August 21, 2025 • 29 mins
In April, Spain suffered a nationwide blackout that lasted nearly a full day. It was a traumatic event for one of Europe’s fastest adopters of solar power, tripling capacity in just five years. The outage sparked a big question: Was solar to blame? And what will it take to avoid blackouts in the renewables era? Bloomberg Green’s Laura Millan joins Akshat Rathi on Zero to unpack the lessons from the Iberian Peninsula and the technologies that could make such blackouts a thing of the past.
Explore further:
- The Fix for Solar Power Blackouts Is Already Here
- Past episodes of the Bottlenecks Series
Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd. Special thanks to Eleanor Harrison Dengate, Siobhan Wagner, Sommer Saadi and Mohsis Andam. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at zeropod@bloomberg.net. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to zero. I am Akshatrati this week? How to
avoid blackouts? We take electricity for granted, and when it disappears,
(00:24):
even briefly, we struggle to do simple things in life,
like taking an elevator or crossing the road without a
red light. Now imagine a country wide blackout, not for minutes,
but for nearly a full day. That's what happened in
Spain earlier this year.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
There was no music, there wasn't no TVs were on,
and people were just on their balconies or outside talking
and just spending a spring night under the lights of
the candles.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
That's my colleague Laura Milan. And while her experience on
the blackout sounds like something straight out of her rom com,
that moment was an exception because for almost a full day,
Spain was in chaos and it sparked a huge conversation.
In the last five years, Spain has tripled the amount
of solar it has deployed on the grid, because, of course,
(01:16):
it is now the cheapest source of electricity, and spain
story is not unique. Solar is being deployed in huge
amounts nearly everywhere. That's also why people wanted to know
was solar to blame for this blackout, and if it was,
what needs to be done to make modern grids stable
when intermittent renewables are taking up a growing share of
(01:37):
the energy mix today. We are going to look at
that question and our reporting trying to answer it. To
tell that story, I'm joined by my Bloomberg Green colleague
Lura Milan, who is based in Madrid. We'll look at
the lessons from the Spanish blackout, get nerdy about the
solutions that are already available, and hear what places like
the UK and Australia that have huge amounts of renewables
(01:58):
already are doing to stabilize the grid. This is the
fourth episode in the Bottleneck series in which we look
at the little known things holding back electrification and clean energy.
Check out the previous episodes in the show notes. Laura,
welcome back to Zero.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
Hello, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
So I want to start a few months ago in
April with what happened in Spain. There was a nationwide blackout.
It affected not just Spain but also Portugal, some parts
of France, and it kicked off this huge conversation about
whether renewables are to blame. But before we get into
the details. Tell us about your experience, because you were
in Madrid and you saw how it played out and
(02:39):
you yourself were affected.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Yes, of course, this was everyone in the country and
like you said, in the region. Actually, so I was
at the office, I was working and suddenly the lights
went off. But because we have a backup generator in
the office, the computer season and we thought it was,
you know, some sort of issue with electricity in the building,
so we just waited for a bit. But then we
(03:03):
started hearing sirens outside and when we looked out the window,
we realized the street lights were off, and that's when
we started thinking that something more serious was going on.
So I started texting and so did others in the office,
family members and friends outside of Madrid to figure out
how widespread that was. And we started getting messages back
(03:25):
from people all over Spain saying they didn't have electricity,
and you know, within the first few minutes we worked
out that the lights were off across the country.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
And how did the rest of the day play out.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
The rest of the day was quite intense for us
as journalists because obviously it was all about trying to
figure out what had happened and why and what the
impacts were. Without knowing how long the generator in.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
The office would last.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
It actually ended up lasting the whole night, which was
very useful for us, but it wasn't the case for
you know, many people across the country, so people were
trapped in trains and metro for hours. The electricity lights
and cities weren't working, so there were huge, huge queues
of cars people trying to get back home. Shops didn't
(04:14):
have power and had to close or remain open without electricity,
so it was a tricky day. Unfortunately, emergency services, hospitals,
airports all had backup systems that worked, and we actually
found out these sort of strategic places have backup systems
that can last four days at a time. So thankfully
(04:37):
the blackout didn't last for that long, and except for
some events and some people that obviously had to spend
a lot of time stuck inside trains and metro wagons,
essentially the rest of the country was okay. So obviously
my main concern when the first few moments of stress
and trying to figure out what was going on, was
(04:59):
trying to find out where my family were.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
In the end, I walked back home.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
It took me a bit, a bit longer than it
should have, and I found that they were okay. Thankfully,
we've got a small gas powered barbecue, so we were
able to eat dinner. And as the hours passed and
it became dark, it was actually a pretty beautiful scene
to watch from our home the windows of our neighbors
(05:26):
that were lead on candles, because that's what everyone was
using candles and flashlights. And then when the lights started
to come back, they came back district by districts, and
from our window we were able to see other buildings
that started to be lead and then light came two
hours that just before midnight.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
So that was our little blackout adventure.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
I'm glad you got a little moment of peace talk
us through what we know happened and what we understand
caused the blackout.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
So what caused the blackout is still under investigation. There
are four different investigation ongoing at the moment. One by
the Spanish grid operator has already finished and they filed
the report waiting for the definitive reports of the other investigations.
