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.
I currently work in the transmission industry, and its gotten a whole lot worse since I started in 2007. Back then, the utility I worked for had a written out blackstart plan. It started with getting the hydro station up and running, which can be started up cold turkey. From there, they sent power upriver to the old, small coal plant which they made sure was capable to be started by the hydro plant. Once that plant got started up, they could then get another, then another ,then another. And they practiced this every year.
But the cracks were already showing even then. A lot of companies got in on the Enron model and were hit hard when Eron folded. And thanks to the Eron model, a lot of power utilities lobbied hard to get their states to go "free market" on the generation side of the business. See, up until the late 90's, most states were regulated, meaning they set a rate of return for the power utilities, and regulated the prices. If a utility wanted to raise the price of power, they had to lobby the PUCs in that state. But when the Enron scheme hit the market, "free" generation was make 3 times the money that the state PUCs had set. So the utilities lobbied to get rid of regulation and let "free market" generation in.
Then Enron folded.
And Marcellus natural gas hit the market.
And the government decided to pick winners and losers by promoting wind and solar with giant subsidies.
With generation being on the free market and with natural gas cutting the action prices drastically along with solar and wind thanks to Uncle Same, your traditional generators could not compete - coal, for instance, has a minimum limit they can sell their power at and still be profitable. All these conditions killed coal's ability to compete.
And thus you started seeing coal powered plants shuttering all around the nation. IT also hit nuclear hard as well. And older hydro plants, pumped storage plants, etc.
The problem is, coal, nuclear, hydro - these plants are all foundational sources of power to the grid. They provide "base load" and they are extremely reliable and steady. Especially nuclear and coal. Oil can as well, but most oil fired generators were scrapped a long time ago because of oil prices. Nuclear runs 24-7, has all the fuel it needs in the reactor, and doesn't care what the weather is outside, if there's a drought, if there is a long period of cloudy skies, etc. Coal fired plants stockpile the coal on site - by law they were required to keep a month's supply of coal on hand. And coal doesn't care what the weather is outside, either.
But coal & nuclear have been pushed out in favor of "peaking" load plants - the plants designed to quickly respond to increased demands beyond the base load. These plants are nimble and can come online at a moment's notice (unlike coal & nuclear) and can be cleared just as fast. The problem? These kind of plants cannot carry base load. Nor are they easy to start from a black start condition. Natural gas has to have pumps running in the natural gas lines - the same lines that are also feeding residential and commercial loads. And Solar and Wind do not store energy and are not rigorous enough nor reliable enough to be able to handle base load or bringing other plants back online after a black start condition.
Yet thanks to our world-wide governments, most countries have dumped the very generation sources that CAN black start. And even worse, most companies quit practicing black start.
My own company, for instance, was bought in in the 2010's by a larger company. That company had spun all its generation off into a separate company that was losing money hand over fist. The first thing they did was shutter every single coal fired plant that was in our footprint EXCEPT the ones in WV because WV is still a regulated state and thus those were the only generation plants actually turning a profit. They even sold off the hydro plant.
I've asked my boss is there even a black start plan still in place. He says yes, but he doesn't know what it is. No one I know does. So supposedly there is one, but it's not being practiced, nor has it been widely disseminated across the company to all employees.
What happened on the Iberian Peninsula is a warning. And it can most definitely - and will likely happen here.
The American power grid is extremely vulnerable. And there is little we can do really to protect it. Lines stretching across huge swaths of empty territory, critical transformers that cannot be made in the US any more and that have a minimum lead time of 5 years to replace.
Every person who works on the transmission side of the business knows exactly where the pinch points are too, and now adays with cellular and satellite technology? It would incredibly easy to take down critical infrastructure that would take months and years to rebuild.
You actually don't need a cyber attack at all. In fact, a cyber attack would be the easiest to come back from. Despite cyber attacks being the main focus of security.
Nope, the most devastating possibility to black out the country would be attacking the physical infrastructure at certain points in the country, something that a small terrorists cell or militant gang cell, could figure out and coordinate scarily easily.
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.
The lack of security and disaster planning for restoring the grid is a problem that everyone knew about and no one did anything about. We gave the technology production to China, and then complain when they spy on us using back doors they've built into our tech. We need to restore the US's ability to produce the tech we use, we need to remove the Chinese manufactured tech from service, and we need to stop fooling ourselves about who and what China really is. They have a long plan that does not involve us except as a vassal state.
