Spain and Portugal outage, time to rethink Net Zero?
Discussion
I think we must all have been stunned to see what happen in Spain and Portugal. Reports suggest that the incident was only minutes away from spreeding across Europe. While reports suggest it was cause by net zero the root cause was a failure in the system, but Net zero policy significantly reduced the resilience of the network causing the blackouts and hampered efforts to restore power.
This is a big red flag to all those evangelists who constantly ignore the warnings regarding network instability caused by renewables. Does this event change you view?
For me it really should cause the Ed milibands in the UK to wake up and stop trying to gas lighting the British public into believing every is rosy in the land of Net Zero. Have an EV,Heat pump, house energy all as electricity seems more risky today than yesterday for me anyway. It makes me think we should roll back subsidies and fix the grid and energy price crisis before moving forward, what do you think?
This is a big red flag to all those evangelists who constantly ignore the warnings regarding network instability caused by renewables. Does this event change you view?
For me it really should cause the Ed milibands in the UK to wake up and stop trying to gas lighting the British public into believing every is rosy in the land of Net Zero. Have an EV,Heat pump, house energy all as electricity seems more risky today than yesterday for me anyway. It makes me think we should roll back subsidies and fix the grid and energy price crisis before moving forward, what do you think?
Decarbonisation of electricity generation is happening and is not going to unhappen - fossil fuels are too expensive, too environmentally damaging, and place too much power in the hands of a small number of foreign states with whom we are not particularly friendly.
Whether the current way in which it is being done is robust enough is certainly a question which needs to be asked, though. My gut feeling is that governments' desperate attempts to do it without actually spending public money is going to cause problems.
ETA: It also has to be said that we don't actually know the cause of these particular power cuts. The particularly rabidly right-wing sections of the British media have jumped on the "blame the renewables" bandwagon and they may well be right but no-one actually knows the cause yet. It could easily be another case of the oil-funded media blaming EVs for that car-park fire in Luton... which turned out to be caused by a diesel catching fire.
Whether the current way in which it is being done is robust enough is certainly a question which needs to be asked, though. My gut feeling is that governments' desperate attempts to do it without actually spending public money is going to cause problems.
ETA: It also has to be said that we don't actually know the cause of these particular power cuts. The particularly rabidly right-wing sections of the British media have jumped on the "blame the renewables" bandwagon and they may well be right but no-one actually knows the cause yet. It could easily be another case of the oil-funded media blaming EVs for that car-park fire in Luton... which turned out to be caused by a diesel catching fire.
Edited by kambites on Tuesday 29th April 09:18
When we have V2G, a 80Kwh fully charged car should be able to maintain an average UK house charged for more than a week. Now. Worst case scenario, electric everything, bleak winter, that would probably be far less. The outage was a one off. If it becomes regular then the problem is somewhere else.
ashenfie said:
I think we must all have been stunned to see what happen in Spain and Portugal. Reports suggest that the incident was only minutes away from spreeding across Europe. While reports suggest it was cause by net zero the root cause was a failure in the system, but Net zero policy significantly reduced the resilience of the network causing the blackouts and hampered efforts to restore power.
This is a big red flag to all those evangelists who constantly ignore the warnings regarding network instability caused by renewables. Does this event change you view?
For me it really should cause the Ed milibands in the UK to wake up and stop trying to gas lighting the British public into believing every is rosy in the land of Net Zero. Have an EV,Heat pump, house energy all as electricity seems more risky today than yesterday for me anyway. It makes me think we should roll back subsidies and fix the grid and energy price crisis before moving forward, what do you think?
Jesus Christ.This is a big red flag to all those evangelists who constantly ignore the warnings regarding network instability caused by renewables. Does this event change you view?
For me it really should cause the Ed milibands in the UK to wake up and stop trying to gas lighting the British public into believing every is rosy in the land of Net Zero. Have an EV,Heat pump, house energy all as electricity seems more risky today than yesterday for me anyway. It makes me think we should roll back subsidies and fix the grid and energy price crisis before moving forward, what do you think?
ashenfie said:
Reports suggest that the incident was only minutes away from spreeding across Europe. While reports suggest it was cause by net zero the root cause was a failure in the system, but Net zero policy significantly reduced the resilience of the network causing the blackouts and hampered efforts to restore power.
ok i'll bite. explain. try to do so using logic, bonus points for demonstrating at least a modicum of understanding of power networks. ashenfie said:
While reports suggest it was cause by net zero the root cause was a failure in the system, but Net zero policy significantly reduced the resilience of the network causing the blackouts and hampered efforts to restore power.