We know some things filled. We know there were some
(06:15):
outages in some solar farms in Spain South and that
destabilized the greed, but that had happened before and didn't
lead to a nation wide blackout, so likely what happened
is a chain of events that happened one after another,
and the combination of.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
All of these led to the blackout.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
But again, what we know happened is these solar firms
disconnected themselves from the greed. They stopped providing power, and
then the grid operator, which is in charge of maintaining
greed stability and making sure the lights are on, requested
backup stability services from the gas plants in Spain, and
(06:57):
the gas plans weren't quick enough to get started, so
because it took them about an hour and a half
to go online. Within that period of time between the
moment that the greed operator requested their services and the
moment when they actually could start running, that's when the
blackout happened.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
What happened then.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Was because of this lack of stability, of this instability
in the greed, other generation plans across the country detected that,
and to avoid this instability filtering into their own networks,
into their own systems, they disconnected themselves and so within
a matter of a second or less, than that, the
(07:35):
whole country went into the dark, as we know, and
that's what the investigations have found so far. And then
what they recommended as well, Spain's greed Operator and then
the European Greed Operator, which is also investigating and has
released some initial conclusions, is that Spain needs more synchronous
(07:56):
compensators and greed forming inverters. So this are devices that
can manage that can help the grid operator handle voltage
instability like the one we had on April twenty eight.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
With more of these devices, the blackout wouldn't have happened.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
And so the next step for the Spanish greed is
installing more of these devices. And this is where we
teamed up you and I actually, because the solutions needed
to deal with these blackouts are not new. That's when
we started you and I having this conversation of not
just what went wrong in Spain, but what can countries
(08:35):
do to make sure that doesn't happen again. Actually during
the UK, which had its own blackout in twenty nineteen,
what happened after that?
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Yeah, it's clearly not the first blackout of the renewables
era so to speak. The UK had one on August ninth,
twenty nineteen. It was relatively small compared to what happened
in Spain about one million people are affected. Lights back
on in forty five minutes. But the event was big
(09:04):
enough and worrying enough that the grid operator was forced
to take immediate action. And one of the things that
it did was create this program within months to provide
grid stabilizing services, and synchronous compensators were among the first
to try and provide these services so that they could
(09:25):
help avoid these blackouts.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
And can we step back just for one second, and
can you explain to us what synchronous compensator is and
why does the greed need it and how it works?
Speaker 1 (09:38):
Essentially, Yeah, it is a really complicated thing, so let's
take it step by step. The grid as it has
existed over the past one hundred years has run on
spinning things, and that might not seem like something people
realize because we never see those spinning things. Those are
turbines that are powered by either coal that hits up
(10:00):
water produce the steam and then the steam turns the turbine,
or it's a gas powered turbine where the gas itself
is being burnt inside the turbine and the spinning action
is happening surrounded by magnets, and because of the interaction
between the shaft that is spinning and the magnets, you
get a production of electricity. Electricity that we get on
(10:21):
the grid is alternating current. It sort of swings between
plus and minus and it does so at a very
constant frequency, which is to say, it swings between plus
and minus about fifty times per second, or what grid
people will call fifty hertz. Four one hundred years, grid
operators have known how to manage electricity when there are
(10:44):
these spinning devices on the grid. But now comes solar,
which is the first form of electricity generation that has
nothing that is moving. It's really just light from the
sun falling on some silicon chips that releases a bunch
of electrons and you get electricity. And it is a
(11:05):
form of electricity that the grid hasn't quite understood how
to handle yet. And so in the short term, what
the grid operators have thought they could do is, if
you're not going to have coal or gas power turbines,
you add something that is spinning but is not burning
any fossil fuels, and that's what a synchronous compensator is
(11:27):
it really just is a device that consumes electricity small
amount all the time and keeps this one hundred ton
object spinning all the time and providing these grid stability services.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
And you actually want to see one of them in action, right,
Can you tell us what did it look like, this big,
heavy machine and what was it doing for the grid
specifically in the place where you want to see it?
Speaker 1 (11:54):
So I got to see the very first one that
was built in the UK following this blackout. It was
built in Liverpool in the north of England and it's
situated between an abandoned market and this rusty old substation.
But when I went to the site, it had this
high fence that was electrically charged because it's a critical
(12:15):
national infrastructure so it needs to be protected. Before we
got in, we had to put on ear protection because
I was told they are very loud and that we
won't be able to have a conversation inside. So the
first thing that you see when you go inside is
this big object that's behind a metal shield and it's
(12:35):
very loud. And the second thing that happens is you
smell oil. That oil is necessary to help this ninety
eight ton object to spin at fifteen hundred rotations per
minute constantly.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
So that's so interesting that the object that you were
talking about, that that performs this very important function for
the greed and to keep the lights of a country
on is somewhere that.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
You know, probably you could walk.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
Through there or next to there and not even notice.
Did they tell you how often? Because obviously the synchronous
compensator is turning all the time, but how often does
it really kick into action and provide this much needed
stability service to the grid, do you know?
Speaker 1 (13:16):
So it actually kicks in every few days, and that
is to say every few days the grid in Liverpool
is experiencing something like what Spain experienced, which is either
a solar farm going down or an interconnector say from Norway,
which is bringing in one gigab of power just suddenly stopping.
(13:38):
And this device, the synchronous compensator, basically pumps in extra
power when needed and it reacts within one millisecond of
such a fault happening, or if there is an extra
injection of power because a power plant is malfunctioning, then
it absorbs that power and it does that automatically. It's
(14:01):
not like some person has to decide it is reacting
to the variations in the grid and making sure that
the grid's frequency, which is fifty hertz, stays constant by
either injecting power when needed or absorbing power when needed.
