Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
But I think a lot of this stuff, a lot
of pushback against so called renewable energy, is accelerating, both
because of the realities of physics and weather and costs
and all this, and also because of the arrival of
one Donald Trump on the scene. That's big picture stuff.
We're going to get a little narrower, at least for
(00:21):
part of the conversation with my good buddy Robert Bryce,
who is one of the world's true leading experts on
electricity generation and distribution. He's written multiple books about this,
about power plants, about power grids, and on and on
and on.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
He travels the world, not.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Just the US, talking to folks who need answers to
these kinds of questions, and his spectacular substack is at
Robert Bryce.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
That's Robert b Ryce.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Dot substack dot com, and everybody should subscribe.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
I do subscribe. Robert.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Thanks for coming back, especially on short notice. I really
appreciate that.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Always a pleasure, Ross.
Speaker 4 (01:05):
But Jesus does not to talk about everything's been so quiet.
I mean, you know, it's just tariffs and Spain fifty
five million people lost power a week ago.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
I mean, you know, it's everything's just so quiet.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
It's a great world for you, though, isn't it Like
I'm sure everybody wants to talk to you, and people
must be rushing to rushing to your work, and I'm
I'm I feel fortunate that we can give you a
call and get you on the show. So when I
was kind of joking with listeners about a week ago
whenever the Spain thing happened, and I started my show
by saying to all my listeners in Spain and Portugal,
(01:40):
be aware that your power is going to stay out
for a while. And I was thinking, I don't think
I said this on the air, but as a student
of Robert Bryce, I was thinking in my head that
Spain has made a big push toward renewables. Germany is
more famous for it, but Spain has done it in
(02:00):
a big way, and I wonder whether that had anything
to do with the blackout. And in the early days,
nobody was saying anything, and now, because whoever they are
would never actually want to blame renewable energy for anything,
we're not hearing that much about this except from you.
(02:22):
So what do we need to know?
Speaker 4 (02:26):
Well, I mean, the attention on Spain now is intense,
but remember Spain is the first we saw similar blackouts
in Australia in twenty sixteen. And the issue, of course,
the issues now are focusing on great inertia, and I
will get into that in just a minute. But what
I've found interesting just in the last couple of days
now it's we're right at it almost exactly a week
(02:47):
ago now that the blackout hit. Fifty five million people
lost power that last week. Reuter's reported. Let me or
read the direct line here. It says in a week
in the week before the blackout, Spain saw several power
surge and cuts. A power cut disrupted railway signals and
stranded at least ten high speed trains near Madrid on
April twenty second, that's six days before the blackout, the
(03:09):
Transport minister said excessive voltage in the network had triggered disconnections.
Same day, Repsol's card to Hano refinery saw its operations
disrupted by power supply problems. The grid suffered from significant instability,
that is in the days before the blackout, said Antonio Toreel,
researcher with a Spanish National Research Council. So all of
this was foreseeable. Red Electrica predicted are warned in February.
(03:33):
Then in fact, this large slug of alternative energy was
going to be causing instability and they were concerned about it,
so this was foreseeable. But this it all beggars to
get to the punchline here, all beggars. These claims, Oh,
win in solar are so much cheaper, you know, cheap
to cheap, che cheap.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
Well they're not cheap if you have blackouts.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
And second, now Spain is and the rest of Europe
is saying, oh, we're gonna have to invest hundreds of
billions of dollars to upgrade the grid to be able
to accommodate all this intermittent renewables.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
So it probably doesn't matter that much to me exactly
why the renewables caused the problems, right, What matters is
that renewables cause the problems, and I want to get
to that. But I'm kind of curious when they're talking
about excessive voltage.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
Sure is, could this.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
Be something as simple as like they built out all
this solar stuff, let's say, And I don't know if
we're if the bigger problem is solar or WIN, so
you're gonna have to tell me. But a thing that
occurred to me is like, Okay, they added a bunch
of solar and then we had a bunch of sunny
days and then it generated power that they couldn't handle.
But that's probably a stupid guess. So tell me, like
how this tell me how this problem actually happens, even
(04:43):
though it's not as important as knowing that the problem
just does happen.
Speaker 4 (04:48):
Sure, well, so let's just take a quick look back
in history, and then I want to talk about nuclear
and land use conflicts in Spain, because nuclear accounts for
about twenty percent of Spain's power generation and they want
to shut that down all of that by twenty thirty five,
which will make this all even worse.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
But let's go back to the days of Edison and.
