Because there wasn’t enough mass in the system due to excess solar, during April, a wobble in solar production quickly escalated triggering a massive blackout throughout both Spain and Portugal. This lack of inertia due to few more traditional energy sources had been identified previously and the Portuguese national grid had plans to install artificial ballasts of sorts to create that inertia (plans which were delayed multiple times iirc)
Correct me if i’m wrong, it’s been a while since i watched this grid engineer’s explanation, but my understanding was it has nothing to do with PV itself, it began with IBR misconfiguration which under “unusual circumstances” cascaded due to further grid mismanagement.
yes the misconfigured IBR were at a PV plant, but thats where i think the media runs with the story without really communicating clearly to the public. IBR misconfiguration, even at a PV plant, is not a technical failure of PV technology itself, at all. IBR misconfiguration also effects turbine outputs with HVDC feed for example.
where i think the story gets further jumbled is alot of the “unusual circumstances” involved issues which were traceable (under current implementations) to a renewables dominant grid state. so the news story seems to become “PV/renewables trouble”, whereas afaict in reality it’s more like “renewables dominating to unexpected levels + misconfiguration/mismanagement”.
imo the distinction is important, it’s not a PROBLEM with PV, it’s a problem with previous assumptions about renewables capacity & grid state no longer being true, and the ways bureaucracies & their infrastructure decisions can lag behind that change.
what happened with them over solar? i assume you mean photovoltaics? because Spain is fucking winning with concentrated solar thermal
Because there wasn’t enough mass in the system due to excess solar, during April, a wobble in solar production quickly escalated triggering a massive blackout throughout both Spain and Portugal. This lack of inertia due to few more traditional energy sources had been identified previously and the Portuguese national grid had plans to install artificial ballasts of sorts to create that inertia (plans which were delayed multiple times iirc)
Ah gotcha, yeh afaik that was definitely a grid failure rather than renewables failure in any form.
It was a grid failure triggered by a poor management of one of the problems of solar, which is NOT being produced with turbines
Correct me if i’m wrong, it’s been a while since i watched this grid engineer’s explanation, but my understanding was it has nothing to do with PV itself, it began with IBR misconfiguration which under “unusual circumstances” cascaded due to further grid mismanagement.
yes the misconfigured IBR were at a PV plant, but thats where i think the media runs with the story without really communicating clearly to the public. IBR misconfiguration, even at a PV plant, is not a technical failure of PV technology itself, at all. IBR misconfiguration also effects turbine outputs with HVDC feed for example.
where i think the story gets further jumbled is alot of the “unusual circumstances” involved issues which were traceable (under current implementations) to a renewables dominant grid state. so the news story seems to become “PV/renewables trouble”, whereas afaict in reality it’s more like “renewables dominating to unexpected levels + misconfiguration/mismanagement”.
imo the distinction is important, it’s not a PROBLEM with PV, it’s a problem with previous assumptions about renewables capacity & grid state no longer being true, and the ways bureaucracies & their infrastructure decisions can lag behind that change.