Life in the Iberian blackout
A twee populace dresses up failure as resilience
PIMLICO JOURNAL
Most Pimlico Journal readers will be aware of the massive blackout in Spain and Portugal on Monday. But in case you aren’t, power was gone from large parts of the country for approximately twelve hours, plunging cities into chaos. Phone coverage was extremely intermittent, making communications all but impossible. All major transport arteries were nearly unusable.
The cause? That remains somewhat unclear, but it is very likely that the growing share of renewables in our energy mix played a major role. At 12:33 CEST, two sudden losses1 — probably from solar plants in southwestern Spain — knocked out power equivalent to sixty percent of national demand. Just 1.5 seconds apart, they sent grid frequency below 50 Hz and overwhelmed backup systems, triggering a full shutdown. The grid was exposed: traditional plants like gas and nuclear were either totally shut down or producing only minimal amounts of energy at this time, unable to compete with cheaper renewables. But unlike gas and nuclear, solar and wind depend on the weather, and lack the reserves needed to stabilise frequency in real time. The main lesson here isn’t to abandon solar, which is a form of electricity generation that makes sense in Spain — it’s to stop dismantling conventional backup systems like nuclear plants, as is favoured by large parts of the European Left.
As always in politics, the blame will fall on whomever is more expedient, be it Russian hackers, climate change, or not listening to the warnings on one’s daily horoscope. Spain’s socialist Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, has already found the perfect scapegoat: private energy companies! (He has offered no rationale for this assertion.) He’s also made it clear that anyone suggesting a larger share of nuclear power (never mind coal or gas) could have prevented this disaster is peddling ‘disinformation’. In the supreme wisdom of our illustrious and infallible leader, nuclear plants were themselves to blame for the slower-than-desired recovery. (Once again, no rationale has been offered for this assertion.) The only real takeaway is that the Spanish authorities were as unprepared to deal with whatever happened here as they were during the flash floods in Valencia a couple of months ago.
A full autopsy of what happened will surely come out eventually. But instead of attempting to analyse the cause of the blackouts, today I am writing about the response. More precisely, what it was like to be someone living in the city centre of Madrid during the ‘end of times’ (as many people really believed it to be, judging by their words and actions)? I hope to show readers of this journal how the ‘last man’ — or the ‘bugman’, as Bronze Age Pervert would call him — behaves in a supposedly apocalyptic situation. (Or maybe it’s just us Spaniards: we’re practically African, if you ask any self-respecting Nordicist.)
The first few minutes of the blackout had me wishing that, in the upcoming conclave, the esteemed cardinals would elect Hans-Hermann Hoppe as the next pope. The fundamental truth of the anarcho-capitalist gospel was unfolding before my very eyes: with the traffic lights out, the streets had become a self-regulating miracle of spontaneous order. Much to the disappointment of certain readers, the few ethnic minorities around me had not availed themselves of the opportunity to assault the nearest Gucci store for some ‘fire drip’. In fact, the only noticeable difference was a marked increase in the number of Indians carelessly meandering through the street, momentarily left without a job thanks to the collapse of Uber Eats.
However, the gawkers who — like myself — belong to that strange brotherhood of men who were wishing for something to happen, did not have to wait long before being satisfied. People poured out from their offices into the streets to exchange information. All of Madrid was affected? No, all of Spain! Nay, Europe! Wrong again — the entire world! Someone’s cousin’s girlfriend’s stepfather lives in Wisconsin and apparently they, too, were without power. Putler’s evil tentacles were far-reaching indeed. It seemed that any minute now, Spetsnaz soldiers would paradrop in and take the city.
It was at this point that scenes reminiscent of the dumbest days of Covid began to unfold: people started queuing outside supermarkets to secure their survival rations while the supermarket staff, having spontaneously appointed themselves as rationing commissars, made sure that no one dared exceed their fair share. (Naturally, our noble commissars didn’t dare tell the histrionic, obese middle-aged women that no amount of bottled water was going to get them through any kind of disaster.) The most urgent need, however, appeared to not be water, but radios: the only lifeline for those who, unlike me, are unfortunate enough not to work for visionary corporate overlords whose benevolence extends to backup generators, ensuring productivity even in the face of apparent societal collapse.
But what struck me most was not the failure of infrastructure. It was the response. People are sheep.