Speaker 4 (05:06):
Look at the one hundred and forty years plus or
minus that we've had a power grid in. Nearly all
of that time, the grid has relied on these large
central power plants that have big spinning machines, right, big
big steel, big metal, big iron, And these spinning generators
create what's called inertia, So think of it. The easiest
(05:27):
way to think about the grid is to compare electricity
to water, and even engineers do this. So if you
have you know, I know, you have an Olympic sized
swimming pool in your backyard and you're always, you know,
having to fill it. So when you're hook your garden
hose up and you're filling your Olympic sized swimming pool,
if the water pressure declines a little bit, it only
takes you a little bit longer to fill the you know,
(05:48):
your hot tub or your swimming pool.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
So that's not a big deal, right, or wash the
clothes or whatever.
Speaker 4 (05:53):
But on the electric grid, you have to maintain that
let's call it electricity flow at a rate. So here
in the US it sixty hertz. In Spain it's fifty
hertz from a lot of the world's fifty hertz. You
have to maintain that frequency and the pressure. Then think
of the electricity flow as pressure. You have to maintain
that flow and pressure constant, and if it varies too much,
(06:15):
the frequency or the voltage varies too much, the thing
will trip off. And that's what happened in Spain, was
that we had a variation in frequency and or voltage
and then the system shut down to protect itself, and
that's what it's designed to do. But it's very clear
then the looking at the evidence, even from Red Electric
saying immediately afterward they had a massive loss of solar
(06:36):
generation in the span of a few seconds. Well, that's
a problem because this here's the punch line. Solar and
wind don't provide that same pressure. They're called inverter based resources.
They don't provide that same kind of umph, that same
kind of inertia, that spinning mass that the grid is
relied on for more than one hundred years. And that's
the key question now about how to deal with that
(06:58):
and how to what extent that great inertia or lack
of grid inertia resulted in the blackout.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
So do you think, just based on what you've read
so far, it almost sounds like the opposite of what
I said, right, I said it was just you know,
first bright sunny days of the year and it's creating
too much electricity. So it sounded like you almost said
the opposite that they said they had a sudden loss
of solar. But maybe that could have just been the
(07:23):
solar generation that was attached to the grid itself like
tripped itself and completely went off, and then that was
just gone, and suddenly the grid is left without that
and that trip for whatever.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
So what was it like? Was it a cloudy day,
was it a sunny day?
Speaker 4 (07:39):
Could have overloaded a local circuit and then that that
results interchange in frequency or voltage. We don't know. I mean,
you know, that's not certain. And I think what's it's
also very clear here, Ross is that what is problematic
about this outage, this blackout? What you know, I think
Javier Blossom Bloomberg called the first blackout of the green
energy era or something like this. Well, it's about the narrative,
(08:03):
remember that, Oh it's cheaper, it's more reliable, and the
sun is always shining somewhere, and you know it's cheaper,
and by we mention it's cheaper. So this blackout beggars
this narrative that a lot of politicians, big NGO's climate
activists have been staking their reputations on now for years.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
Oh well, maybe this does destabilize the grid.
Speaker 4 (08:23):
Maybe this is going to result in more problems on
the grid and more costs. And so the thing that
matters here is why hasn't the Spanish government said, well,
we think it's probably this, Oh, full investigation, full investigation.
They're going to drag their feet and try and point
everything at everything, but solear and wind because the narrative
depends on this this, this push, and there's making no mistake,
(08:45):
tens of billions of dollars at steak for sure.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
So Okay, I've got a few things that I want
to get to with, So let's go through these in
no particular order, but do them kind of quick because
I do want to get to.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
The nuclear stuff.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Yeah, you mentioned the term grid inertia, and I think
you followed up on it a little bit ken, But
just because I'm a nerd, can you do a little
more on grid inertia?
Speaker 3 (09:09):
Sure?
Speaker 4 (09:09):
So think about it again as water pressure. I think
that's the easiest way to think about it. So if
that pressure of the and think about the power generators
and central power stations as electron pumps. They're pumping electricity
out at a constant rate, and that rate has to
be maintained.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
So think of that as velocity. Right.
Speaker 4 (09:31):
You have to maintain that flow at that continuous rate,
so that would be the frequency.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
Right.
Speaker 4 (09:37):
So that's how I think is the best way to
think about inertia and think about it in another way.
One of the ways that different inventors, different companies are
trying to assure grid inertia is to add flywheels to
the grid. That then those flywheels provide what's called synthetic inertia,
right to make up for the lack of the lack
(09:58):
of juice or lack of uh pressure that is coming
as due to this influx of solar and wind. They're
trying to mimic the uh the the qualities of the
nuclear plants, coal plants, gas plants, at hydro plants that
we've relied on for decades.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
One of the things that I still does.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
That help, you know, it does you on zoom and
you're kind.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Of going, yeah, no, no, it does, It does help.
