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2025 Iberia Blackout Report [pdf]

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Re: 2025 Iberia Blackout Report [pdf]

#31

Post by baq »

philipkglass wrote: post #28
baq wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should’ve said ‘not enough spinning mass’ and it’d be perfectly fine for the politically correct and mean the same thing. This was highlighted as a risk for years and it finally materialized.

According to the operator report linked in another comment by leymed [1], the problem was not a lack of spinning mass (inertia) but voltage instability. From page 16 of the PDF: The incident was NOT caused by a lack of system inertia. Rather, it was triggered by a voltage issue and the cascading disconnection of renewable generation plants, as previously indicated. Higher inertia would have only resulted in a slightl…

Obviously I’m as good of a grid operator as I was a stealth bomber expert on the weekend, but superficially that just doesn’t seem right. Maybe I’m underestimating how much spinning mass would be required, but that still qualifies as ‘not enough was present’.

Re: 2025 Iberia Blackout Report [pdf]

#32

Post by giantg2 »

AnotherGoodName wrote: post #27
giantg2 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like pumped hydro offers a nice compromise.

Fwiw the hornsdale battery linked above cost AUD$172 million and can provide 2000MW of equivalent inertia. Link: https://www.energymagazine.com.au/sa-approves-world-first-ba... That equivalent inertia can only be done for short periods but that's exactly what grids need in stability - there's generally no lack of total generation, just a need to jump in and smooth out spikes. You can't build a dam for that price, nor…

You don't need to build a dam, you just need the pipes and pumps for an existing dam (or elevated natural basin).

Re: 2025 Iberia Blackout Report [pdf]

#34

Post by diggan »

gred wrote: post #33

Why so many pages of "Recommendation: implement multi-factor authentication" and other IT security irrelevancies? Did they need to pad out the number of pages?

> In the systems with network traffic evaluation probes, no records consistent with unauthorized activity have been observed, such as lateral movements, network traces or file movements for vulnerability exploitation or privilege escalation, among others.

> However, as is common in networks and information systems in any sector, other risks have been identified, such as vulnerabilities, deficiencies or inadequate configurations of security measures, which may expose networks and systems to potential risks, for which a series of measures are proposed.

Re: 2025 Iberia Blackout Report [pdf]

#35

Post by diggan »

Seems the money shot starts at page 131:

> The ultimate cause of the peninsular electrical zero on April 28th was a phenomenon of overvoltages in the form of a "chain reaction" in which high voltages cause generation disconnections, which in turn causes new increases in voltage and thus new disconnections, and so on.

> 1. The system showed insufficient dynamic voltage control capabilities sufficient to maintain stable voltage

> 2. A series of rhythmic oscillations significantly conditioned the system, modifying its configuration and increasing the difficulties for voltage stabilization.

If I understand it correctly (and like software, typical), it was a positive feedback-loop. Since there wasn't enough voltage control, some other station had to be added but got overloaded instead, also turning off, and then on to the next station.

Late addition: It was very helpful for me to read through the "ANNEX X. BRIEF BASICS OF THE ELECTRIC SYSTEM" (page 168) before trying to read the report itself, as it explains a lot of things that the rest of the report (rightly) assumes you already know.

Re: 2025 Iberia Blackout Report [pdf]

#36

Post by pkilgore »

fuoqi wrote: post #9
matsemann wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the quote literally spells out it was market forces, not some instability in solar generation? Your other comment probably got flagged because it started with a huge straw man and had multiple unwarranted jabs in it.

Temporary negative prices have been caused by the renewable generation which exceeded the grid demand at the time, which then evolved into the nasty feedback loop caused by the reaction of renewable generation to those conditions. You simply do not get such situation with traditional generation, it's the direct consequence of the intermittent nature of renewables and its high ratio in the total generation. Also, have…

Where is the market for someone to get paid to pump water into a reservoir and let it fall down later for $$$?

Re: 2025 Iberia Blackout Report [pdf]

#37

Post by baq »

decimalenough wrote: post #20
rcarmo wrote: post #11

Page 130 is where the actual human readable summary is. Although the previous pages were pretty detailed in explaining the cumulative instabilities. Sadly, some news outlets are probably only going to look at the recommendations and read "cybersecurity" and (even though they are common sense recommendations) assume there might be more to say about the matter.

