The usual critique of solar energy is that the sun doesn't shine all the time–and that's certainly true. But millions of Spaniards, Portuguese and some French people spent hours without any electricity Monday as the over reliance on solar bit them in the culo. You had to read widely to even hear about it in California since the Green agenda doesn't want to talk about these things. The WSJ noted:
Life changed for Spaniards at noon on Monday. With the sun at its peak, the country’s largely solar-powered electrical grid shut down. Mere days before, Spain’s government had announced that its grid had for the first time run entirely on renewable power, with new records set almost daily for solar. Breathless declarations of victory flowed, in service of the government’s promise to phase out reliable nuclear power plants with many years of remaining service life. As in Germany, this promise is now the Spanish politicians’ nightmare.
The Financial Times had some of the numbers that lead to the collapse of the grid:
About 55 percent of Spain's supply was from solar sources when 15 gigawatts of electricity generation disconnected from the grid within just five seconds. Several European experts said Spain appeared to lack enough firm power–readily available, reliable energy supply from sources such as fossil fuels or nuclear that can be reduced or raised–to kick in when the grid's frequency dropped sharply…an oversupply of electricity might have initially caused the problem. Normally, the grid operator would have managed this by asking traditional plants to moderate their output but this was not possible because so few plants were on line. Of the scheduled 26 GW of electricity supply on Monday, just 5GW came from non-intermittent sources.
About a fifth of the country's power normally comes from solar power, but hey, the government wanted to set a new Green record–and they have. Traffic lights, electric trains, home medical equipment, internet access, ATMs—all of it down for hours. My part of B'game was out for 50 hours two years ago during the big storms. We have enough weather and vehicle accident-driven outages without adding more risk by virtue signaling. As the Journal concluded:
Events will inevitably test any electrical system’s limits. A rational system should be designed to handle such events. Spain’s system was engineered politically, not rationally. It’s the latest lesson in how not to make energy policy. Will anyone learn from it?
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