Despite the fact that the radios provided absolutely no information that couldn’t just as easily be gathered by chatting with the nearest stranger on the street, people still flocked to buy them en masse — not because they informed, but because they soothed. That, more than anything, was the truly depressing part. Put our good-looking, well-spoken Prime Minister in front of a microphone to reassure the nation that everything is under control, and the ‘people’ will happily follow him off a cliff, like lemmings.
Not everyone, though, was equally panicked. Several hours into the blackout, two American tourists — dressed as if Madrid was someplace where one goes on safari — asked me whether powerless ATMs were just part of the local charm. They were, of course, somehow completely oblivious to the chaos unfolding around them. As I explained the situation to the Americans, their eyes grew wide with astonishment: they couldn’t believe that anyone amongst these primitive tribes could speak more than a smattering of English. Somehow, it was the least surprising thing that happened all day.
Walking back home, one could almost mistake this for a day of celebration. The panic had subsided; the streets echoed with animated chatter; the terraces and beer gardens, even more crowded than usual, buzzed with the sound of collective indifference. Crowds gathered around a hippie and his guitar — ‘name a more iconic duo’ — to sing songs of sweet bohemian carelessness. Successive waves of cheers and clapping rang throughout the city as block after block received power. Yes: clapping!
In the moment, you might have been forgiven for finding this all rather charming. A city coming together, bustling bars, neighbours chatting… But beneath the surface-level warmth lay something far more unsettling: a collective willingness to normalise dysfunction; to dress up failure as resilience. The opinion pieces written the day after heaped praise upon the citizenry for their civic-mindedness. Outrage was in short supply: no one seemed concerned that the public had so eagerly — and cheerfully! — swallowed what ought to have been a national scandal. Over on Spanish Twitter, our noble Prime Minister was showered with sympathy for stoically weathering Covid, a volcanic eruption, and now this — as if widespread institutional failure were just another natural disaster. ‘Spain is different.’ Well, perhaps. But what looked like stoicism and a joie de vivre in the face of adversity was, in truth, indifference with a smile.
The West’s decline and slide towards the Third World happens so gradually that it is hard for the untrained eye to notice it. Incidents like this should be a wake-up call. This is a reminder of how much it cost to get here, and how easy it is to let it slip away. The world as we know it ends not with a bang, but with cheers; not with lamentations, but with celebrations of a ‘return to community values’.
This article was written by Exhausted Food Guy, a Pimlico Journal contributor from Spain. Have a pitch? Send it to [email protected].
This article (Life in the Iberian blackout) was created and published by Pimlico Journal and is republished here under “Fair Use”
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Spain and Portugal’s Blackout Reveals the Achilles’ Heel of Electricity Grids Dominated by Wind and Solar
ANONYMOUS ENGINEER
While a comprehensive investigation will take weeks to complete, today’s massive power outages across Spain and Portugal present compelling evidence of the inherent vulnerability in renewable-heavy grids and likely offer a stark lesson in the dangers of sacrificing grid stability on the altar of green energy. While officials scramble to restore power to millions and politicians inevitably deflect blame, the catastrophic failure aligns perfectly with warnings that power grid experts have been sounding for years: systems with high penetrations of solar and wind generation have diminished mechanical inertia and are inherently vulnerable to collapse.
The inertia problem nobody wants to discuss
Spain’s electrical grid, once a model of reliability, has undergone a radical transformation over the past decade. Conventional power plants with massive spinning turbines – the kind that naturally resist frequency changes and provide crucial stability – have been systematically replaced with weather-dependent solar panels and wind turbines that contribute virtually no inertia to the system.
The result? A grid that may function adequately under ideal conditions but remains perilously susceptible to rapid destabilization when faced with disturbances.
Anatomy of a collapse
Initial reports from Spain grid operator Red Eléctrica indicate that ‘oscillations’ in the network triggered the cascade of failures. This technical language obscures a simpler truth: the system likely lacked sufficient physical inertia to withstand a relatively routine disturbance.
The data reveals the shocking speed and scale of the collapse. Real-time generation data shows that before the blackout, Spain’s grid was operating with an extremely renewables-heavy mix, including 18,068 MW from solar PV (by far the largest contributor at approximately 54% of domestic generation) and 3,643 MW from wind. By contrast, conventional synchronous generation sources provided minimal output: nuclear at 3,388 MW, hydro at 3,171 MW, and combined cycle at just 1,633 MW.