The ability to cold start a power plant is logically a foundational requirement. Why would you build a generation plant that is incapable of starting on its own? Maybe because you're a politician who's more interested in getting a plant built than in getting it built right? You betcha.
Econolog and Robert Bryce have articles up about the Iberian blackout on Substack. Bottom line, the grid fell because of frequency instability - it got too far off rated frequency and the safeties tripped. Not enough inertia on the grid. Those big turbines on hydro and steam plants resist frequency changes. Solar and wind do not; they produce DC and then use inverters to supply AC to the grid. No inertia.
the utility I work for got rid of a lot of its generation but one big plant was kept online for that very reason - though they converted it to be a synchronous condenser, a device that is there purely to provide the needed inertia on the system. It doesn't provide power at all; it provides that inertia to keep the grid stable.
Response(s)? Committees will be formed, chaired by bean counters. Weaknesses in the grid will be enumerated and some listed. The cost of the fixes will be weighed against the possible impact on paying out annual stock dividends, bonuses, new fitness gyms for employees, the budgets for HR/PR/Lobbying/Green-Climate Change Initiatives/Maintenance on wind & solar farms. Difficult choices will be made. A 5 and 10-year plan will be developed by mid 2026. Rates will be hiked. The can will have been successfully kicked down the road.
I remember Hurricane Ivan in 2004. No power for 10+ weeks. No landline, cable TV or internet for 4 months. It wasn't pretty. But this wasn't New Orleans. We only had one incidence of looting. An illegal alien was caught by motorists while siphoning gasoline from a generator that was powering the traffic lights at a busy intersection. He was subdued and sat on until the Sheriff's deputies carted him off. My gut tells me we are less prepared now than in 2004. Hic sunt dracones.
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.
I currently work in the transmission industry, and its gotten a whole lot worse since I started in 2007. Back then, the utility I worked for had a written out blackstart plan. It started with getting the hydro station up and running, which can be started up cold turkey. From there, they sent power upriver to the old, small coal plant which they made sure was capable to be started by the hydro plant. Once that plant got started up, they could then get another, then another ,then another. And they practiced this every year.
But the cracks were already showing even then. A lot of companies got in on the Enron model and were hit hard when Eron folded. And thanks to the Eron model, a lot of power utilities lobbied hard to get their states to go "free market" on the generation side of the business. See, up until the late 90's, most states were regulated, meaning they set a rate of return for the power utilities, and regulated the prices. If a utility wanted to raise the price of power, they had to lobby the PUCs in that state. But when the Enron scheme hit the market, "free" generation was make 3 times the money that the state PUCs had set. So the utilities lobbied to get rid of regulation and let "free market" generation in.
Then Enron folded.
And Marcellus natural gas hit the market.
And the government decided to pick winners and losers by promoting wind and solar with giant subsidies.
With generation being on the free market and with natural gas cutting the action prices drastically along with solar and wind thanks to Uncle Same, your traditional generators could not compete - coal, for instance, has a minimum limit they can sell their power at and still be profitable. All these conditions killed coal's ability to compete.
And thus you started seeing coal powered plants shuttering all around the nation. IT also hit nuclear hard as well. And older hydro plants, pumped storage plants, etc.
The problem is, coal, nuclear, hydro - these plants are all foundational sources of power to the grid. They provide "base load" and they are extremely reliable and steady. Especially nuclear and coal. Oil can as well, but most oil fired generators were scrapped a long time ago because of oil prices. Nuclear runs 24-7, has all the fuel it needs in the reactor, and doesn't care what the weather is outside, if there's a drought, if there is a long period of cloudy skies, etc. Coal fired plants stockpile the coal on site - by law they were required to keep a month's supply of coal on hand. And coal doesn't care what the weather is outside, either.
But coal & nuclear have been pushed out in favor of "peaking" load plants - the plants designed to quickly respond to increased demands beyond the base load. These plants are nimble and can come online at a moment's notice (unlike coal & nuclear) and can be cleared just as fast. The problem? These kind of plants cannot carry base load. Nor are they easy to start from a black start condition. Natural gas has to have pumps running in the natural gas lines - the same lines that are also feeding residential and commercial loads. And Solar and Wind do not store energy and are not rigorous enough nor reliable enough to be able to handle base load or bringing other plants back online after a black start condition.
