saw it coming
The government has feigned surprise at a blackout it describes as unpredictable. However, there were plenty of voices that saw it coming.
For example, a report sent to the European Commission in 2020 clearly warned of the dangers of excessive penetration of renewable energies: “Problems related to inertia are expected to cause system instability, including load shedding or even blackouts.”[5]
This report is no exception, as experts around the world have been warning about this for some time[6]. In 2018, the last technical president of REE warned of the blackouts that would result from the obsession with renewables[7].
Along the same lines, an essay sent to me in 2021 by its author, M.L., an industrial engineer and long-time reader of this blog, warned the
following: “A generation system with more than 30% or 40% of nonregulating sources and no inertia (such as wind and photovoltaic) can result in an electric zero: leaving everyone in the dark. Every time we exceed that 30% or 40% of production, we are buying lottery tickets for a big problem. Perhaps it will not be until we win one of those big prizes that voices of alarm with technical weight will begin to be raised.”
She ended by warning (in 2021): “We must remember that France has its networks automatically calibrated so that in the event of a major accident on the Peninsula, they would cut ties with us to prevent a chain reaction, so that we don’t knock out their system (…). If we have a big problem, our neighbors will turn us into an island, increasing the severity of the problem and its management, before they too are affected.”[8]
This blackout also had similar international precedents, albeit of lesser scope and duration. All of them had as a common factor a disproportionate share of renewable energy at the time of the primary incident, which prevented the grid from stabilizing. This was the case in Chile just three months ago, with renewables accounting for 80% of the generation mix[9] (a bit more to what we had in Spain on April 28th[10]), or in southern Australia in 2016, when wind power alone provided 50% of generation[11].
Other observations
In addition to the fiasco of renewable energies and government incompetence, the blackout has highlighted the worrying state of decline in which our country finds itself.
The lack of outrage on the part of public opinion is astonishing, as it seems to hide a sheep-like behavior behind a mask of fatalistic sense of humor. This attitude is incomprehensible given the extreme gravity of the blackout and the psychopathic immorality of Sanchez, who remained unmoved and joking at the National Security Council meeting.
The timid reaction of the non-opposition is also perplexing, showing once again that strange weakness of untraceable origin, but which is beginning to take on pathological overtones. The consequences are beginning to be dire, since the main reason for Sanchez’s continued hold on power is the absence of opposition: the most destructive Spanish government in the last 80 years is faced with the most velvetlike “flower power” opposition in history.
I understand that it is difficult for the main opposition party to criticize the climate change ideology ultimately responsible for the blackout, since it shares this same ideology. However, there is something else going on with the opposition Popular Party beyond its role as the Spanish Socialist Party’s white label. Using a soccer metaphor, its current leader is missing shots on an unguarded goal: it’s not that he misses, it’s that he refuses to shoot. And if he’s not up to the task now, why would he be once in government?
Finally, the blackout has brought to light the institutional colonization of our political class, which has reached a parasitic paroxysm with Sanchez. As 20th century philosopher Julián Marias used to say, it seems that the State built by the 1978 Constitution was created for the political parties, and not the parties for the State. For politicians, public institutions and companies (as well as a few private ones, such as REE, Indra, and Telefonica) are a spa for cronies.
We need a reliable electricity system, not a green one
The government has already announced that it will continue with its green fanaticism, which guarantees that blackouts will be repeated in the future in an unpredictable manner. Is it so difficult to understand that the electricity system does not have to be green, but reliable? The whole of society relies on electricity, as we saw the other day, but green and reliable are to a large extent incompatible, because electricity does not obey the laws of Parliament, but the laws of Physics.
The only way to avoid “a life lived between intermittent blackouts”[12] is to halt the construction of new wind and solar plants and ensure a solid base of synchronous, inertial, and regulating generation sources at all times.
It is also crucial to maintain existing nuclear power plants and even build more, as they provide enormous stability to the system. Remember that in France almost 70% of the electricity produced comes from nuclear energy.
Of course, Sanchez (who is not exactly AAA) has said that the blackout will not happen again. But if he cannot explain what happened, how can he guarantee that it will not happen again? The next step will be periodic mandatory consumption restrictions, i.e., energy rationing cards. As the Davos boys put it, “you’ll own nothing, and you’ll be happy.”
A final thought. Don’t forget that the cash the EU wants to take away from us saved you when credit cards didn’t work, and that it was the
old and reliable combustion engines of generators, fueled by the extraordinary fossil fuels to which humanity owes so much, that allowed hospitals to save lives.
[1] Net zero blamed for Europe’s biggest power cut
[2] https://www.fpcs.es/en/the-myth-of-electric-vehicles/
[3] Energy security, affordability and environmental sustainability
[4] Apr-25-ARC-Scorecard.pdf
[5] Penetration of renewables and reduction of synchronous inertia in the European power system – Publications Office of the EU
[6] HEADLINE: “Over-Reliance On Renewables Behind Catastrophic Blackouts in Spain”, By MICHAEL
SHELLENBERGER
[7] “A 100% renewable system is unviable, extremely expensive and would lead to blackouts” – Libre Mercado
[8] Quoted with permission from the author, who requested anonymity.
[9] Chile Blackout, February 25: Overview – BNamericas
[10] Real-time electricity demand, generation structure, and CO2 emissions
[11] Black System Event Compliance Report – Investigation into the Pre-event System
Restoration and Market Suspension aspects surrounding the 28 September 2016 event.pdf
[12] https://www.fpcs.es/en/the-truth-about-the-2030-agenda/
