Spain and Portugal Power Outages

[missy]

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/spains-power-generation-nearly-back-normal-after-monday-blackout-says-grid-2025-04-29/

One of the biggest power outages ever in Europe

"The scale and speed of the power outage that brought much of Spain and Portugal to a standstill on Monday have raised significant concerns both regionally and internationally."

"Questions remain about whether Spain’s heavy renewable energy supply may have made its grid system more susceptible to the type of outage that took place Monday. The thinking goes that non-renewable energy sources, such as coal and natural gas, can better weather the type of fluctuations observed Monday on Spain’s grid."

 

[Karl_K]

Renewables more so than some sources need a sync source and if they get out of sync they shut down.
I would bet they were set up to get sync signals from one of the sources that were down and could not sync to come back up.
Most nuke plants can self sync and start the grid as can some gas plants.
In places that still have large coal plants some of them can also self sync to start the grid but many can not.
The grid getting out of sync is what caused the biggest grid drop in the US/Canada history.
We had the same problem getting it synced and back up.
They had to sync the nuke plants then use them to bring up the grid which took time.

 

[kenny]

@Karl_K

By sync are you referring to the frequency of all AC sources matching, 60 Hz in the US, and (I think) 50 Hz in Europe?

... or, is it the synchronizing, matching, the supply to the demand of the actual current in amps or power in watts?

 

[Karl_K]

@Karl_K

By sync are you referring to the frequency of all AC sources matching, 60 Hz in the US, and (I think) 50 Hz in Europe?

... or, is it the synchronizing, matching, the supply to the demand of the actual current in amps or power in watts?

Hi Kenny.
The 60hz in the US, 50hz in Europe is part of it.
The frequency has to be the same but so does the phase of the signal.
Frequency is easy, phase is hard.
This is what an AC waveform looks like and to feed the grid every source has to have very similar patterns with the same start,zero cross,finish points.
In the US the time for one cycle would be 1/60th of a second.

 

[Karl_K]

Here is an example of 2 waveforms out of sync/phase with each other.

 

[kenny]

Ahh, phase.
Makes sense.
Thanx.

 

[Sunrises Sunsets]

Here is an example of 2 waveforms out of sync/phase with each other.

You are very wise, thank you for the insight.