Yet thanks to our world-wide governments, most countries have dumped the very generation sources that CAN black start. And even worse, most companies quit practicing black start.
My own company, for instance, was bought in in the 2010's by a larger company. That company had spun all its generation off into a separate company that was losing money hand over fist. The first thing they did was shutter every single coal fired plant that was in our footprint EXCEPT the ones in WV because WV is still a regulated state and thus those were the only generation plants actually turning a profit. They even sold off the hydro plant.
I've asked my boss is there even a black start plan still in place. He says yes, but he doesn't know what it is. No one I know does. So supposedly there is one, but it's not being practiced, nor has it been widely disseminated across the company to all employees.
What happened on the Iberian Peninsula is a warning. And it can most definitely - and will likely happen here.
The American power grid is extremely vulnerable. And there is little we can do really to protect it. Lines stretching across huge swaths of empty territory, critical transformers that cannot be made in the US any more and that have a minimum lead time of 5 years to replace.
Every person who works on the transmission side of the business knows exactly where the pinch points are too, and now adays with cellular and satellite technology? It would incredibly easy to take down critical infrastructure that would take months and years to rebuild.
You actually don't need a cyber attack at all. In fact, a cyber attack would be the easiest to come back from. Despite cyber attacks being the main focus of security.
Nope, the most devastating possibility to black out the country would be attacking the physical infrastructure at certain points in the country, something that a small terrorists cell or militant gang cell, could figure out and coordinate scarily easily.
Ouch, that is NOT good. Thanks for the info!
Thanks, I didn’t know that.
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.
The lack of security and disaster planning for restoring the grid is a problem that everyone knew about and no one did anything about. We gave the technology production to China, and then complain when they spy on us using back doors they've built into our tech. We need to restore the US's ability to produce the tech we use, we need to remove the Chinese manufactured tech from service, and we need to stop fooling ourselves about who and what China really is. They have a long plan that does not involve us except as a vassal state.
The ability to cold start a power plant is logically a foundational requirement. Why would you build a generation plant that is incapable of starting on its own? Maybe because you're a politician who's more interested in getting a plant built than in getting it built right? You betcha.
Econolog and Robert Bryce have articles up about the Iberian blackout on Substack. Bottom line, the grid fell because of frequency instability - it got too far off rated frequency and the safeties tripped. Not enough inertia on the grid. Those big turbines on hydro and steam plants resist frequency changes. Solar and wind do not; they produce DC and then use inverters to supply AC to the grid. No inertia.
the utility I work for got rid of a lot of its generation but one big plant was kept online for that very reason - though they converted it to be a synchronous condenser, a device that is there purely to provide the needed inertia on the system. It doesn't provide power at all; it provides that inertia to keep the grid stable.
Thanks Jon!
Response(s)? Committees will be formed, chaired by bean counters. Weaknesses in the grid will be enumerated and some listed. The cost of the fixes will be weighed against the possible impact on paying out annual stock dividends, bonuses, new fitness gyms for employees, the budgets for HR/PR/Lobbying/Green-Climate Change Initiatives/Maintenance on wind & solar farms. Difficult choices will be made. A 5 and 10-year plan will be developed by mid 2026. Rates will be hiked. The can will have been successfully kicked down the road.
I remember Hurricane Ivan in 2004. No power for 10+ weeks. No landline, cable TV or internet for 4 months. It wasn't pretty. But this wasn't New Orleans. We only had one incidence of looting. An illegal alien was caught by motorists while siphoning gasoline from a generator that was powering the traffic lights at a busy intersection. He was subdued and sat on until the Sheriff's deputies carted him off. My gut tells me we are less prepared now than in 2004. Hic sunt dracones.
Detailed explanation of Spain - with notes that this is NOT the first time this sort of thing has happened - in these two substacks:
https://meredithangwin.substack.com/p/the-switches-in-spain
https://willbates.substack.com/p/sleuthing-spanish-solar
that's very interesting, and I can see exactly how that can happen too. I remember doing Synchronous relaying testing years ago.