Spain’s Toxic Politics Clouds Investigation Into Power Blackout

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Sanchez is a polarizing figure in Spain after almost seven years, during which he’s managed to survive at the head of increasingly fragile coalitions through skillful maneuvering and, at times, seeking to demonize his conservative opponents. Last year, he threatened to quit politics over a criminal probe of his wife’s business affairs which he decried as a right-wing stitch-up. 

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The blackout on Monday shone an uncomfortable spotlight on the Sanchez government’s controversial position on phasing out nuclear power at a time when many countries are extending the lives of reactors or planning to build new ones. Núñez Feijóo said nuclear plants need to be retained as “backup power” for volatile solar and wind capacity.

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In the meantime, experts are trying to gather the facts about what happened, and Portugal isn’t waiting for Spain and plans to request an independent audit of the incident from the European Union. 

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The longer the uncertainty persists, the more pressure Sanchez will face. Experts are already at odds about the role that solar and wind played. Spain had reported an unprecedented number of hours with negative power prices in recent months, a fallout from insufficient storage capacity available to soak up increasing amounts of solar and wind supply.  

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Solar farms in particular inject large amounts of power into the grid during the day and go dark at night. While these swings can create instability for the grid, the variations haven’t previously caused blackouts in the country.

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For critics of renewables, the blackout represents an opportunity to go the attack. They’ve argued that limited fossil-fueled generation in Spain meant there was insufficient inertia to help maintain the grid’s frequency. But that ignores the other sources of stabilizing inertia available, including nuclear, hydro and solar thermal. 

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“A lack of inertia was therefore not the main driver for the blackout,” said Adam Bell, a power analyst in the UK. “Indeed, post the frequency event no fossil generation remained online — but wind, solar and hydro did.”

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On Monday, just after noon and again about 15 minutes before the outage, the frequency of the grid started shifting unusually, indicating that the grid was under stress and needed to be stabilized, according to data provided to Bloomberg by Gridradar. 

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One clear lesson is that more investment is needed to ensure resilience of the system. More battery storage would have definitely helped as the technology could have responded “in a split second,” said Kesavarthiniy Savarimuthu, an analyst with BloombergNEF. 

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Other European nations are watching closely, as they could face similar issues as the continent transition to clean energy to protect environment but also reduce dependencies on fossil fuel exporters. 

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“The massive blackout here in Spain and Portugal is a brutal reminder of the importance of security of supply,” Ebba Busch, Sweden’s energy minister, said in a post on social media. “Renewables and more grids alone will not build the strong power system that the EU needs for our security and our competitiveness.”

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—With assistance from Daniel Basteiro, Thomas Gualtieri, Macarena Muñoz, William Mathis, John Ainger and Rachel Morison.

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