Did solar energy trigger the Iberian blackout? | EUROtoday

As quickly because the lights went out in Spain and Portugal, the speculating about the reason for the blackout started. Was it a cyberattack? Atmospheric interference? Aliens?

Though the Spanish authorities is wanting into the potential of a cyberattack on the Spanish electrical energy grid, the top of the Spanish electrical energy transmission system operator Red Electrica (REE) , Eduardo Prieto, has dominated this out already.

Extreme frequency fluctuation

According to Prieto, two apparently separate incidents that occurred inside 1.5 seconds of one another in southwestern Spain threw the grid frequency off stability. He mentioned that this precipitated the outage of energy vegetation with a capability of 15 gigawatts (GW) — nearly half of the lively energy plant capability on the time.

Very giant and sudden deviations could cause a cascading failure, whereby excessive frequency fluctuations set off components and mechanisms in different energy vegetation (and enormous customers), which then routinely take these vegetation off the grid.

Prieto described it as fairly doable that this domino impact could have been triggered by solar energy vegetation.

Does that imply critics of renewable energies are proper once they say that an oversupply of solar energy triggered the blackout?

Claim: “Renewables, in this case solar, have just caused the first major #power outage in Spain, specifically due to an oversupply of solar,” an alleged physicist with a German account, posted on X, previously Twitter, garnering nearly 100,000 views (as of 30.04.2025, 16:40).

The person refered to Fritz Vahrenholt, a German chemistry professor and supervisor, who’s essential of power transition efforts and had defined in one other put up on X, which attracted greater than 400,000 views, that earlier than the grid failure in Spain, the manufacturing of renewable energies, particularly photo voltaic, had elevated greater than demand.

DW truth test: Unproven

The reason behind the facility outage has not been conclusively clarified. It is appropriate that on the time of the blackout, photo voltaic power offered round 60% (19.3 GW) of the facility obtainable within the Spanish grid. Moreover, it seems that solar energy vegetation dominated electrical energy manufacturing within the southwest of Spain.

Did all PV methods instantly change off?

For power transition critic Fritz Vahrenholt, there isn’t any doubt that the excess of photovoltaic (PV) energy within the Spanish grid was the “primary cause,” as he instructed DW by electronic mail. He mentioned that Spain had been compelled to export electrical energy to France because of this.

The “secondary cause” was the lack of this transmission line and because of this “all” the PV methods had then “abruptly” disconnected from the grid, he mentioned.

However, PV methods are usually not alleged to shut down abruptly. as a result of standardized laws for electrical energy producers have been in drive within the EU since 2016.

These laws stipulate that PV methods need to steadily scale back their feed-in if the grid frequency exceeds the restrict worth of fifty.2 hertz (Hz) because of an influence surplus.

“In Spain, corresponding grid connection guidelines were introduced at the end of the 2000s to ensure that PV systems do not simply disconnect from the grid in the event of a sudden grid fault,” mentioned Sönke Rogalla, a researcher on the German Fraunhofer Institute ISE, Europe’s largest photo voltaic analysis institute. He defined that these properties had been verified previous to operation as a part of certification procedures.

Furthermore, information avaiable thus far additionally contradict Vahrenholt’s thesis. Even if all photo voltaic vegetation had been taken off the grid on the identical time, there wouldn’t have been a shortfall of 15 GW, however no less than of 20.4 GW because the PV output on the time of the blackout was no less than 17 GW.

However, additionally nuclear energy vegetation, which provided 3.4 GW, had been taken off the grid as a precautionary measure.

Is excessive PV energy an issue for electrical energy grids?

It is documented that Spain’s energy grid connections to France and Portugal had been capped through the blackout. However, it’s nonetheless unclear whether or not this was the reason for the blackout in Spain or one of many domino results.

What is for certain is that Spain exported a web complete of three GW shortly earlier than the grid disconnection. As a results of the interruption to the facility traces, this surplus was instantly obtainable in Spain. Such an incident would undoubtedly be a significant burden for any electrical energy grid.

Vahrenholt believes that the low variety of coal and nuclear energy vegetation in Spain was an extra drawback, because the generators of such energy vegetation can serve to clean frequencies.

This stabilizing impact, often called instantaneous reserve, was most likely missing in Spain, wrote Enrique Garralaga, a managing director at a subsidiary of the German PV element producer SMA, in a LinkedIn put up.

“Technical solutions are available”

Fraunhofer researcher Rogalla confirmed that this might have contributed to the blackout however he had a unique perspective: “The blackout in Spain was not a PV failure, but probably a system failure,” he mentioned, including that “in this respect, I see it as an urgent reminder that the restructuring of the energy system poses major challenges.”

With the methods put in right now, it isn’t doable to function an electrical energy grid with photo voltaic and wind energy alone, he mentioned. He additionally rejected the declare {that a} excessive proportion of renewable energies was an unsolvable drawback. “We are constantly learning. The technical solutions are now available, now we have to set about implementing them.”

The outgoing German authorities outlined a doable approach ahead in a roadmap. The regulatory authority, the European Union Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators, or ACER, has already submitted a proposal for the implementation of latest options at EU stage.

Conclusion: The idea that ‘an oversupply of photo voltaic (energy)’ was the explanation for the blackout can’t be substantiated. Although a excessive proportion of renewable electrical energy within the grid is without doubt one of the main challenges of the power transition, it isn’t an unsolvable drawback.

This article was initially printed in German.