And you can actually measure that change because the rotational speed,
(14:23):
so if it's removing at fifteen hundred rpm, it might
either move a little too fast or little too slow
when it is in action doing this work for the grid.
More from my conversation with Laura Milan on the Spanish
blackout and the technologies needed to solve it after the shortbreak.
(14:44):
If you're finding this episode insightful, please take a moment
to rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Recently,
a listener who goes by them Changes First said, listen
to several episodes of Zero, and you will get a
sense of both how much there is to do on
climate and how much we've made. Thank you them Changes First.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Actually you've just told us how the grid has run
on spinning things for more than a century. But actually
now we are seeing coal plants being decommissioned and even
gas plants, and in the Spanish case, we saw how
gas plants weren't fast enough to come online to prevent
the blackout.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
So these are.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
Being replaced with synchronous compensators in some places. But my
question is will we remain stuck with the spinning things
to make the grid work or is there something else?
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Yeah, in our reporting we found that grid operators are
comfortable with spinning things. That's why if a gaster wine
article poplant is being shut down, or even a nuclear
power plant as we know happened in Germany, they are
first being replaced by these synchronous compensators because it's sort
of a like to like replacement for the grid operator.
(16:07):
But we also know that the future doesn't have to
involve spinning things. There are these grid forming inverters that
are available right now and deployed in some places that
could do that job too.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
So can you tell us what a greed forming invertery
is and how it works.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
So inverters are something that have existed in the renewable
era from the very beginning, because solar plants and batteries
produce electricity as direct current, and before they can be
put on the grid, they need to be turned into
alternating current. But the inverters that exist on most of
these plants today are passive inverters. They basically copy the
(16:48):
signal that is already on the grid. So if the
grid is running at forty nine point five herds, the
inverter will produce alternating current at forty nine point five herds.
That can be a problem sometimes because if there is
a fault on the grid, these inverters might amplify that
fault and make things worse. And so there is a
move to make these inverters smart by putting a computer
(17:09):
processing chip in there and making them actually help the
grid form the right frequency. So that's why they're called
grid forming inverters. And what's being done these days is
batteries are being linked up with these grid forming inverters
and they can do what these spinning devices are doing,
just in a digital manner. So the spinning devices produce
(17:33):
something called inertia, which is when a thing is spinning,
it keeps spinning because of Newton's laws of motion. That
is what is helping grid operators manage stabilizing the grid.
What grid forming inverters are doing are essentially creating that
signal with digital processing and making it be as good
(17:53):
as what spinning devices could do.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
I love that we are learning so many new and
technical concepts in this US today. Actually, how widespread is
the use of these batteries is greed forming batteries right now.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
Synchronous compensators are cheaper to build and so a lot
of them are being deployed initially, but they are expensive
to run because they're constantly consuming power. Batteries, on the
other hand, are much more expensive upfront to build because
batteries still are not that cheap, but they don't consume
power all the time. The second problem with batteries is
(18:27):
that because grid operators aren't yet comfortable with using batteries
in this manner, they're only starting to be deployed in
small ways in some places. So Australia has a few examples.
The UK is building a grid forming battery right now.
There are few in the US, but it's not as
widespread as we would like. We spoke to Felicia Amanoff
(18:50):
of Bloomberg and EF and she said that grid operators
are not yet fully trusting of how they work on
the grid, but once they do, we'll start to see more
of them. Now, we talked about sort of the lessons
from the UK's blackout, why these technical solutions like synchronous
compensators and gride forming inverters could help. What is Spain
(19:14):
planning to do as a result of its own blackout?
Speaker 2 (19:17):
So Spain started working on first of all, obviously finding
out what had happened, but also how to make sure
it never happens again, because obviously it was even if
it just lasted a few hours, it was quite an
impressive and traumatic experience for the country to have zero
electricity for several hours.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
On a day.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
So what we saw on the aftermath of the blackout,
on the immediate hours and days after was the Spanish
grid operator going back to what it now it works,
and so we actually saw less renewable power on the
grid and more gas on the first few days, and
then that gradually recovered, so renewable power going up, gas
(20:03):
going down on the weeks after. And then on June nineteen,
the Spanish regulator CNMC approved a revision of the rules
aimed at keeping the voltage on the greed stable. Those
rules had been stalled for months and even years, it
just took so long for the regulator to approve them,
but as soon as the blackout happened. It looks like
(20:25):
for some reason, the regulator thought that that was a
good moment to approve them and make them kick in.
So the new rules open what's called a stability market
that was previously accessible only to gas and nuclear power operators.
That the market mechanism that encourages those in it to
set up mechanisms install devices to provide stability to the market.
(20:47):
So again, before only gas and nuclear power plants were
able to access that, and now wind and solar power
plants will also be allowed into these stability markets. So
that step will encour it's renewable operators to install devices
like grid forming inverters, like synchronous compensators that will provide
stability to the greed because they will get paid for it. Worse,
(21:10):
before they weren't, so they didn't have any motivation to
do it.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
We are seeing now renewable deployment just grow rapidly. There
is an IA report that came out recently that looked
at the share of wind and solar in the global
grid mix, and between twenty sixteen and now, in a
period of ten years, it has gone up from four
(21:36):
percent to twenty percent and it's showing no signs of stopping.
We know that in the UK after this blackout, with
the addition of grid forming inverters and synchronous compensators, the
amount of renewables on the grid kept rising. The same
thing happened in Australia, where there was a blackout in
(21:56):
twenty sixteen, in a place where wind power was growing
very rapidly. They followed similar steps and now Australia has
a lot more wind and solar on its grid. So
are we seeing countries around the world recognize the need
for these grid stabilizing technologies and are they investing in it?
