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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

#41

Post by UltraSane »

Rygian wrote: post #20

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…

"Spain still relies on fixed dispatch based on emails, phone calls, even snail mail. "

Yikes!

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

#42

Post by jaoane »

gred wrote: post #19
serial_dev wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

It’s incredible that here of all places you will have someone justify a person who’s completely unqualified running something as important as a country’s electrical network.

I wonder if they’d say the same if this had happened in, say, Hungary.

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

#43

Post by motorest »

gred wrote: post #19
serial_dev wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

> Otherwise the best she can do is "not get in the way".

Playing devil's advocate, policy can be set by inertia (i.e., no one is fired for buying IBM). So a government loyalist can have the motivation to implement a policy change that breaks away from conservative biases towards how a problem is solved. You already see how the criticism is that things weren't done as they were always done, aka "Don't touch it to not break it". The problem with this approach is that conservative approaches are not inherently safer: their primary value is to serve as scapegoat and create responsibility voids. See for example how some critics attack how nuclear was not singled out as baseline, when under this scenario nuclear would be by design the first system being pulled from the network.

Spain is being criticized for implementing a policy to shift the country's energy supply away from fossil+nuclear and towards renewables. Naturally there will be growing pains. Attacking the regulator based on shifts in policy only underline that the attacks are political, thus complaining that the top stop was handed to a politician actually justifies the move as clearly the position is responsible for managing the political side of the policy shift.

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

#45

Post by petre »

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).

Yup, now they can fire her for breaking the record of incompetence.

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

#46

Post by toomuchtodo »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #12
spspeaker wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Spain had resources to prevent a blackout, but they didn't respond - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44311685 - June 2025

https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/06/spanish-blackout-rep...

> The Iberian grid is capable of handling this sort of thing. But the grid operator only scheduled 10 power plants to handle voltage regulation on the 28th, which the report notes is the lowest total it had committed to in all of 2025 up to that point. The report found that a number of those plants failed to respond properly to the grid operators, and a few even responded in a way that contributed to the surging voltages.

> As the voltages rose, they approached a threshold at which power plants need to disconnect from the grid to protect their equipment. But the report found that some of the plants disconnected before the threshold was reached. And with each disconnection, the voltages on the grid continued to rise, causing plants to disconnect in multiple Spanish provinces. At that point, things spun out of control, with the grid frequency dropping. That led to it falling out of sync with its connection to France, causing the shutdown. The blackout had long since passed the point of intervention.

> It may be tempting to view the cascading failures as a sign of incompetence on the part of the grid operators. But these are the same operators who managed to restore the process of black-starting the grid to normal operations within a matter of hours. There should (and undoubtedly will) be questions about the low number of plants dedicated to grid stabilization, but that can be handled with a simple policy fix. An equally focused correction can likely address any problems at the problematic facility that triggered the whole chain of events.

> The real issue is why so much hardware on the grid didn't follow its operating specifications, either disconnecting early or failing to respond properly to the calls for stabilization.

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

#47

Post by mensetmanusman »

brewtide wrote: post #39
btilly wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would think that a trivial solution for that is to create devices that can supply variable demand. (For example by heating up water somewhere in the ocean.) If the power created by nuclear exceeds base-line demand, create artificial demand to level out the valleys. By strategically wasting power, nuclear can supply a larger share of the demand.

I know it's a shamed topic around here, or it seems like it, however I find the Bitcoin mining aspect of chewing up these "needed to be wasted" loads the one true positive of it (Bitcoin). Yeah, it's changed from its seeming origins. Yes it's number go up! But being able to turn that extra juice, that NEEDS to go somewhere back into 'cash' is certainly on my list of positives. Obviously, it's lower than batteries and…

I agree, except bitcoin should not be calculating meaningless things. Could have been a large decentralized AI training algorithm for example :)

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

#48

Post by AshamedCaptain »

cryptonector wrote: post #31
AshamedCaptain wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your point is not really a point either: every power plant can be ejected from the network in such cases, and not just nuclear ones. The remark here is that it precisely happened to a nuclear first.

Nuclear can't ramp up or down fast. As the grid loses generation capacity the load on the base-load type capacity becomes too variable and that capacity has to be brought offline. It's that simple. Nuclear wasn't ejected because there was too much of it but because there was not enough capacity of all types, especially of the gas-fired type that can most readily respond to solar and wind drop-off.

My point is "moar nuclear" guarantees nothing as evidenced by what happened _in France_ (hint: not exactly the same as in Spain even if same underlying direct cause). Your remark, at best, only adds to my point, and is not a counterargument to mine. And for the record, very few power stations can ramp up "fast" or "down" for the level required here -- this is not something that uniquely applies to nuclear. Even oft-quoted gas stations still measure "ramp up" in hours.

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

#49

Post by toomuchtodo »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #46
toomuchtodo wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Spain had resources to prevent a blackout, but they didn't respond - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44311685 - June 2025 https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/06/spanish-blackout-rep... > The Iberian grid is capable of handling this sort of thing. But the grid operator only scheduled 10 power plants to handle voltage regulation on the 28th, which the report notes is the lowest total it had committed to in all of…

The official report on the blackout in Spain and Portugal was just released - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44300906 - June 2025

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

#50

Post by Rygian »

cryptonector wrote: post #29

> REE did not have enough thermal power stations switched on when surge occurred That's.. that's a miscalculation alright. But it's not likely that it was just a small math error. It must have been policy to live on the edge.

It's common policy to plan your resource consumption in the most economical way.

Couple that to a "next day" dispatching system.

Couple that to resources that failed to do their job (did not compensate enough reactive power, or even added extra reactive power instead of compensating).

Couple that to one of the most challenging electrical grids in the world.

When taking that context in consideration, "living in the edge" is not really a legitimate way to put it.

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