It just raises there are just more questions now. So
one of the things that I've long struggled with is
so since these so called renewables are intermittent, which would
probably be a better name for them, intermittent power rather right,
because the wind isn't always blowing and the sun isn't
(10:40):
always shining. And as you told us, the Germans actually
have a word for that, right.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
Dunkel flouta.
Speaker 4 (10:47):
That's so that's a wind bowl, a wind a wind
uh wind drops uh huh.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
So what I so then you from the perspective of
the utility, you always have to be generating power.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
You never know when Robert Brice is.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
Gonna want to play an electric guitar or Ross is
going to want to turn on an air conditioning, So
you have to be generating power at two am and
two pm, and at two pm. At two am, the
sun isn't shining and maybe the wind isn't blowing, so
you've got to generate some other way. So as long
as you have to generate some other way, could be nuclear,
(11:22):
could be hydro, could be natural gas, could be coal.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
You is it right to.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Think that unless you have some kind of battery backup
system that the world is very very very far away
from on a utility scale, Like we're going to save
enough power in batteries to power all of Denver for
eight hours, right, that is not gonna happen anytime soon.
So as long as that's not going to happen, sure
(11:51):
you're going to have all this other stuff running.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
So how how can it possibly.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Be efficient to have to try to run an electrical
system on whin and solar when you have to have
the natural gas running anyway?
Speaker 3 (12:06):
Well, that's a really good point.
Speaker 4 (12:08):
And that's one of the things I think that's key here,
Ross is that wind and solar don't disnecessarily displace existing resources,
ad they are added to. So as you point out,
you know, if you're in Denver and you have a
wind drought and the sun is down, and you know
it gets cold and dark in Colorado in the winter time.
I know this for a fact, I've used to live there.
Then you have to have a If let's say Denver
(12:31):
needs a thousand megawatts, it's more than that you need.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
Okay, well you can.
Speaker 4 (12:35):
You can run it for a few hours on a
thousand megawatts of solar and wind, but you're going to
need a thousand megawats of back up reliable power, and
some of it could be batteries. I'm coming around to
the battery story slowly, but like you say, it could
be natural gas, coal, nuclear, or something. You have to
have that entire you have to duplicate the entire installed
(12:55):
base of solar and wind to assure reliability. To get
to your point, but one other quick point, and you
alluded to this, You're almost there. It's about spinning. Reserve
is the other thing that's required. So you make sure
that if you have a sudden loss of generation, then
you have some power plants that are running in back in, backup,
in parallel, and that's called spinning reserve. And apparently Spain
(13:17):
didn't have enough of that when this blackout happened.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
A few listener questions that relate to this. We got
about six minutes here, So let's try to work start
this in and then maybe we can talk. We can
you can work into your answers anything you want to
say about land use and about and about nuclear Let's see,
isn't the best solution moving toward more distributed electrical generation
(13:43):
instead of large central power stations trying to push electricity
all over smaller stations or even down to individual homes
having some energy producing capabilities. So that's an interesting A
lot of people are thinking about that. But I'll just
say to the listener and then we'll actually have the
expert give an answer. But you got to remember that
the when you're talking about energy producing capabilities of a
(14:05):
house more most likely that solar and that could just
be a whole bunch of small versions of the same
problem that Spain just had, adding up to a big
version of the problem that Spain just had a right
go ahead, Robert Well.
Speaker 4 (14:19):
In general, the thermodynamic efficiency favors large power plants over
smaller ones.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
And that said, I have a generak.
Speaker 4 (14:26):
I'd put a generack at my house after, you know,
we got blacked out during winter.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Store he's in Texas.
Speaker 4 (14:30):
We have a twenty two kilowatt generak in our yard
running on natural gas. But to try and run that
myself would be massively more expensive than relying on the
grid because of the efficiency the efficiencies of large systems
versus small ones. So I'm not saying distributed energy resources
aren't going to grow. They are, but they come with
limitations and generally higher costs.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
Are batteries good at keeping that flow that you talked about.
Speaker 4 (14:57):
I'm coming around on batteries, you know were I'm in Texas,
and Texas has been installing a lot of batteries, So
batteries can be useful for maintaining that voltage and frequency
that I've been talking about. So you know, perhaps if
Spain had had enough batteries that that could have prevented
this from happening now. But remember those are expensive, and
just like you mentioned land use, you know, the battery
(15:19):
there's a backlash against the installation of batteries, and that's
happening all over the world. And since I'll just mentioned
land use one of the other keys, that's happening in
Spain now, as around the rest of the world and
here in the United States, local communities, rural communities are
looking at all the encroachment of these big wind and
solar projects and say we don't in saying we don't
want them here, Go put them where the sun doesn't
(15:40):
shine and the wind doesn't blow. And so there have
been numerous news reports, and I've created the Global Renewable
Rejection Database to go with the US Renewable Rejection Database.
