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Miscalculation by Spanish power grid operator REE contributed to blackout

reuters.com

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Re: Miscalculation by Spanish power grid operator REE contributed to blackout

#11

Post by spspeaker »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #8
narag wrote: post #3

Disclaimer: I can't really vouch for any of this, but let me tell you what's being discussed in the press over here. This is Government's version and it shows. REE boss was put there by the ruling party. Still they try to paint REE as a private operator now. It's not. Like many other orgs, it's a mix of private and public capital, ultimately controled by the government. It's suspected that the blackout was caused bec…

Doesn't have to be nuclear, can be anything that provides reactive power and grid services, i.e. grid forming battery storage. The problem is this service is needed on the Spanish grid, but isn't paid for in the market. Pay for it and the grid services will be provided. Resources below. Mind you, doesn't have to be a Tesla battery, just has to be a battery with power controls (grid forming) and some lithium cells for…

Grid forming services are indeed paid for, according to this very same article:

> Power plants "should have controlled voltage and, moreover, many of them were economically remunerated to do so. They did not absorb all the reactive power that was expected," Aagesen said.

Re: Miscalculation by Spanish power grid operator REE contributed to blackout

#12

Post by toomuchtodo »

spspeaker wrote: post #11
toomuchtodo wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't have to be nuclear, can be anything that provides reactive power and grid services, i.e. grid forming battery storage. The problem is this service is needed on the Spanish grid, but isn't paid for in the market. Pay for it and the grid services will be provided. Resources below. Mind you, doesn't have to be a Tesla battery, just has to be a battery with power controls (grid forming) and some lithium cells for…

Grid forming services are indeed paid for, according to this very same article: > Power plants "should have controlled voltage and, moreover, many of them were economically remunerated to do so. They did not absorb all the reactive power that was expected," Aagesen said.

It is possible I misread or misunderstood something on the topic with regards to compensation for grid services in the article. With that said, before jumping to solutioning (although I am a strong proponent of batteries based on their performance, capabilities, and cost as of this comment), I would like to see more information and data as to which generators were signaled to change their output when the grid started to fault and were unable or unwilling to (failure to appropriately manage output and/or field excitation to absorb reactive power, etc) and if improvements to the electricity market are required. Without root cause, we cannot effectively solve.

Re: Miscalculation by Spanish power grid operator REE contributed to blackout

#13

Post by gred »

narag wrote: post #3

Disclaimer: I can't really vouch for any of this, but let me tell you what's being discussed in the press over here. This is Government's version and it shows. REE boss was put there by the ruling party. Still they try to paint REE as a private operator now. It's not. Like many other orgs, it's a mix of private and public capital, ultimately controled by the government. It's suspected that the blackout was caused bec…

> REE boss was put there by the ruling party.

Yeah, these public / private entities can get ridiculous. Her background is legal and political: Secretary of Women and Equality, Spokesperson for Housing, Minister of Housing, State Secretary of Housing and Urban Construction, etc. But she's a party loyalist and she took a few business classes, so it's all good.

Re: Miscalculation by Spanish power grid operator REE contributed to blackout

#15

Post by serial_dev »

gred wrote: post #13
narag wrote: post #3

Disclaimer: I can't really vouch for any of this, but let me tell you what's being discussed in the press over here. This is Government's version and it shows. REE boss was put there by the ruling party. Still they try to paint REE as a private operator now. It's not. Like many other orgs, it's a mix of private and public capital, ultimately controled by the government. It's suspected that the blackout was caused bec…

> REE boss was put there by the ruling party. Yeah, these public / private entities can get ridiculous. Her background is legal and political: Secretary of Women and Equality, Spokesperson for Housing, Minister of Housing, State Secretary of Housing and Urban Construction, etc. But she's a party loyalist and she took a few business classes, so it's all good.

I mean it could be good enough, as long as she listens to the experts and doesn’t think that “these nerds are preventing me from making history and breaking records” (assuming what parent comment says is true).

Re: Miscalculation by Spanish power grid operator REE contributed to blackout

#16

Post by 7952 »

narag wrote: post #3

Disclaimer: I can't really vouch for any of this, but let me tell you what's being discussed in the press over here. This is Government's version and it shows. REE boss was put there by the ruling party. Still they try to paint REE as a private operator now. It's not. Like many other orgs, it's a mix of private and public capital, ultimately controled by the government. It's suspected that the blackout was caused bec…

Well nuclear is a thermal power station.