Speaker 2 (22:16):
Unfortunately not, as you were just mentioning, what we are
seeing is countries reacting after a major event, a major
blackout happens. So what we know from research right Bloomberg
and EF is that investment in the grid is lagging
in comparison to how much is being invested on adding
renewables to the greed. So the twenty seven members of
(22:40):
the European Union plus the UK invest on average zero
point seven dollars in greed for every dollar spent on renewables.
Spain spent zero point three dollars for every dollar in
the greed, and that's the lowest among the countries that
Bloomberg and EF was tracking. And it's not just Spain.
(23:00):
There are blackouts everywhere in the world and they are
causing political backlash against renewable and that's something that politicians
can afford right now if they want to fulfill their
climate and their renewable commitments. So that's something that Antonio
Uterre is the Head of the United Nations himself recognized
(23:21):
in a speech in July where he asked countries to
really focus on greed investments and in greed infrastructure, saying
that the ratio that we were mentioning before, the ratio
between renewable investment and investment in the grid, should be
one to one.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
Well, it's kind of interesting when the head of the
United Nations is talking about investments in the grid and
a speech like, clearly this is a big issue that
needs to be handled, and of course renewables are needed
for meeting climate goals, but they are also increasingly, especially
in developing countries, needed just to be able to keep
the cost of energy low, because we know these are
(23:59):
the cheapest source of electricity that can be built. Is
it just investments that are lacking or are there other
obstacles that are holding back countries like Spain from actually
deploying these technologies.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
Investments and money are not the only bottlenecks. Actually, the
main bottlenecks are regulation and the time it takes for
each one of these machines, the synchronous compensatures and even
the greed forming inverters to be bought and installed into
the greed So, for example, the EU, the whole of
the EU operates under rules that were approved in twenty twelve,
(24:34):
so that's more than ten years old, and they have
been working EU institutions on an upgrade to the electricity
Network Code for the past two years, but there's no
clue on when that will become effective. So this upgrade
would in theory provide a framework for countries to then
set up their own stability markets, a necessary step towards
(24:55):
again encouraging companies to install devices like Spain has done now,
devices like c synchronous compensators and greed forming batteries. More
regulation is needed in Spain to keep evolving, to continue
encouraging companies and setting up these markets and this framework.
But what we have seen actually is that earlier in
(25:16):
the summer a degree with additional measures stalled in Congress.
What's happening has nothing to do with greed stability, but
the ruling Socialist party is in minority in Congress, so
it needs to agree with other parties to pass any
regulations at all. And once the regulation is sorted, as
we have seen in the EU and Spain, that's not
(25:37):
a quick or easy thing. Then starts the moment of
drawing up the contracts and setting the specifications, the technical
specifications for the machinery, whether it's a synchronous compensator or
greed forming battery. So we spoke to someone at Siemen's
Energy that told us that in Germany these documents can
be as long as two thousand pages and it can
(25:59):
take up to ten years to put them together and
then set up the tender and for companies to respond
to that and a winner to be declared. So it's
a very long process even when the regulations are in.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
The Semen's Energy expert was also telling us it's not
like all countries do this. The UK does have leaner
regulations and can get synchronous compensators on the grid pretty quickly.
The Liverpool tender was one and the device was working
within eighteen months of it happening, So there are clearly
lots of lessons that countries can learn from each other. Now,
(26:36):
when we do this kind of reporting, we are spending
weeks and months talking to experts, going to places looking
at these devices. But editors want this story to reach
a big audience, and one of the frames that our editor,
Aaron Rudkoff, was very keen on us hitting in the
story was that is there kind of a hangover that
(26:58):
comes from deploying so much solar because it's cheap, because
it meets not just renewables goals, but also lowers the
cost of power on the grid. Are they going on
a sugar rush or alcohol bench just deploying lots and
lots of solar but not realizing what might be the outcomes.
(27:18):
What do you conclude having done this work.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
I think it's a good metaphor.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
We know how these countries have set up first very
ambitious renewable targets, So the EU has a clean energy
target of at least forty two percent by twenty thirty,
whilst Spain has an even more ambitious target of eighty
one percent by the end of this decade. Then we
saw how the cost of renewables went down, and they
(27:44):
became the perfect solution to provide cheap energy at a
time when there.
Speaker 3 (27:48):
Was a cost of living crisis. So obviously that was
the perfect solution. But they just forgot the very.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
Important thing that the grid does, which is connect the
place where the power is produced with the places where the.
Speaker 3 (28:03):
Power is consumed.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
And that's when the hangover comes in in form of
a terrible blackout that leaves a whole country to countries
actually without power for hours, and people suddenly asking about
devices that no one was concerned about before. Synchronous compensators,
creed forming inverters. Suddenly everyone in Spain. Now it has
(28:25):
become part of the conversation why don't we have these
things that are hangover?
Speaker 1 (28:31):
Yes, this is a lot of fun to report, quite
a nerdy story, but such an important solution. Thank you Laura,
thank you Action, and thank you for listening to zero
now for the sound of the week. That is the
(28:54):
sound of the synchronous compensator. I went to see in
Liverpool loud Huh. To read full report on the Spanish
blackout and the solutions to deal with it, head to
Bloomberg dot com or find a link in the show
notes If you like this episode, please take a moment
to rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Share this episode with a friend or with someone who
likes spinning things. This episode was produced by Oscar Boy.
