A blackout never seen It affected on Monday throughout Spain and Portugal, causing uncertainty about the reliability of the electrical system. The incident occurred just after several historical days in which the demand for energy It had been covered in its entirety by renewable sources. This situation has opened a debate on whether the lack of electric synchrony could be one of the causes.
We go in parts. First of all, synchrony in an electrical system means that all generators that produce electricity (hydroelectric, thermal, nuclear centrals …) revolve at the same frequency (50Hz), keeping the supply stable. These traditional technologies help maintain network stability thanks to their large rotary masses, which act as “shock absorbers” to sudden changes in demand or generation.
On the contrary, renewable sources such as solar or wind generate electricity in another way: they do not revolve at the frequency of the network by mechanical masses. They connect to the system through Electronic deviceswhich means that they do not provide natural rotational inertia and, therefore, They do not stabilize the frequency in the same way.
Opening of the debate. Bloomberg Javier Blas columnist He explained that the blackout can be related to a network dominated by renewable generation at that time. However, his statement was quickly nuanced by other specialists, such as engineer Sergio Fernández Munguía, who has shared An image of the structure of the generation before the blackout. In it, the data has shown that 30% of the generation came from non -renewable sources. For his part, the expert in renewables, Xavier Cugat, He has highlighted That at that time there were 6,604 MW of large -scale large -scale generation, between nuclear, thermoso and cogeneration, ensuring that the system still had an important support of synchronous generation.
In any case, the hypothesis about the lack of synchrony remains only that: a hypothesis, such as has pointed out The engineer Jorge Morales de Labra in RTVE News: “It will have been determining exactly what has failed.” Although at this last moment, the Spanish electricity network has communicated at a press conference That after a preliminary analysis the blackout has been attributed to a massive power disconnection to the Spanish electrical system in the southwest of the country, presumably of renewable energy, and has ruled out cyber attack as a cause.
Synchrony so important. This is a very technical debate, such as He explained The professor associated with the Technical University of Denmark, Marta Victoria, when the balance between generation and demand is broken, the frequency of the network begins to deviate. If generators cannot react on time – because there is less mechanical inertia – the system fails to stabilize, and a waterfall disconnection occurs. The expert used a simple metaphor: “It is like a ship that leans to the side and, instead of straightening, turns.” Finally, Marta Victoria has detailed that during the blackout several generators, both solar and nuclear, were automatically disconnected from frequency oscillations. This aggravated instability and ended up causing the mass blackout.
Something that is missing. For his part, the professor and researcher at Rey Juan Carlos University, Eloy Sanz He recalled That the lack of rotational mass in the system can make it harder to correct rapid imbalances between generation and demand. In its analysis, it stressed that failure events in critical infrastructure or sudden disconnections can aggravate instability, especially when the system depends largely on sources that They do not provide synchrony.
In short, both agree that understanding the lack of synchrony as a vulnerability factor is important to understand the fragility that the system showed, although it cannot be affirmed that it has been the only cause.
Progressive accumulated generation and storage structure at 11:00 am
Right now the network. At 11:00 in the morning of April 29, about to meet 24 hours from the blackout, the Spanish electricity grid presents a stable situation. The demand is around 25,500 MW and is being mostly covered by photovoltaic solar energy (32%), hydraulics (18.7%), wind (17.7%) and combined cycle (22.2%). The system is operating with a balanced combination of synchronous technologies and not synchronous, indicating a complete technical recovery after the blackout of the previous day.
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