The blackout in Spain is a wake-up call to anyone looking for reliable power grids. Renewable power must rely on a duplicate system of traditional power plants that can supply the entire grid when the sun isn’t out or the wind doesn’t blow. In Spain, rapid increases in the amount of renewable power used on the grid caused instability, and ultimately a blackout. Bjorn Lomborg explains in The Wall Street Journal:
Just a week prior to the blackout, Spain bragged that for the first time, renewables delivered 100% of its electricity, though only for a period of minutes around 11:15 a.m. When it collapsed, the Iberian grid was powered by 74% renewable energy, with 55% coming from solar. It went down under the bright noon sun. When the Iberian grid frequency started faltering on April 28, the grid’s high proportion of solar and wind generation couldn’t stabilize it. This isn’t speculation; it’s physics. As the electricity supply across Spain collapsed, Portugal was pulled along, because the two countries are tightly interconnected through the Iberian electricity network.
Action Line: Plan for your own backup power generation. As grids become more reliant on renewables, you don’t want to be left in the dark. Click here to subscribe to my free monthly Survive & Thrive letter.