After the collapse, the generation mix shifted dramatically as operators struggled to restore the system. Total demand dropped from ~27 GW to just ~16 GW. Interestingly, nuclear generation disappeared completely from the generation stack, confirming that these plants – typically considered the most reliable part of the generation fleet – were forced to disconnect entirely during the event. Solar PV output fell by more than half to 8,236 MW, while other sources like wind and hydro saw similar reductions.
What is system inertia and why does it matter?
System inertia is the inherent resistance to sudden frequency changes provided by the kinetic energy stored in rotating masses of conventional power plants. When a disturbance occurs, this inertia automatically slows the rate of frequency change, giving operators crucial seconds to respond. Consider the difference between a heavily ballasted ship and a lightweight vessel in rough seas. The former can absorb massive waves without capsizing, while the latter remains dangerously vulnerable to sudden squalls.
Power system engineers have been warning about the high penetration of renewables and the inertia-related risk for years. The European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSO-E) has been sounding increasingly urgent alarms about declining system inertia. Their studies methodically demonstrate that as renewable generation increases, the reduction in rotating mass weakens the grid’s natural ability to resist frequency disturbances and they’ve identified a critical vulnerability: when renewable generation dominates the mix, the resulting low rotating mass and insufficient inertia create conditions where frequency disturbances can accelerate rapidly – precisely the pre-failure conditions that existed in Spain’s grid before today’s collapse. Indeed, these conditions mirror the vulnerabilities observed in previous European events, such as the 2021 Iberian Peninsula separation.
Lessons for Britain
British grid operators have been highlighting nearly identical concerns. The National Grid ESO’s 2023 ‘Operability Strategy Report’ explicitly identifies that Britain’s system inertia declined by around 40% between 2009 and 2021, creating reduced resistance to frequency changes and making the grid more vulnerable to disturbances. The report further acknowledges that operating to an inertia threshold is increasingly challenging as renewable penetration grows – a warning that recent events in Spain make even more urgent.
As our nation races down the same dangerous path – systematically closing reliable coal and gas plants while becoming increasingly dependent on weather-contingent generation – green energy advocates inside and outside of government will inevitably blame extraordinary circumstances when failures occur, refusing to acknowledge the underlying vulnerability regarding system stability created by dismantling conventional generation capacity. For years, many renewable advocates have dismissed these warnings, claiming that clever electronics and battery systems can provide ‘synthetic inertia’ to replace what’s lost. However, multiple studies have shown this to be untrue.
The path forward
A sensible approach to any energy transition would be to prioritize maintaining adequate system inertia through a mix of conventional generation. New technologies must be carefully tested and validated before widespread deployment. Grid stability isn’t merely a technical detail; it’s the foundation of our civilization.
Unfortunately, Britain’s headlong rush toward a renewables-dominated grid is being led by Energy Secretary Ed Miliband, whose economic illiteracy regarding energy markets is rivaled only by his magical thinking on power system fundamentals. Such delusion is nothing new in the energy sector. Enron’s spectacular collapse came after years of selling ‘innovative’ energy products that analysts and governments lapped up but that were, in reality, elaborate financial illusions. Today’s renewable alchemy represents the next iteration of energy-related magical thinking – insisting, contrary to all engineering evidence, that a grid built on wind and solar can match the reliability and resilience of conventional generation. Like all magical thinking, this too collides with the immutable laws of physics.
This week, millions of Spaniards learned this lesson the hard way, trapped in elevators, stranded on trains, and left without basic services. The economic toll of the Spanish blackout will be huge. With the outages affecting much of Spain and Portugal for several hours (at the time of writing the system is only partially restored and could take days to fully recover), the total economic damage will likely reach into the tens of billions of euros.
Britain faces a stark choice: acknowledge the physical realities of electrical systems and maintain adequate conventional generation or continue the current ideologically-driven path toward likely system collapse.
Stop Press: The power cuts across Spain and Portugal were likely caused by failures at solar farms, the grid operator REE has said. It has identified two incidents of power generation loss, probably from solar plants, in the country’s south-west, which caused instability in the electric system and led to a breakdown of its interconnection with France.
This article (Spain and Portugal’s Blackout Reveals the Achilles’ Heel of Electricity Grids Dominated by Wind and Solar) was created and published by Daily Sceptic and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Anonymous Engineer
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