(29:18):
Our theme music is composed by Wonderly Special. Thanks to
everyone involved in reporting this story. Haley Warren, Tom Fabrere,
Will Mathis, Thomas Goulthieri, Emily Busso, Aaron Rudkoff, som Nadbat
and Jody Maxin i'm Akshatrati Back soon.
Welcome to zero. I am Akshatrati this week? How to
avoid blackouts? We take electricity for granted, and when it disappears,
(00:24):
even briefly, we struggle to do simple things in life,
like taking an elevator or crossing the road without a
red light. Now imagine a country wide blackout, not for minutes,
but for nearly a full day. That's what happened in
Spain earlier this year.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
There was no music, there wasn't no TVs were on,
and people were just on their balconies or outside talking
and just spending a spring night under the lights of
the candles.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
That's my colleague Laura Milan. And while her experience on
the blackout sounds like something straight out of her rom com,
that moment was an exception because for almost a full day,
Spain was in chaos and it sparked a huge conversation.
In the last five years, Spain has tripled the amount
of solar it has deployed on the grid, because, of course,
(01:16):
it is now the cheapest source of electricity, and spain
story is not unique. Solar is being deployed in huge
amounts nearly everywhere. That's also why people wanted to know
was solar to blame for this blackout, and if it was,
what needs to be done to make modern grids stable
when intermittent renewables are taking up a growing share of
(01:37):
the energy mix today. We are going to look at
that question and our reporting trying to answer it. To
tell that story, I'm joined by my Bloomberg Green colleague
Lura Milan, who is based in Madrid. We'll look at
the lessons from the Spanish blackout, get nerdy about the
solutions that are already available, and hear what places like
the UK and Australia that have huge amounts of renewables
(01:58):
already are doing to stabilize the grid. This is the
fourth episode in the Bottleneck series in which we look
at the little known things holding back electrification and clean energy.
Check out the previous episodes in the show notes. Laura,
welcome back to Zero.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
Hello, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
So I want to start a few months ago in
April with what happened in Spain. There was a nationwide blackout.
It affected not just Spain but also Portugal, some parts
of France, and it kicked off this huge conversation about
whether renewables are to blame. But before we get into
the details. Tell us about your experience, because you were
in Madrid and you saw how it played out and
(02:39):
you yourself were affected.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Yes, of course, this was everyone in the country and
like you said, in the region. Actually, so I was
at the office, I was working and suddenly the lights
went off. But because we have a backup generator in
the office, the computer season and we thought it was,
you know, some sort of issue with electricity in the building,
so we just waited for a bit. But then we
(03:03):
started hearing sirens outside and when we looked out the window,
we realized the street lights were off, and that's when
we started thinking that something more serious was going on.
So I started texting and so did others in the office,
family members and friends outside of Madrid to figure out
how widespread that was. And we started getting messages back
(03:25):
from people all over Spain saying they didn't have electricity,
and you know, within the first few minutes we worked
out that the lights were off across the country.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
And how did the rest of the day play out.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
The rest of the day was quite intense for us
as journalists because obviously it was all about trying to
figure out what had happened and why and what the
impacts were. Without knowing how long the generator in.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
The office would last.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
It actually ended up lasting the whole night, which was
very useful for us, but it wasn't the case for
you know, many people across the country, so people were
trapped in trains and metro for hours. The electricity lights
and cities weren't working, so there were huge, huge queues
of cars people trying to get back home. Shops didn't
(04:14):
have power and had to close or remain open without electricity,
so it was a tricky day. Unfortunately, emergency services, hospitals,
airports all had backup systems that worked, and we actually
found out these sort of strategic places have backup systems
that can last four days at a time. So thankfully
(04:37):
the blackout didn't last for that long, and except for
some events and some people that obviously had to spend
a lot of time stuck inside trains and metro wagons,
essentially the rest of the country was okay. So obviously
my main concern when the first few moments of stress
and trying to figure out what was going on, was
(04:59):
trying to find out where my family were.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
In the end, I walked back home.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
It took me a bit, a bit longer than it
should have, and I found that they were okay. Thankfully,
we've got a small gas powered barbecue, so we were
able to eat dinner. And as the hours passed and
it became dark, it was actually a pretty beautiful scene
to watch from our home the windows of our neighbors
(05:26):
that were lead on candles, because that's what everyone was
using candles and flashlights. And then when the lights started
to come back, they came back district by districts, and
from our window we were able to see other buildings
that started to be lead and then light came two
hours that just before midnight.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
So that was our little blackout adventure.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
I'm glad you got a little moment of peace talk
us through what we know happened and what we understand
caused the blackout.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
So what caused the blackout is still under investigation. There
are four different investigation ongoing at the moment. One by
the Spanish grid operator has already finished and they filed
the report waiting for the definitive reports of the other investigations.