There now more than one hundred rejections globally since twenty
twenty three. And in Spain, just in the last few months,
in Andalucia, in Aragon, in in Galicia, you've seen local
(16:02):
communities saying we don't want these projects here.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
All right, So I want to stick with I want
to stick with this.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
Actually for our last few minutes, listeners who sent in questions,
thank you for that.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
I'm probably not going to get.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Some more listener questions with Robert this time, because I
just want to stick with something. So sure so we've
got this this pushback on the land use right. And
obviously the folks who are going to try to build
this renewable stuff, one of the things they have to
deal with this cost of land. So they're not going
to try to build this where land is priced like
New York City land. Plus you couldn't get approval for
(16:34):
something like that. So you're outing these rural areas and
the rural folk. Rural folks are are pushing back now
as you as you note so many rejections of these
of these projects. What about nuclear and especially what about
small nuclear? Is that a real thing? Is that a
pipe dream? Is small nuclear a thing that can really
(16:56):
that can really boost large scale utilities or is that
more a thing to let's say, power a data a
power hungry data center.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
What should we think about small nuclear and.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
Whether that's sure a substitute or is it real for
renewable or is it really in a different.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
Does it have a different function.
Speaker 4 (17:19):
Well, let me talk about Spain and nuclear first, ross
because I think just to finish this out, so the
other problem and I wrote a piece on substec that
I just published.
Speaker 3 (17:28):
What was it May second, that's on Friday wasn't.
Speaker 4 (17:30):
It that the other problem facing Spain now, in addition
to this near term issue of instability on the grid
because of all this wind and solar, is that the
government has committed to close all five of their nuclear
plants by twenty thirty five. That's twenty percent of their
power generation. So they're compounding the error by planning to
(17:50):
get rid of this nuclear which just makes no sense whatsoever.
If you care about climate change and Spain has this
net zero target, you keep your nuclear plants open, you know,
Can I say dumbass on the air here?
Speaker 3 (18:01):
I mean, it's just ridiculous. Why would you ever close this?
Speaker 4 (18:04):
But nevertheless, so they're compounding the error by this plan
of closing nuclear and this has been a bit now
a big political issue in Spain, as it is around
in many countries around the world, including.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
Australia, et cetera.
Speaker 4 (18:15):
But the question of small modular reactors SMRs, I'm very
hopeful for nuclear. I've been saying the same thing natural
gas to nuclear for fifteen years. The problem here in
the US is that now, despite the fact that we
lead the world in nuclear capacity, we don't have a
single licensed nuclear reactor under construction in the United States,
not one. We have some that have construction approval, we
(18:35):
have other approvals, but you know, we're behind the eight ball.
We're not moving forward with the sufficient speed. And if
the Trump administration would do anything on the energy front,
I'd say focus on that.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
Well, you and I have a mutual friend who now
happens to be Secretary of Energy. Is your sense, whether
you've talked to him or just watching what's going on,
that there will be a significant increase in the rate
of permit approvals ForMRS? Or do you think it's all
just so freaking bureaucratic that even Chris Wright is going
to have a hard time making a really significant order
(19:07):
of magnitude difference in that speed.
Speaker 4 (19:11):
I fear it's that what you just said, Ross, And
I'm hopeful. I'm all day optimistic. I'm as you know,
optimistic and as the late Molly Ivans said, optimistic to
the point of idiocy. But the challenge for the Trump administration.
I was just in Washington last week and I met
with some people in the administration in the Senate. You've
got to what do you have to do to get
(19:32):
nuclear moving forward? You have to solve the regulatory problem
that's only one of the issues.
Speaker 3 (19:36):
You have to solve the capital availability problem, the fuel
and the waste issue.
Speaker 4 (19:39):
And so you know, I fear, you know, and I
say this non partisan fear, the Trump administration is frittering
away a lot of it's political capital on tariffs and
some of this other stuff and losing some of the
momentum that it could apply on the energy front.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
But that's a longer discussion, i'm sure than what we
have for today.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
Robert Price is one of the world's leading experts on
electricity generation, distribution, power grids, power plants, and on and on.
Check out his fabulous substack at Robert Bryce Robert b
r y C.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
Dot substack dot com. Subscribe to his substack.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
It is a very very good use of your time
to read his work. Robert, thank you so much for
making time for us, and we'll talk again, Sue.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
It's always a pleasure. Ross
But I think a lot of this stuff, a lot
of pushback against so called renewable energy, is accelerating, both
because of the realities of physics and weather and costs
and all this, and also because of the arrival of
one Donald Trump on the scene. That's big picture stuff.
