Iberian Blackout’s Renewable Energy Dependency Warning
The recent Iberian blackout starkly warns against an ideologically-driven dependence on renewable energy. It offers an even greater caution for a climate change strategy that rests on such a dependency. While much is still unknown about the blackout’s origins, it is clear renewable energy is more expensive, more complex, and less reliable than is popularly promulgated.
Around 12:30pm on April 28, the countries of Spain and Portugal, along with a small portion of southern France lost all power. Almost 80% of the Iberian peninsula’s grid came from renewables, with 60% coming from solar. It took just five seconds to lose 15 gigawatts of electrical capacity. Between the five hours when power started to return, and into the next day when all power was essentially restored, people were stranded, shut down, locked out.
The reasons why this so suddenly and completely happened are still unknown and under investigation. What is known is that dependence on renewable energy is far more complex and expensive than commonly proclaimed.
It has long been known that dependence on renewable energy is risky. A paper on the blackout by Rice University’s Baker Institute explains that conventional power plants, usually hydroelectric, thermal, or nuclear, have a self-correcting capability (synchronous generators) that aid in stabilizing “grid frequency and voltage during sudden fluctuations or imbalances.”
Renewable don’t have this self-correcting ability: “By contrast, solar and wind installations typically operate with grid-following inverters —devices that synchronize with the grid’s existing frequency and voltage rather than establishing those parameters themselves. These systems depend on a stable grid to function correctly and cannot autonomously support grid stability during disturbances.”
That lack of “autonomy” means renewables need conventional systems to back them up and smooth out their disturbances. When disturbance hit the Iberian peninsula’s renewable-heavy system, it “lacked the inertia needed to absorb the initial generation-loss shocks. Automatic protection mechanisms were triggered, including the disconnection of transmission lines and generating units, ultimately resulting in cascading power outages.”
To offset renewable systems’ risks grid-forming inverters are needed. Another expense for renewable systems. Yet even these are present challenges because they have not been successfully used in large systems, let alone the multiple ones that would be needed to work in coordination (to avoid “conflicting frequency signals”) for an extensive renewable system.
There is also the need for battery systems to manage (injecting and absorbing) energy to smooth energy supply during critical moments. But these too need to address the inverter problem just mentioned. And there are also issues of “flexibility and capacity of grid interconnections.” This will require more infrastructure investment.
As the Baker Institute paper concludes: “as the events of April 28 illustrate, renewables also introduce new system-level requirements—such as frequency control and inertia, typically provided by conventional generators — that, if not adequately addressed, can undermine grid stability and potentially lead to blackouts.”
The Iberian Peninsula blackout demonstrated on a comparatively small scale, renewable electricity systems’ severe limitations. They are still undependable. To make them dependable, you need conventional systems to serve as a backup. Overcoming renewable systems’ dependability issues is a complex undertaking, requiring solutions that have not been successfully deployed on a large scale. Addressing renewable systems’ dependability issues will also be costly.
In addition to exposing the validity and vulnerability of individual renewable systems, it does so even more for a climate change strategy based on using such systems and simultaneously replacing non-renewable systems.
Of course, the climate change zealots do not want to discuss this, because such a replacement is their strategy. And the establishment media, which recycles the zealots’ climate change ideology, equally ignore it. In fact, perhaps the only blackout greater than the recent Iberian Peninsula one, is the establishment media’s of the April 28th blackout’s implications.
All of this comes in the context of the current energy usage baseline. Even with current technology, energy usage continues to grow in the developed world. The emerging technology tidal wave that AI represents will cause this to surge even more.
The developing world promises a surge in demand for electricity, even under the current technology baseline, as they rush to catch up with the developed world—and with their more rapidly growing populations. Of course, the same AI tidal wave will eventually engulf these nations as well, spiking energy demand even more.
If rapidly shifting to a currently undependable, expensive, and complex renewable system is unfeasible, how much more so is a climate change strategy based on it?
Already those embracing such a move have expended enormous resources—and foregone other uses for those resources—simply to get themselves to their current level of inadequacy. We know that far more resources will be needed, far more opportunities forgone, and far more problems will need to be solved. This applies all the more to a comprehensive strategy based on eliminating climate change with renewables.
A far better and more realistic strategy is one aimed at mitigating climate change’s effects. As Steve Koonin, former Undersecretary for Science in the Department of Energy in the Obama administration, writes in Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters: “barriers, combined with the uncertainty and vague nature of future climate impacts, mean that the most likely societal response will be to adapt to a changing climate, and that adaptation will very likely be effective.”
J.T. Young is the author of the recent book, Unprecedented Assault: How Big Government Unleashed America’s Socialist Left from RealClear Publishing and has over three decades’ experience working in Congress, the Department of Treasury, the Office of Management, and Budget, and representing a Fortune 20 company.