We know some things filled. We know there were some
(06:15):
outages in some solar farms in Spain South and that
destabilized the greed, but that had happened before and didn't
lead to a nation wide blackout, so likely what happened
is a chain of events that happened one after another,
and the combination of.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
All of these led to the blackout.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
But again, what we know happened is these solar firms
disconnected themselves from the greed. They stopped providing power, and
then the grid operator, which is in charge of maintaining
greed stability and making sure the lights are on, requested
backup stability services from the gas plants in Spain, and
(06:57):
the gas plans weren't quick enough to get started, so
because it took them about an hour and a half
to go online. Within that period of time between the
moment that the greed operator requested their services and the
moment when they actually could start running, that's when the
blackout happened.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
What happened then.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Was because of this lack of stability, of this instability
in the greed, other generation plans across the country detected that,
and to avoid this instability filtering into their own networks,
into their own systems, they disconnected themselves and so within
a matter of a second or less, than that, the
(07:35):
whole country went into the dark, as we know, and
that's what the investigations have found so far. And then
what they recommended as well, Spain's greed Operator and then
the European Greed Operator, which is also investigating and has
released some initial conclusions, is that Spain needs more synchronous
(07:56):
compensators and greed forming inverters. So this are devices that
can manage that can help the grid operator handle voltage
instability like the one we had on April twenty eight.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
With more of these devices, the blackout wouldn't have happened.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
And so the next step for the Spanish greed is
installing more of these devices. And this is where we
teamed up you and I actually, because the solutions needed
to deal with these blackouts are not new. That's when
we started you and I having this conversation of not
just what went wrong in Spain, but what can countries
(08:35):
do to make sure that doesn't happen again. Actually during
the UK, which had its own blackout in twenty nineteen,
what happened after that?
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Yeah, it's clearly not the first blackout of the renewables
era so to speak. The UK had one on August ninth,
twenty nineteen. It was relatively small compared to what happened
in Spain about one million people are affected. Lights back
on in forty five minutes. But the event was big
(09:04):
enough and worrying enough that the grid operator was forced
to take immediate action. And one of the things that
it did was create this program within months to provide
grid stabilizing services, and synchronous compensators were among the first
to try and provide these services so that they could
(09:25):
help avoid these blackouts.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
And can we step back just for one second, and
can you explain to us what synchronous compensator is and
why does the greed need it and how it works?
Speaker 1 (09:38):
Essentially, Yeah, it is a really complicated thing, so let's
take it step by step. The grid as it has
existed over the past one hundred years has run on
spinning things, and that might not seem like something people
realize because we never see those spinning things. Those are
turbines that are powered by either coal that hits up
(10:00):
water produce the steam and then the steam turns the turbine,
or it's a gas powered turbine where the gas itself
is being burnt inside the turbine and the spinning action
is happening surrounded by magnets, and because of the interaction
between the shaft that is spinning and the magnets, you
get a production of electricity. Electricity that we get on
(10:21):
the grid is alternating current. It sort of swings between
plus and minus and it does so at a very
constant frequency, which is to say, it swings between plus
and minus about fifty times per second, or what grid
people will call fifty hertz. Four one hundred years, grid
operators have known how to manage electricity when there are
(10:44):
these spinning devices on the grid. But now comes solar,
which is the first form of electricity generation that has
nothing that is moving. It's really just light from the
sun falling on some silicon chips that releases a bunch
of electrons and you get electricity. And it is a
(11:05):
form of electricity that the grid hasn't quite understood how
to handle yet. And so in the short term, what
the grid operators have thought they could do is, if
you're not going to have coal or gas power turbines,
you add something that is spinning but is not burning
any fossil fuels, and that's what a synchronous compensator is
(11:27):
it really just is a device that consumes electricity small
amount all the time and keeps this one hundred ton
object spinning all the time and providing these grid stability services.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
And you actually want to see one of them in action, right,
Can you tell us what did it look like, this big,
heavy machine and what was it doing for the grid
specifically in the place where you want to see it?
Speaker 1 (11:54):
So I got to see the very first one that
was built in the UK following this blackout. It was
built in Liverpool in the north of England and it's
situated between an abandoned market and this rusty old substation.
But when I went to the site, it had this
high fence that was electrically charged because it's a critical
(12:15):
national infrastructure so it needs to be protected. Before we
got in, we had to put on ear protection because
I was told they are very loud and that we
won't be able to have a conversation inside. So the
first thing that you see when you go inside is
this big object that's behind a metal shield and it's
(12:35):
very loud. And the second thing that happens is you
smell oil. That oil is necessary to help this ninety
eight ton object to spin at fifteen hundred rotations per
minute constantly.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
So that's so interesting that the object that you were
talking about, that that performs this very important function for
the greed and to keep the lights of a country
on is somewhere that.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
You know, probably you could walk.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
Through there or next to there and not even notice.
Did they tell you how often? Because obviously the synchronous
compensator is turning all the time, but how often does
it really kick into action and provide this much needed
stability service to the grid, do you know?
Speaker 1 (13:16):
So it actually kicks in every few days, and that
is to say every few days the grid in Liverpool
is experiencing something like what Spain experienced, which is either
a solar farm going down or an interconnector say from Norway,
which is bringing in one gigab of power just suddenly stopping.
(13:38):
And this device, the synchronous compensator, basically pumps in extra
power when needed and it reacts within one millisecond of
such a fault happening, or if there is an extra
injection of power because a power plant is malfunctioning, then
it absorbs that power and it does that automatically. It's
(14:01):
not like some person has to decide it is reacting
to the variations in the grid and making sure that
the grid's frequency, which is fifty hertz, stays constant by
either injecting power when needed or absorbing power when needed.
And you can actually measure that change because the rotational speed,
(14:23):
so if it's removing at fifteen hundred rpm, it might
either move a little too fast or little too slow
when it is in action doing this work for the grid.
More from my conversation with Laura Milan on the Spanish
blackout and the technologies needed to solve it after the shortbreak.