We're going to get a little narrower, at least for
(00:21):
part of the conversation with my good buddy Robert Bryce,
who is one of the world's true leading experts on
electricity generation and distribution. He's written multiple books about this,
about power plants, about power grids, and on and on
and on.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
He travels the world, not.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Just the US, talking to folks who need answers to
these kinds of questions, and his spectacular substack is at
Robert Bryce.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
That's Robert b Ryce.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Dot substack dot com, and everybody should subscribe.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
I do subscribe. Robert.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Thanks for coming back, especially on short notice. I really
appreciate that.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Always a pleasure, Ross.
Speaker 4 (01:05):
But Jesus does not to talk about everything's been so quiet.
I mean, you know, it's just tariffs and Spain fifty
five million people lost power a week ago.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
I mean, you know, it's everything's just so quiet.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
It's a great world for you, though, isn't it Like
I'm sure everybody wants to talk to you, and people
must be rushing to rushing to your work, and I'm
I'm I feel fortunate that we can give you a
call and get you on the show. So when I
was kind of joking with listeners about a week ago
whenever the Spain thing happened, and I started my show
by saying to all my listeners in Spain and Portugal,
(01:40):
be aware that your power is going to stay out
for a while. And I was thinking, I don't think
I said this on the air, but as a student
of Robert Bryce, I was thinking in my head that
Spain has made a big push toward renewables. Germany is
more famous for it, but Spain has done it in
(02:00):
a big way, and I wonder whether that had anything
to do with the blackout. And in the early days,
nobody was saying anything, and now, because whoever they are
would never actually want to blame renewable energy for anything,
we're not hearing that much about this except from you.
(02:22):
So what do we need to know?
Speaker 4 (02:26):
Well, I mean, the attention on Spain now is intense,
but remember Spain is the first we saw similar blackouts
in Australia in twenty sixteen. And the issue, of course,
the issues now are focusing on great inertia, and I
will get into that in just a minute. But what
I've found interesting just in the last couple of days
now it's we're right at it almost exactly a week
(02:47):
ago now that the blackout hit. Fifty five million people
lost power that last week. Reuter's reported. Let me or
read the direct line here. It says in a week
in the week before the blackout, Spain saw several power
surge and cuts. A power cut disrupted railway signals and
stranded at least ten high speed trains near Madrid on
April twenty second, that's six days before the blackout, the
(03:09):
Transport minister said excessive voltage in the network had triggered disconnections.
Same day, Repsol's card to Hano refinery saw its operations
disrupted by power supply problems. The grid suffered from significant instability,
that is in the days before the blackout, said Antonio Toreel,
researcher with a Spanish National Research Council. So all of
this was foreseeable. Red Electrica predicted are warned in February.
(03:33):
Then in fact, this large slug of alternative energy was
going to be causing instability and they were concerned about it,
so this was foreseeable. But this it all beggars to
get to the punchline here, all beggars. These claims, Oh,
win in solar are so much cheaper, you know, cheap
to cheap, che cheap.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
Well they're not cheap if you have blackouts.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
And second, now Spain is and the rest of Europe
is saying, oh, we're gonna have to invest hundreds of
billions of dollars to upgrade the grid to be able
to accommodate all this intermittent renewables.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
So it probably doesn't matter that much to me exactly
why the renewables caused the problems, right, What matters is
that renewables cause the problems, and I want to get
to that. But I'm kind of curious when they're talking
about excessive voltage.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
Sure is, could this.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
Be something as simple as like they built out all
this solar stuff, let's say, And I don't know if
we're if the bigger problem is solar or WIN, so
you're gonna have to tell me. But a thing that
occurred to me is like, Okay, they added a bunch
of solar and then we had a bunch of sunny
days and then it generated power that they couldn't handle.
But that's probably a stupid guess. So tell me, like
how this tell me how this problem actually happens, even
(04:43):
though it's not as important as knowing that the problem
just does happen.
Speaker 4 (04:48):
Sure, well, so let's just take a quick look back
in history, and then I want to talk about nuclear
and land use conflicts in Spain, because nuclear accounts for
about twenty percent of Spain's power generation and they want
to shut that down all of that by twenty thirty five,
which will make this all even worse.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
But let's go back to the days of Edison and.
