Interesting...
And worrisome it if happens here...
Since the Iberian Peninsula lost power in a massive blackout, grid operators are in the process of trying to restore power to millions of customers and businesses. As you might imagine, the process—termed a "black start"—is quite a bit more challenging than flicking on a switch. However, the challenge is made considerably more difficult because nearly everything about the system—from the management hardware that remotely controls the performance of the grid to the power plants themselves—needs power to operate.
Restarting the grid
You might think that a power plant could easily start generating power, but in reality, only a limited number of facilities have everything they need to handle a black start. That's because it takes power to make power. Facilities that boil water have lots of powered pumps and valves, coal plants need to pulverize the fuel and move it to where it's burned, etc. In most cases, black-start-rated plants have a diesel generator present to supply enough power to get the plant operating. These tend to be smaller plants, since they require proportionally smaller diesel generators.
Full article, HERE from Arstechnica.com
Other than nuke plants, I'm not sure how many black start rated plants the US has, nor how much ability to shed enough load to actually perform a black start.
Most of the nuke plants have a capability to 'dump' their load without scramming the plant. And from conversations with folks, they do have generators to maintain 'local' power to the control room and plant.
Of course, the elephant in the room is 'what' caused this blackout in Spain and the entire Iberian peninsula. I have not heard anything, and I doubt we will, as this is obviously a security issue, in addition to other problems...
What happens if it happens here?
I know Texas is 'not' on the national grid, even though there is a lot of pressure on Texas to 'voluntarily' participate... voluntarily...yeah, right...
I'm betting there are lot of folks in the US power industry looking at their hole cards, emergency procedures are being reviewed, and a lot of discussions are ongoing right now.
In point of fact, our infrastructure security is weak, and that has been proven a couple of times over. I can't help but wonder if the administration is also looking into this and what the response(s) will be.
I worked for CALISO (California ISO) a number of years ago (worst job I ever had) and PGT a few years before that (You think I would have learned). A lot of the major utilities are run by 6-year olds with mental issues. The people that work at ISO's all get rounded up and sent to jail about every 5 to 6 years (I'm NOT kidding).
But for a number of months I had the 'pleasure' of doing the 7am grid briefing for the state of California, 5 days a week. (Oh, btw, all of the guards at the ISOs are armed with machine guns and are bonifide private military groups).
Most grid sections can shed loads easily and will immediately trip off line if demand suddenly spikes - this is automatic. It's called 'Islanding'. That's how it works in the USA and how it's supposed to work everywhere else. I suspect that's how it works in Spain as well. All generating plants have the ability to be brought up from a cold start (unless some asshole politicians who don't know anything about power have gotten involved and passed laws - like the rumored one about Texas pipelines being run by solar power rather than the gas IN the pipeline).
HOWEVER...
'Sustainable' and 'Renewable' energy 'plants', i.e. wind and solar, do NOT have that capability at all. Solar, if it's just panels isn't usually an issue, but wind turbines need to be spun up to speed and in general use more power than they generate. ALL of these renewable energy plants across the country were put online before Spain destroyed many (or maybe all?) of it's nuke plants. So there was power back then to spin this all up.
But once they shut those down, is was only a matter of time until 'cloudy windless day' came along and suddenly they no longer had enough power for the grid and 'bam' breakers start tripping everywhere.
Breakers that must be reset BY HAND, not remotely - they're not powered.
Breakers that can NOT be reset unless there's power on BOTH sides.
I like that whole 'atmospheric waves' BS they came up with. Like, you have to be really stupid to believe that one! But then, you have to be really stupid to believe in Green Energy. Spain is fucked. And will remain fucked for MANY years to come. They're going to be like India, where you only have power for so many hours of the day, and that's it.
And it's worse than that. We no longer have the capability to make critical infrastructure components in a timely manner, if we can even make them at all.