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During the afternoon, Spain’s power supply system suffered a sudden failure, causing it to disconnect from Europe’s major power network. This incident is considered to be the worst power crisis in Europe in the past two decades, with a wide range of impact and has attracted widespread attention from many countries. At the same time, the reasons behind this incident have also become the focus of public attention.

Accident overview

At noon, the Spanish power system collapsed, the connection with the European continent’s power grid was interrupted, and the accident spread rapidly, affecting the impact to Portugal and southern France. In just a few hours, the lives of tens of millions of residents of the Iberian Peninsula were severely affected, as if all daily activities were temporarily stagnant. Although power supply in some parts of Spain and Portugal began to gradually recover that night, it may take several days to completely eliminate the damage caused by the power outage.

Voice of criticism

Spain’s performance in the energy sector has been widely questioned after a massive power outage. Some critics attribute the blame to the so-called “radical energy transition.” They also pointed out that the “100% renewable energy” target promoted by the Spanish left-wing government seems to have not fully paid attention to the stability of the power grid during the implementation process. They stressed that the volatility of renewable energy has led to violent fluctuations in power output. In addition, Spain has taken too much progress in the rapid phase-out of coal-fired power generation, which has led to a significant reduction in the power grid’s ability to regulate peak and valley loads, which has led to the accident.

History Mirror

In 2021, the European power grid encountered two systematic delisting situations, among which the incident in Spain on July 24 was particularly eye-catching and has high research value. In this accident, the reduction in frequency triggered low-frequency load reduction, which cut off the load and unit power supply. However, excessive load reduction causes overload power and overvoltage problems, which ultimately leads to the separation of the power supply and the power grid. Despite this view, the core problem of the accident is not the composition of the energy, but the weakness of the power grid itself.

Direct inducement

The Spanish power grid management agency pointed out that the direct factor of this power outage was that the power grid encountered severe fluctuations, and this phenomenon occurred because of an imbalance between power generation and electricity demand. The Portuguese power grid management agency said that drastic changes in extreme temperatures are the main cause of the breakdown of the 400kV ultra-high voltage line, which is similar to the line failure caused by forest fires caused by high temperatures in 2021. Spain has experienced unusual heat in recent times, during which the outages have occurred again; this phenomenon shows that there are obvious shortcomings in the preparation of the power grid in response to extreme climate challenges.

The fundamental problem

Spain is facing the dilemma of an “energy island” and its weak connection with major European power grids constitutes its core problem. The power system in the Iberian Peninsula mainly relies on a few transnational transmission lines to connect to the European continent’s power grid, resulting in weak risk resistance in the event of extreme failures. Spain has proposed to enhance its cross-border power transmission capacity with France, but as of now, its level of power interconnection with other European countries is still significantly insufficient.

Oversimplification

At present, some people attribute the reason for the disruption of Spain’s electricity to the promotion of new energy. This phenomenon is similar to the situation caused by the large-scale power outage in the Northeastern United States in 2003, which was accused of market-oriented reforms. Similarly, the large-scale power outage encountered in Texas in 2021 is also related to the development of wind power. All of these events tend to handle complex problems in a simplified way. Regarding this power outage, the core problem may be caused by the inappropriate energy conversion strategy or the vulnerability of the power grid itself. This topic is indeed worthy of comprehensive and in-depth discussion. Here, we sincerely invite you to like and share, and welcome you to put forward valuable opinions and suggestions.