Speaker 4 (05:06):
Look at the one hundred and forty years plus or
minus that we've had a power grid in. Nearly all
of that time, the grid has relied on these large
central power plants that have big spinning machines, right, big
big steel, big metal, big iron, And these spinning generators
create what's called inertia, So think of it. The easiest
(05:27):
way to think about the grid is to compare electricity
to water, and even engineers do this. So if you
have you know, I know, you have an Olympic sized
swimming pool in your backyard and you're always, you know,
having to fill it. So when you're hook your garden
hose up and you're filling your Olympic sized swimming pool,
if the water pressure declines a little bit, it only
takes you a little bit longer to fill the you know,
(05:48):
your hot tub or your swimming pool.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
So that's not a big deal, right, or wash the
clothes or whatever.
Speaker 4 (05:53):
But on the electric grid, you have to maintain that
let's call it electricity flow at a rate. So here
in the US it sixty hertz. In Spain it's fifty
hertz from a lot of the world's fifty hertz. You
have to maintain that frequency and the pressure. Then think
of the electricity flow as pressure. You have to maintain
that flow and pressure constant, and if it varies too much,
(06:15):
the frequency or the voltage varies too much, the thing
will trip off. And that's what happened in Spain, was
that we had a variation in frequency and or voltage
and then the system shut down to protect itself, and
that's what it's designed to do. But it's very clear
then the looking at the evidence, even from Red Electric
saying immediately afterward they had a massive loss of solar
(06:36):
generation in the span of a few seconds. Well, that's
a problem because this here's the punch line. Solar and
wind don't provide that same pressure. They're called inverter based resources.
They don't provide that same kind of umph, that same
kind of inertia, that spinning mass that the grid is
relied on for more than one hundred years. And that's
the key question now about how to deal with that
(06:58):
and how to what extent that great inertia or lack
of grid inertia resulted in the blackout.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
So do you think, just based on what you've read
so far, it almost sounds like the opposite of what
I said, right, I said it was just you know,
first bright sunny days of the year and it's creating
too much electricity. So it sounded like you almost said
the opposite that they said they had a sudden loss
of solar. But maybe that could have just been the
(07:23):
solar generation that was attached to the grid itself like
tripped itself and completely went off, and then that was
just gone, and suddenly the grid is left without that
and that trip for whatever.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
So what was it like? Was it a cloudy day,
was it a sunny day?
Speaker 4 (07:39):
Could have overloaded a local circuit and then that that
results interchange in frequency or voltage. We don't know. I mean,
you know, that's not certain. And I think what's it's
also very clear here, Ross is that what is problematic
about this outage, this blackout? What you know, I think
Javier Blossom Bloomberg called the first blackout of the green
energy era or something like this. Well, it's about the narrative,
(08:03):
remember that, Oh it's cheaper, it's more reliable, and the
sun is always shining somewhere, and you know it's cheaper,
and by we mention it's cheaper. So this blackout beggars
this narrative that a lot of politicians, big NGO's climate
activists have been staking their reputations on now for years.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
Oh well, maybe this does destabilize the grid.
Speaker 4 (08:23):
Maybe this is going to result in more problems on
the grid and more costs. And so the thing that
matters here is why hasn't the Spanish government said, well,
we think it's probably this, Oh, full investigation, full investigation.
They're going to drag their feet and try and point
everything at everything, but solear and wind because the narrative
depends on this this, this push, and there's making no mistake,
(08:45):
tens of billions of dollars at steak for sure.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
So Okay, I've got a few things that I want
to get to with, So let's go through these in
no particular order, but do them kind of quick because
I do want to get to.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
The nuclear stuff.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Yeah, you mentioned the term grid inertia, and I think
you followed up on it a little bit ken, But
just because I'm a nerd, can you do a little
more on grid inertia?
Speaker 3 (09:09):
Sure?
Speaker 4 (09:09):
So think about it again as water pressure. I think
that's the easiest way to think about it. So if
that pressure of the and think about the power generators
and central power stations as electron pumps. They're pumping electricity
out at a constant rate, and that rate has to
be maintained.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
So think of that as velocity. Right.
Speaker 4 (09:31):
You have to maintain that flow at that continuous rate,
so that would be the frequency.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
Right.
Speaker 4 (09:37):
So that's how I think is the best way to
think about inertia and think about it in another way.
One of the ways that different inventors, different companies are
trying to assure grid inertia is to add flywheels to
the grid. That then those flywheels provide what's called synthetic inertia,
right to make up for the lack of the lack
(09:58):
of juice or lack of uh pressure that is coming
as due to this influx of solar and wind. They're
trying to mimic the uh the the qualities of the
nuclear plants, coal plants, gas plants, at hydro plants that
we've relied on for decades.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
One of the things that I still does.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
That help, you know, it does you on zoom and
you're kind.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Of going, yeah, no, no, it does, It does help.