So Power System Engineers haven't yet determined the cause of the outage, but inexpert 'reports' have managed to come to these conclusions? Even when the engineers have come to an initial conclusion, there will no doubt be a months-long investigation to determine any contributing factors.
king around with Mother Nature I don't think will ever end very well.
PistonTim said:
Ah that's why I couldn't find any tin foil in the shop this morning....
While buying you tin foil and hopefully the cash machine works (i.e.not from M&S). Maybe it was aliens at M&S not a cyber attach?This is a real issue that is happening today and is acknowledged by the industry is as follows. The last time we built power stations in the UK was over 30 years ago and gas was the solution back then. Today we talking about better electricity interconnects and nuclear or maybe micro nuclear power stations. No one seams keen on storing electricity for some reason.
Ed Milliband is getting blasted even in the press for saying 'Gas prices are controlled by international markets' he denies that tax on fossil fuels make them more expensive and reducing the tax would reduce their cost. Further he does not recognise that the cost of supplying electricity to the grid could be reduced by removing green incentives changing the algorithm using for paying for the energy supplied. The algorithm used should not pay everyone who bid for a given slot the maximum amount but use weighted average. Gas is often the most expensive not because gas is expensive but the political engineer using makes it expensive.
A rare atmospheric phenomenon causing anomalous oscillations apparently.
Sounds legit.
Fine in principal, but assumes of course that the EV in question isn't being used to deliver its primary function during the period and is fully charged when the blackout occurs. It is a very handy bit of functionality though I agree, and wish our EV had it with us living out in the sticks in Yorkshire. Will have to keep relying on our 3kW petrol generators instead.
Sounds legit.
Pistonheadsdicoverer said:
When we have V2G, a 80Kwh fully charged car should be able to maintain an average UK house charged for more than a week. Now. Worst case scenario, electric everything, bleak winter, that would probably be far less. The outage was a one off. If it becomes regular then the problem is somewhere else.
I assume you mean V2L?Fine in principal, but assumes of course that the EV in question isn't being used to deliver its primary function during the period and is fully charged when the blackout occurs. It is a very handy bit of functionality though I agree, and wish our EV had it with us living out in the sticks in Yorkshire. Will have to keep relying on our 3kW petrol generators instead.
Edited by SWoll on Tuesday 29th April 10:20
ashenfie said:
SWoll said:
A rare atmospheric phenomenon causing anomalous oscillations apparently.
Sounds legit.
Mmm, Sunny day with temperatures around 20c with wind speed around 12mphSounds legit.
ashenfie said:
I think we must all have been stunned to see what happen in Spain and Portugal. Reports suggest that the incident was only minutes away from spreeding across Europe. While reports suggest it was cause by net zero the root cause was a failure in the system, but Net zero policy significantly reduced the resilience of the network causing the blackouts and hampered efforts to restore power.
This is a big red flag to all those evangelists who constantly ignore the warnings regarding network instability caused by renewables. Does this event change you view?
For me it really should cause the Ed milibands in the UK to wake up and stop trying to gas lighting the British public into believing every is rosy in the land of Net Zero. Have an EV,Heat pump, house energy all as electricity seems more risky today than yesterday for me anyway. It makes me think we should roll back subsidies and fix the grid and energy price crisis before moving forward, what do you think?
Should we be improving the grid? Yes. Can we do that while shifting from gas to other forms of generation? Yes. I don't see the link that's worrying you.This is a big red flag to all those evangelists who constantly ignore the warnings regarding network instability caused by renewables. Does this event change you view?
For me it really should cause the Ed milibands in the UK to wake up and stop trying to gas lighting the British public into believing every is rosy in the land of Net Zero. Have an EV,Heat pump, house energy all as electricity seems more risky today than yesterday for me anyway. It makes me think we should roll back subsidies and fix the grid and energy price crisis before moving forward, what do you think?
One of the big motivators at the moment for upgrading the grid is to be able to distribute power from a more diversified set of sources, both in terms of the original source of power and geography. That sort of diversification increases resiliency. It actively reduces risk. Net Zero drives that move towards diversification.
A couple of the really useful side effects of people sticking solar on their rooves, buying EVs and installing battery capacity to store excess solar or just to exploit cheap power overnight, and being able to schedule dishwashers, washing machines and car charging at night is that (a) our power system will have a load of really useful additional storage right next to the point of consumption paid for directly be the consumer and (b) demand will naturally get spread much more evenly across the entire day rather than being concentrated during period when people are awake. That gives consumers direct resiliency, if the grid can draw from individual customers' stored it gives the grid more resiliency, and the grid will be feeding a more constant and predictable load. That all sounds good to me.
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