> Damian Cortinas, chair of ENTSO-E’s board, told the Financial Times that “the issue is not about renewables” but about the grid’s ability to manage “fast voltage variations” that can destabilise the system. Unusual oscillations triggered a cascade of plant disconnections, and grid managers lost control. The real lesson is not that Spain has gone too far on wind and solar, YES THEY DID, they went as far as making nu…
Also worth tracking whether consumption is increasing. Rebound Effect can kick in - when energy prices fall most people use more energy, produce/consume more junk, use more heat/cooling etc. Its like dealing with very low interest rates. It can produce a whole lot of brainless behaviour.
The problem there is that they can't upgrade the grid fast enough at the neighborhood level. Combine that with residential electricity contracts where you pay the spot market price, and suddenly you've got a whole bunch of people who want to source or drain electricity at the same time, with a total capacity which far exceeds what their local grid is physically capable of.
The solution is to change a grid connection fee which depends on the peak load, where drawing/supplying a steady 1kW during the day is significantly cheaper than doing 12kW for 2 hours and 0kW for 22 hours. You're incentivized to spread out your load, so you are less likely to fall for needless consumption of "free" electricity.