It just raises there are just more questions now. So
one of the things that I've long struggled with is
so since these so called renewables are intermittent, which would
probably be a better name for them, intermittent power rather right,
because the wind isn't always blowing and the sun isn't
(10:40):
always shining. And as you told us, the Germans actually
have a word for that, right.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
Dunkel flouta.
Speaker 4 (10:47):
That's so that's a wind bowl, a wind a wind
uh wind drops uh huh.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
So what I so then you from the perspective of
the utility, you always have to be generating power.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
You never know when Robert Brice is.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
Gonna want to play an electric guitar or Ross is
going to want to turn on an air conditioning, So
you have to be generating power at two am and
two pm, and at two pm. At two am, the
sun isn't shining and maybe the wind isn't blowing, so
you've got to generate some other way. So as long
as you have to generate some other way, could be nuclear,
(11:22):
could be hydro, could be natural gas, could be coal.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
You is it right to.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Think that unless you have some kind of battery backup
system that the world is very very very far away
from on a utility scale, Like we're going to save
enough power in batteries to power all of Denver for
eight hours, right, that is not gonna happen anytime soon.
So as long as that's not going to happen, sure
(11:51):
you're going to have all this other stuff running.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
So how how can it possibly.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Be efficient to have to try to run an electrical
system on whin and solar when you have to have
the natural gas running anyway?
Speaker 3 (12:06):
Well, that's a really good point.
Speaker 4 (12:08):
And that's one of the things I think that's key here,
Ross is that wind and solar don't disnecessarily displace existing resources,
ad they are added to. So as you point out,
you know, if you're in Denver and you have a
wind drought and the sun is down, and you know
it gets cold and dark in Colorado in the winter time.
I know this for a fact, I've used to live there.
Then you have to have a If let's say Denver
(12:31):
needs a thousand megawatts, it's more than that you need.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
Okay, well you can.
Speaker 4 (12:35):
You can run it for a few hours on a
thousand megawatts of solar and wind, but you're going to
need a thousand megawats of back up reliable power, and
some of it could be batteries. I'm coming around to
the battery story slowly, but like you say, it could
be natural gas, coal, nuclear, or something. You have to
have that entire you have to duplicate the entire installed
(12:55):
base of solar and wind to assure reliability. To get
to your point, but one other quick point, and you
alluded to this, You're almost there. It's about spinning. Reserve
is the other thing that's required. So you make sure
that if you have a sudden loss of generation, then
you have some power plants that are running in back in, backup,
in parallel, and that's called spinning reserve. And apparently Spain
(13:17):
didn't have enough of that when this blackout happened.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
A few listener questions that relate to this. We got
about six minutes here, So let's try to work start
this in and then maybe we can talk. We can
you can work into your answers anything you want to
say about land use and about and about nuclear Let's see,
isn't the best solution moving toward more distributed electrical generation
(13:43):
instead of large central power stations trying to push electricity
all over smaller stations or even down to individual homes
having some energy producing capabilities. So that's an interesting A
lot of people are thinking about that. But I'll just
say to the listener and then we'll actually have the
expert give an answer. But you got to remember that
the when you're talking about energy producing capabilities of a
(14:05):
house more most likely that solar and that could just
be a whole bunch of small versions of the same
problem that Spain just had, adding up to a big
version of the problem that Spain just had a right
go ahead, Robert Well.
Speaker 4 (14:19):
In general, the thermodynamic efficiency favors large power plants over
smaller ones.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
And that said, I have a generak.
Speaker 4 (14:26):
I'd put a generack at my house after, you know,
we got blacked out during winter.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Store he's in Texas.
Speaker 4 (14:30):
We have a twenty two kilowatt generak in our yard
running on natural gas. But to try and run that
myself would be massively more expensive than relying on the
grid because of the efficiency the efficiencies of large systems
versus small ones. So I'm not saying distributed energy resources
aren't going to grow. They are, but they come with
limitations and generally higher costs.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
Are batteries good at keeping that flow that you talked about.
Speaker 4 (14:57):
I'm coming around on batteries, you know were I'm in Texas,
and Texas has been installing a lot of batteries, So
batteries can be useful for maintaining that voltage and frequency
that I've been talking about. So you know, perhaps if
Spain had had enough batteries that that could have prevented
this from happening now. But remember those are expensive, and
just like you mentioned land use, you know, the battery
(15:19):
there's a backlash against the installation of batteries, and that's
happening all over the world. And since I'll just mentioned
land use one of the other keys, that's happening in
Spain now, as around the rest of the world and
here in the United States, local communities, rural communities are
looking at all the encroachment of these big wind and
solar projects and say we don't in saying we don't
want them here, Go put them where the sun doesn't
(15:40):
shine and the wind doesn't blow. And so there have
been numerous news reports, and I've created the Global Renewable
Rejection Database to go with the US Renewable Rejection Database.