(14:44):
If you're finding this episode insightful, please take a moment
to rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Recently,
a listener who goes by them Changes First said, listen
to several episodes of Zero, and you will get a
sense of both how much there is to do on
climate and how much we've made. Thank you them Changes First.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Actually you've just told us how the grid has run
on spinning things for more than a century. But actually
now we are seeing coal plants being decommissioned and even
gas plants, and in the Spanish case, we saw how
gas plants weren't fast enough to come online to prevent
the blackout.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
So these are.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
Being replaced with synchronous compensators in some places. But my
question is will we remain stuck with the spinning things
to make the grid work or is there something else?
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Yeah, in our reporting we found that grid operators are
comfortable with spinning things. That's why if a gaster wine
article poplant is being shut down, or even a nuclear
power plant as we know happened in Germany, they are
first being replaced by these synchronous compensators because it's sort
of a like to like replacement for the grid operator.
(16:07):
But we also know that the future doesn't have to
involve spinning things. There are these grid forming inverters that
are available right now and deployed in some places that
could do that job too.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
So can you tell us what a greed forming invertery
is and how it works.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
So inverters are something that have existed in the renewable
era from the very beginning, because solar plants and batteries
produce electricity as direct current, and before they can be
put on the grid, they need to be turned into
alternating current. But the inverters that exist on most of
these plants today are passive inverters. They basically copy the
(16:48):
signal that is already on the grid. So if the
grid is running at forty nine point five herds, the
inverter will produce alternating current at forty nine point five herds.
That can be a problem sometimes because if there is
a fault on the grid, these inverters might amplify that
fault and make things worse. And so there is a
move to make these inverters smart by putting a computer
(17:09):
processing chip in there and making them actually help the
grid form the right frequency. So that's why they're called
grid forming inverters. And what's being done these days is
batteries are being linked up with these grid forming inverters
and they can do what these spinning devices are doing,
just in a digital manner. So the spinning devices produce
(17:33):
something called inertia, which is when a thing is spinning,
it keeps spinning because of Newton's laws of motion. That
is what is helping grid operators manage stabilizing the grid.
What grid forming inverters are doing are essentially creating that
signal with digital processing and making it be as good
(17:53):
as what spinning devices could do.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
I love that we are learning so many new and
technical concepts in this US today. Actually, how widespread is
the use of these batteries is greed forming batteries right now.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
Synchronous compensators are cheaper to build and so a lot
of them are being deployed initially, but they are expensive
to run because they're constantly consuming power. Batteries, on the
other hand, are much more expensive upfront to build because
batteries still are not that cheap, but they don't consume
power all the time. The second problem with batteries is
(18:27):
that because grid operators aren't yet comfortable with using batteries
in this manner, they're only starting to be deployed in
small ways in some places. So Australia has a few examples.
The UK is building a grid forming battery right now.
There are few in the US, but it's not as
widespread as we would like. We spoke to Felicia Amanoff
(18:50):
of Bloomberg and EF and she said that grid operators
are not yet fully trusting of how they work on
the grid, but once they do, we'll start to see more
of them. Now, we talked about sort of the lessons
from the UK's blackout, why these technical solutions like synchronous
compensators and gride forming inverters could help. What is Spain
(19:14):
planning to do as a result of its own blackout?
Speaker 2 (19:17):
So Spain started working on first of all, obviously finding
out what had happened, but also how to make sure
it never happens again, because obviously it was even if
it just lasted a few hours, it was quite an
impressive and traumatic experience for the country to have zero
electricity for several hours.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
On a day.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
So what we saw on the aftermath of the blackout,
on the immediate hours and days after was the Spanish
grid operator going back to what it now it works,
and so we actually saw less renewable power on the
grid and more gas on the first few days, and
then that gradually recovered, so renewable power going up, gas
(20:03):
going down on the weeks after. And then on June nineteen,
the Spanish regulator CNMC approved a revision of the rules
aimed at keeping the voltage on the greed stable. Those
rules had been stalled for months and even years, it
just took so long for the regulator to approve them,
but as soon as the blackout happened. It looks like
(20:25):
for some reason, the regulator thought that that was a
good moment to approve them and make them kick in.
So the new rules open what's called a stability market
that was previously accessible only to gas and nuclear power operators.
That the market mechanism that encourages those in it to
set up mechanisms install devices to provide stability to the market.
(20:47):
So again, before only gas and nuclear power plants were
able to access that, and now wind and solar power
plants will also be allowed into these stability markets. So
that step will encour it's renewable operators to install devices
like grid forming inverters, like synchronous compensators that will provide
stability to the greed because they will get paid for it. Worse,
(21:10):
before they weren't, so they didn't have any motivation to
do it.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
We are seeing now renewable deployment just grow rapidly. There
is an IA report that came out recently that looked
at the share of wind and solar in the global
grid mix, and between twenty sixteen and now, in a
period of ten years, it has gone up from four
(21:36):
percent to twenty percent and it's showing no signs of stopping.
We know that in the UK after this blackout, with
the addition of grid forming inverters and synchronous compensators, the
amount of renewables on the grid kept rising. The same
thing happened in Australia, where there was a blackout in
(21:56):
twenty sixteen, in a place where wind power was growing
very rapidly. They followed similar steps and now Australia has
a lot more wind and solar on its grid. So
are we seeing countries around the world recognize the need
for these grid stabilizing technologies and are they investing in it?