Re: Miscalculation by Spanish power grid operator REE contributed to blackout

#17

Post by mschuster91 »

riedel wrote: post #9
tux3 wrote: post #2

They've now presented the report, but the report itself hasn't yet been made public. The press release is here: https://www.miteco.gob.es/es/prensa/ultimas-noticias/2025/ju...

Interesting read. I reminded me of some stories a German guy who used to work for a Spanish utility told me (the guy lost his job at one of the first closed German nuclear facilities and now worked at the museum of a pumped storage power plant): he told us that the Spanish utility he worked for waited far too long to kick in gas power plants waiting for prices to rise further making tons of money by risking stability…

> I also learned from him that a lot German nuclear facilities are still running there generators only as weight to stabilize the network.

We aren't. Pretty much the first things that get dismantled is the turbines and machinery that has no radiation exposure because you need space to maneuver, buffer, dismantle and decontaminate everything else that's coming out of the innards of the plant and actually is contaminated.

Maybe you can get some remaining use as reactive power provider done during the ~1 year that it takes for the bureaucracy to process the actual permit for dismantling [1] - but even during that time, restarting it again is practically impossible after the main coolant pipes have been flushed [2] (that happened shortly after the plant had been formally taken offline and all the uranium pellets were removed from the core, although I can't find out how many months that took - but it did happen in the same year as the shutdown, so less than 8 months).

The only thing that's being kept connected to the grid after that is the small portion that supplies the cooling for the cooldown pools where the freshly removed uranium pellets deplete enough material that they can be stored in CASTOR containers [3]. In addition, the high-voltage switching equipment is being kept alive in Landshut's case as the area of the former NPP is planned to be the end point of the SüdOstLink national grid expansion link and the power is supposed to be transferred from Ohu to the wider regional/state grid using the existing tie-ins of the former NPP [4].

If you want I can try to contact the utility handling the teardown about specifics, I live a few kilometers from there after all, but I doubt they're going to share much information given the obvious threat of Russian espionage.

It's also a workplace safety issue. You absolutely do not want electricity anywhere where you do not vitally need it, particularly no high voltage.

EDIT: Thanks to @closewith, indeed Biblis A's genset was converted for a "second life" as power regulator in 2011/2012 [5], but that's (at least from a cursory research) all I could find.

[1] https://www.br.de/nachrichten/bayern/genehmigung-fuer-rueckb...

[2] https://www.bayerische-staatszeitung.de/staatszeitung/politi...

[3] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castor_(Kerntechnik)

[4] https://www.br.de/nachrichten/bayern/tennet-stellt-suedostli...

[5] https://www.amprion.net/Presse/Presse-Detailseite_2667.html

Re: Miscalculation by Spanish power grid operator REE contributed to blackout

#18

Post by mocmoc »

narag wrote: post #3

Disclaimer: I can't really vouch for any of this, but let me tell you what's being discussed in the press over here. This is Government's version and it shows. REE boss was put there by the ruling party. Still they try to paint REE as a private operator now. It's not. Like many other orgs, it's a mix of private and public capital, ultimately controled by the government. It's suspected that the blackout was caused bec…

100% this. In the conversations , it's cristal clear

Re: Miscalculation by Spanish power grid operator REE contributed to blackout

#19

Post by gred »

serial_dev wrote: post #15
gred wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> REE boss was put there by the ruling party. Yeah, these public / private entities can get ridiculous. Her background is legal and political: Secretary of Women and Equality, Spokesperson for Housing, Minister of Housing, State Secretary of Housing and Urban Construction, etc. But she's a party loyalist and she took a few business classes, so it's all good.

I mean it could be good enough, as long as she listens to the experts and doesn’t think that “these nerds are preventing me from making history and breaking records” (assuming what parent comment says is true).

Sure, but even better would be if she had experience in the industry to judge tactical advice she is given and set strategic direction. Otherwise the best she can do is "not get in the way".

Re: Miscalculation by Spanish power grid operator REE contributed to blackout

#20

Post by Rygian »

For me the keywords are "capacidad de control de tensión insuficiente" (insufficient voltage control capacity) which was already a known issue for years.

REE asked back in 2019/2020 to create a new real-time dispatch mechanism for reactive power, because Spain still relies on fixed dispatch based on emails, phone calls, even snail mail. There was a pilot project in 2022 which was successful (dispatching in less than 5 seconds) but proved to be very expensive, and therefore incompatible with the European Union's directives on creating market-ready regulation processes [1].

[1][ES] https://www.eldiario.es/economia/competencia-reconocio-julio...

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