Don't worry, some news outlets will summarize this as "renewables = bad" regardless of what the report actually says. Oh wait, they already did: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/06/18/renewable-en... Ed: Do I need a /s tag here or something? My point was that we shouldn't worry too much about about the presentation of the report, its actual contents will be spun to suit any narrative regardless.

Flame bait journalism is one of the things you can count on in any circumstance. If you replace that ‘renewables = bad’ with ‘politicians = idiots’ OTOH… sometimes the elected representatives should listen to unelected physicists and engineers. Grid stuff is one of those things.

Re: 2025 Iberia Blackout Report [pdf]

#38

Post by ajross »

londons_explore wrote: post #12
AnotherGoodName wrote: post #10

Reads very similar to some blackouts we had in Australia. Weakly connected grids with vast geographical distances leading to oscillations that took down the grid. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_South_Australian_blackout Completely solved with lithium based grid storage at key locations btw. This grid storage has also been massively profitable for it's owners https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornsdale_Power_Reserve#R…

> nor are brief periods of multi-gigawatt draw/dumping as needed. Actually this is typically an issue for grid batteries. Spinning generators can easily briefly go to 10x the rated current for a second or so to smooth out big anomalies. Stationary batteries inverters can't do 10x current spikes ever - the max they can get to is more like 1.2x for a few seconds. That means you end up needing a lot of batteries to prov…

That... doesn't sound correct. Inverters are the cheap part, you can literally wire as many as you want in parallel. Batteries have immense power availability, with most chemistries you can trivially deliver the entire capacity in half an hour or so (more like 5 minutes with lithium cells).

Basically I'm dubious. I'm sure there are grids somewhere that have misprovisioned their inverter capacity, but I don't buy that battery facilities are inherently unable to buffer spikes. Is there a cite I can read?

Re: 2025 Iberia Blackout Report [pdf]

#39

Post by leymed »

diggan wrote: post #35

Seems the money shot starts at page 131: > The ultimate cause of the peninsular electrical zero on April 28th was a phenomenon of overvoltages in the form of a "chain reaction" in which high voltages cause generation disconnections, which in turn causes new increases in voltage and thus new disconnections, and so on. > 1. The system showed insufficient dynamic voltage control capabilities sufficient to maintain stabl…

I think your interpretation is correct. The voltage control is done at the high level of the grid, meaning the control covers bigger generation stations and major substations. Even if it’s small generator, rotating machinery, you won’t have strict voltage control other than its own AVR. The problem I see here is that we embed smaller individual generations at the lower level, where they pump the generated power to the grid at the medium voltage level. When you have majority of your generation at this level, you won’t have strict control over voltage and even frequency, I assume. I’m still digesting the report, but what I am after is whether they really neglected it and if it is not possible to do voltage control with 50% generation coming from renewable and through medium voltage level, aka lower level.

Re: 2025 Iberia Blackout Report [pdf]

#40

Post by AnotherGoodName »

ajross wrote: post #38
londons_explore wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> nor are brief periods of multi-gigawatt draw/dumping as needed. Actually this is typically an issue for grid batteries. Spinning generators can easily briefly go to 10x the rated current for a second or so to smooth out big anomalies. Stationary batteries inverters can't do 10x current spikes ever - the max they can get to is more like 1.2x for a few seconds. That means you end up needing a lot of batteries to prov…

That... doesn't sound correct. Inverters are the cheap part, you can literally wire as many as you want in parallel. Batteries have immense power availability, with most chemistries you can trivially deliver the entire capacity in half an hour or so (more like 5 minutes with lithium cells). Basically I'm dubious. I'm sure there are grids somewhere that have misprovisioned their inverter capacity, but I don't buy that…

Agreed. The relatively small battery substation linked above can output 2GW of equivalent inertia generation (a measure to align batteries to inertial power systems) when needed. That's an entire power station they can match for short periods of time. Link: https://www.energymagazine.com.au/sa-approves-world-first-ba...

Australia's largest power plant has 2.9GW of inertial generation assuming all generators are running at 100%. As in the small battery substation alone comes close to the countries largest power station. I'm not sure where the idea that lithium ion can't dump power quickly comes from. They are absolutely phenomenal at it. Australia's building dozens of these substations too since they are so cheap and reduce overall power costs. It's a win from all points of view.

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