Speaker 2 (22:16):
Unfortunately not, as you were just mentioning, what we are
seeing is countries reacting after a major event, a major
blackout happens. So what we know from research right Bloomberg
and EF is that investment in the grid is lagging
in comparison to how much is being invested on adding
renewables to the greed. So the twenty seven members of
(22:40):
the European Union plus the UK invest on average zero
point seven dollars in greed for every dollar spent on renewables.
Spain spent zero point three dollars for every dollar in
the greed, and that's the lowest among the countries that
Bloomberg and EF was tracking. And it's not just Spain.
(23:00):
There are blackouts everywhere in the world and they are
causing political backlash against renewable and that's something that politicians
can afford right now if they want to fulfill their
climate and their renewable commitments. So that's something that Antonio
Uterre is the Head of the United Nations himself recognized
(23:21):
in a speech in July where he asked countries to
really focus on greed investments and in greed infrastructure, saying
that the ratio that we were mentioning before, the ratio
between renewable investment and investment in the grid, should be
one to one.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
Well, it's kind of interesting when the head of the
United Nations is talking about investments in the grid and
a speech like, clearly this is a big issue that
needs to be handled, and of course renewables are needed
for meeting climate goals, but they are also increasingly, especially
in developing countries, needed just to be able to keep
the cost of energy low, because we know these are
(23:59):
the cheapest source of electricity that can be built. Is
it just investments that are lacking or are there other
obstacles that are holding back countries like Spain from actually
deploying these technologies.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
Investments and money are not the only bottlenecks. Actually, the
main bottlenecks are regulation and the time it takes for
each one of these machines, the synchronous compensatures and even
the greed forming inverters to be bought and installed into
the greed So, for example, the EU, the whole of
the EU operates under rules that were approved in twenty twelve,
(24:34):
so that's more than ten years old, and they have
been working EU institutions on an upgrade to the electricity
Network Code for the past two years, but there's no
clue on when that will become effective. So this upgrade
would in theory provide a framework for countries to then
set up their own stability markets, a necessary step towards
(24:55):
again encouraging companies to install devices like Spain has done now,
devices like c synchronous compensators and greed forming batteries. More
regulation is needed in Spain to keep evolving, to continue
encouraging companies and setting up these markets and this framework.
But what we have seen actually is that earlier in
(25:16):
the summer a degree with additional measures stalled in Congress.
What's happening has nothing to do with greed stability, but
the ruling Socialist party is in minority in Congress, so
it needs to agree with other parties to pass any
regulations at all. And once the regulation is sorted, as
we have seen in the EU and Spain, that's not
(25:37):
a quick or easy thing. Then starts the moment of
drawing up the contracts and setting the specifications, the technical
specifications for the machinery, whether it's a synchronous compensator or
greed forming battery. So we spoke to someone at Siemen's
Energy that told us that in Germany these documents can
be as long as two thousand pages and it can
(25:59):
take up to ten years to put them together and
then set up the tender and for companies to respond
to that and a winner to be declared. So it's
a very long process even when the regulations are in.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
The Semen's Energy expert was also telling us it's not
like all countries do this. The UK does have leaner
regulations and can get synchronous compensators on the grid pretty quickly.
The Liverpool tender was one and the device was working
within eighteen months of it happening, So there are clearly
lots of lessons that countries can learn from each other. Now,
(26:36):
when we do this kind of reporting, we are spending
weeks and months talking to experts, going to places looking
at these devices. But editors want this story to reach
a big audience, and one of the frames that our editor,
Aaron Rudkoff, was very keen on us hitting in the
story was that is there kind of a hangover that
(26:58):
comes from deploying so much solar because it's cheap, because
it meets not just renewables goals, but also lowers the
cost of power on the grid. Are they going on
a sugar rush or alcohol bench just deploying lots and
lots of solar but not realizing what might be the outcomes.
(27:18):
What do you conclude having done this work.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
I think it's a good metaphor.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
We know how these countries have set up first very
ambitious renewable targets, So the EU has a clean energy
target of at least forty two percent by twenty thirty,
whilst Spain has an even more ambitious target of eighty
one percent by the end of this decade. Then we
saw how the cost of renewables went down, and they
(27:44):
became the perfect solution to provide cheap energy at a
time when there.
Speaker 3 (27:48):
Was a cost of living crisis. So obviously that was
the perfect solution. But they just forgot the very.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
Important thing that the grid does, which is connect the
place where the power is produced with the places where the.
Speaker 3 (28:03):
Power is consumed.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
And that's when the hangover comes in in form of
a terrible blackout that leaves a whole country to countries
actually without power for hours, and people suddenly asking about
devices that no one was concerned about before. Synchronous compensators,
creed forming inverters. Suddenly everyone in Spain. Now it has
(28:25):
become part of the conversation why don't we have these
things that are hangover?
Speaker 1 (28:31):
Yes, this is a lot of fun to report, quite
a nerdy story, but such an important solution. Thank you Laura,
thank you Action, and thank you for listening to zero
now for the sound of the week. That is the
(28:54):
sound of the synchronous compensator. I went to see in
Liverpool loud Huh. To read full report on the Spanish
blackout and the solutions to deal with it, head to
Bloomberg dot com or find a link in the show
notes If you like this episode, please take a moment
to rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Share this episode with a friend or with someone who
likes spinning things. This episode was produced by Oscar Boy.
(29:18):
Our theme music is composed by Wonderly Special. Thanks to
everyone involved in reporting this story. Haley Warren, Tom Fabrere,
Will Mathis, Thomas Goulthieri, Emily Busso, Aaron Rudkoff, som Nadbat
and Jody Maxin i'm Akshatrati Back soon.
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