There now more than one hundred rejections globally since twenty
twenty three. And in Spain, just in the last few months,
in Andalucia, in Aragon, in in Galicia, you've seen local
(16:02):
communities saying we don't want these projects here.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
All right, So I want to stick with I want
to stick with this.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
Actually for our last few minutes, listeners who sent in questions,
thank you for that.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
I'm probably not going to get.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Some more listener questions with Robert this time, because I
just want to stick with something. So sure so we've
got this this pushback on the land use right. And
obviously the folks who are going to try to build
this renewable stuff, one of the things they have to
deal with this cost of land. So they're not going
to try to build this where land is priced like
New York City land. Plus you couldn't get approval for
(16:34):
something like that. So you're outing these rural areas and
the rural folk. Rural folks are are pushing back now
as you as you note so many rejections of these
of these projects. What about nuclear and especially what about
small nuclear? Is that a real thing? Is that a
pipe dream? Is small nuclear a thing that can really
(16:56):
that can really boost large scale utilities or is that
more a thing to let's say, power a data a
power hungry data center.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
What should we think about small nuclear and.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
Whether that's sure a substitute or is it real for
renewable or is it really in a different.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
Does it have a different function.
Speaker 4 (17:19):
Well, let me talk about Spain and nuclear first, ross
because I think just to finish this out, so the
other problem and I wrote a piece on substec that
I just published.
Speaker 3 (17:28):
What was it May second, that's on Friday wasn't.
Speaker 4 (17:30):
It that the other problem facing Spain now, in addition
to this near term issue of instability on the grid
because of all this wind and solar, is that the
government has committed to close all five of their nuclear
plants by twenty thirty five. That's twenty percent of their
power generation. So they're compounding the error by planning to
(17:50):
get rid of this nuclear which just makes no sense whatsoever.
If you care about climate change and Spain has this
net zero target, you keep your nuclear plants open, you know,
Can I say dumbass on the air here?
Speaker 3 (18:01):
I mean, it's just ridiculous. Why would you ever close this?
Speaker 4 (18:04):
But nevertheless, so they're compounding the error by this plan
of closing nuclear and this has been a bit now
a big political issue in Spain, as it is around
in many countries around the world, including.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
Australia, et cetera.
Speaker 4 (18:15):
But the question of small modular reactors SMRs, I'm very
hopeful for nuclear. I've been saying the same thing natural
gas to nuclear for fifteen years. The problem here in
the US is that now, despite the fact that we
lead the world in nuclear capacity, we don't have a
single licensed nuclear reactor under construction in the United States,
not one. We have some that have construction approval, we
(18:35):
have other approvals, but you know, we're behind the eight ball.
We're not moving forward with the sufficient speed. And if
the Trump administration would do anything on the energy front,
I'd say focus on that.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
Well, you and I have a mutual friend who now
happens to be Secretary of Energy. Is your sense, whether
you've talked to him or just watching what's going on,
that there will be a significant increase in the rate
of permit approvals ForMRS? Or do you think it's all
just so freaking bureaucratic that even Chris Wright is going
to have a hard time making a really significant order
(19:07):
of magnitude difference in that speed.
Speaker 4 (19:11):
I fear it's that what you just said, Ross, And
I'm hopeful. I'm all day optimistic. I'm as you know,
optimistic and as the late Molly Ivans said, optimistic to
the point of idiocy. But the challenge for the Trump administration.
I was just in Washington last week and I met
with some people in the administration in the Senate. You've
got to what do you have to do to get
(19:32):
nuclear moving forward? You have to solve the regulatory problem
that's only one of the issues.
Speaker 3 (19:36):
You have to solve the capital availability problem, the fuel
and the waste issue.
Speaker 4 (19:39):
And so you know, I fear, you know, and I
say this non partisan fear, the Trump administration is frittering
away a lot of it's political capital on tariffs and
some of this other stuff and losing some of the
momentum that it could apply on the energy front.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
But that's a longer discussion, i'm sure than what we
have for today.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
Robert Price is one of the world's leading experts on
electricity generation, distribution, power grids, power plants, and on and on.
Check out his fabulous substack at Robert Bryce Robert b
r y C.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
Dot substack dot com. Subscribe to his substack.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
It is a very very good use of your time
to read his work. Robert, thank you so much for
making time for us, and we'll talk again, Sue.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
It's always a pleasure. Ross
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