After the unprecedented power failure on Monday, Spain and Portugal largely restored power – the worst in recent European history.
The Fallout has put the region's trust in renewable energies under Fire. Santiago Abascal, leader of the right-wing extremist Vox party in Spain, even called on the country to give up “climate fanaticism” in response to the power failure. However, experts emphasized TNW that the problem is not a green energy, but the outdated grid infrastructure and technology that it depends on.
“What happened this week should be a strong memory of the dangers that does not invest in a more resilient energy network,” Taco Engelaar in Amsterdam, Managing Director of Energy Infrastructure Neara, told TNW.
Last year Portugal and Spain put together, each 87.5% And 56% From their stream of renewable energies such as wind, solar and hydropower. The two countries both have their grids completely with green energy for a short time. However, since the Iberian nations have progressed in the race for renewable energies, they may have been victims of their own momentum.
Grow out of the grid?
While wind and solar create a clean, cheap electricity, they do not produce any power in a steady current – they rise and fall with the weather. However, the grids in Europe were largely built for more predictable energy sources such as coal, gas or nuclear power plants.
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Without this stabilizing force or the addition of alternatives such as battery storage systems, the network becomes more susceptible to painting or offering electricity. As we have seen this week, this can overwhelm the system in rare cases and to crash it, take houses, companies and critical services offline.
“The first thing to clarify is that this is not a net zero problem,” Chris Glover, supply company and energy manager at British Engineering Consultancy Buro Happold, to TNW. “The problem here is to manage supply and demand.”
The growing mismatch between the design of the network and its new energy mix is ​​now taking place. But that's no reason to beat the brakes of the energy transition, said Glover. Instead, he suggests that you double the energy storage, grid compensation technology and the infrastructure upgrades to support a more resilient system.
“Hunger of flexibility”
Spain and Portugal are not the first to face this challenge. A large power failure in 2016 left 850,000 south Australians without power. Critics, including Australia's Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, pointed To the ambitious shift of the state to renewable energies. Instead of withdrawing, South Australia leaned forward and invested in large batteries, so -called synchronous compressors (which imitate the stabilizing “inertia” of turbines with fossil fuels) and even more wind and solar. Last year, the state exhibited 75% of its electricity from renewable energies and has no further power failure since then. The IEA has described its progress as “remarkable”.
Alex Schoch, head of flexibility at Octopus Energy, believes that Spain could make a keyword from the success of South Australia. While the latter power failure was caused by a storm, “the grids of both countries had the right tools to recover from sudden shocks,” he continued LinkedIn. He Spain's Power System One “starved from flexibility”.
Before the blackout, the Spanish network ran to almost 80% wind and solar – an enormous performance for clean energy, but also a challenge for stability. Very little electricity came from steady sources such as gas or nuclear, which help to keep the network into harmony. In addition, Spain has almost no large-scale battery memory that gets in when the sun or wind falls unexpectedly.
Expert believe These factors played a key role in the comprehensive power failure on Monday. The fault was attributed to two separate network towers in the southwest of the country – the heart of Spanish solar energy production. With so few backup stream, the system may have difficulty reacting to these disorders quickly enough, which has led to cascading failures in the entire network.
If part of the Spanish power supply has suddenly decreased, the network would have had to be reduced quickly to keep everything in balance – for example by using batteries or other safety systems to smooth things, Glover explained. “No such steps seem to have been taken,” he said.
When the power generation drops, countries can often import electricity from neighbors. However, Spain and Portugal are largely cut off, and only a weak connection with France through the Pyrenees mountains. This makes them more vulnerable in the event of failures.
Although the exact cause of the power failure is still being examined, the disorder in which the Spanish network lost 15 GW of energy in just five seconds – serious doubts about the region's energy infrastructure. It could also serve as a strong warning for other countries.
Electrification puzzle
If more and more electric vehicles connect, heat pumps replace gas boilers and the factories switch to electrical power, the aging networks in Europe are increasingly feeling the burden. Between 2020 and 2050, the electricity requirement will increase to 80%. A large part of the infrastructure that carries this load was built decades ago. In order to achieve climate goals, the annual global network investment must double to $ 600 billion according to the International Energy Agency (IEA) by 2030 to 2030.
Engelaar believes that new technologies could help. “DIgital modeling can give [energy] Supply company granular insights into every centimeter of your networks and enable you to test your assets against potential threats and to determine weaknesses before it is too late. “Another software solution is the query that automatically adjusts the power consumption in real time.
Jacob Bro, partner of the Climate Tech VC company 2150, also emphasizes the power of decentralized energy solutions. This includes panels on the roof, house batteries and local wind farms, which create electricity closer to the area.
“We have to use flexible capacities closer to our houses and offices, on the edge of the network, and we need more intelligent networks and greater transparency,” he told TNW.
Overall, a complex image of fast progress is created that exceeds the preparation. The power failure was not a failure of renewable energies – it was a failure to keep up with them. If Europe wants a cleaner future, its networks have to catch up quickly.
“The investment in the Net-Null infrastructure is a central part of the solution, not the problem,” said Glover.
