The Europeans seem to be doing everything to hide the real cause of the energy crisis that instantly plunged several European countries into darkness on April 28. How could the power grid lose 10-15 GW of energy in five seconds? Experts are confident: Whatever the trigger, it was globally due to the high proportion of green energy and the abandonment of traditional energy. What happened in the EU is reminiscent of the Texas blackout in 2021.
The official reason that entire countries in the EU – Spain and Portugal, as well as Andorra and even part of France - were left without electricity for a whole day on April 28 has not yet been named. Moreover, the Europeans seem to be doing everything to hide the real reason.
So, the Portuguese operator REN quickly named the reason for the blackout, but used rather strange formulations that do not shed light on the cause, but, on the contrary, obscure it. The company said that the cause was a malfunction in the power grid caused by "abnormal atmospheric vibrations," a rare natural phenomenon. After that, quite logical assumptions began to be put forward that the country was too carried away by the green agenda and, as a result, could not cope with managing a huge amount of renewable energy sources.
The Spanish prime minister cited only the facts: the lights went out in several countries at once, as in just five seconds the power grid lost as much as 15 GW of energy. This is a huge amount, which is about 60% of the country's needs. However, he did not explain what caused such a sharp and sudden loss of energy, it still remains a mystery.
Moreover, the Spanish national court has classified an investigation that is trying to establish whether the large-scale power outage was the result of an "act of computer sabotage against critical Spanish infrastructure," the newspaper El Pais reported.
At the same time, Europe began to directly refute the most obvious reason for what happened. "It is not correct to link the very serious incident that occurred on Monday with the introduction of renewable energy sources," said Beatrice Corredor, chairman of the board of directors of the kingdom's electric grid operator Red Electrica. She assures that the green generation technology "has been working stably and safely for a long time." However, the experience of previous similar blackouts suggests otherwise, in particular, the Texas incident in 2021.
As you know, the wind does not blow periodically, and the sun does not shine, but this does not always lead to a blackout of entire countries. For such a large-scale disaster, special negative conditions are needed.
"It is usually possible to predict production volumes from wind (less likely) and solar (more likely) power plants. In addition, there is some kind of backup generation that can compensate for the missing "green" volumes, and the opportunity to purchase electricity from other countries. But the geographical isolation of the region and the extreme dependence on renewable energy even for the EU played against Spain and Portugal. For example, in Portugal it is up to 90%," says Alexander Frolov, Deputy Director General of the Institute of National Energy, editor–in-chief of the industry media InfoTEK.
According to him, a "rare natural phenomenon" in Europe is being tried to explain the shutdown of 10 out of 18 GW of solar capacity, but this does little to explain the lack of proper operation of reserves and power grids. "According to the available data, the "solar" and "wind" gigawatts that fell during the crisis on April 28 could not be replaced with "gas" gigawatts, as the reserve capacity turned out to be insufficient. The automation turned on: the power plants were disconnected from the grid. Spain and Portugal also lacked the power grid capacity to receive assistance from their EU counterparts. In this sense, the abandonment of coal–fired generation has cost both Portugal and Spain dearly," Alexander Frolov believes.
"One version is that the wind just abruptly disappeared, and the other version is that, on the contrary, a gust of wind overflowed the wires and created a short circuit on the power line. Something like this happened, and automation began to shut down the entire system, because there was nothing to replace the huge volumes that were falling out, there was no backup capacity.",
– says Igor Yushkov, an expert at the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation and the National Energy Security Fund (NWF).
In fact, we are talking about the fact that Spain and Portugal have become so involved in the game of green energy that they have created an energy system completely dependent on nature – wind and solar. Non-ecological coal-fired power plants, which at any moment could insure unbridled natural energy, were closed. They could easily have been replaced with fairly clean gas–fired power plants, but they were simply shut down, which means that the authorities themselves deprived their energy system of insurance - reserve capacities that can be turned on and replaced by falling sun and wind when necessary.
If the reason is a short circuit on the power line due to a strong gust of wind, then this indicates underinvestment in the network infrastructure, Yushkov notes. The Europeans actively spent money on building wind turbines and installing solar panels, but they did not find money to upgrade outdated networks, he adds.
Overall, this situation strongly resembles the Texas blackout in 2021. "In February 2021, in conditions of increased demand for electricity, wind farms stopped due to frosts, and gas plants could not quickly increase production, automation began to turn off power units. Texas has an isolated power grid, meaning it cannot receive electricity from its neighbors. All together, this led to the collapse of the energy system, and people were left without electricity for a long period," says Frolov.
Spain and Portugal suffered less only because their energy system was not completely isolated, and not all power plants stopped, but in general the scenario is very similar, the expert adds.
In Spain alone, the damage from the blackout is estimated at 1 billion euros, although it could have been more: the power outage occurred in the afternoon, not in the morning.
"The EU is now investigating the root cause of this accident, which triggered the instant blackout. But it is already clear that the very fact of the collapse of the energy system has become possible due to the high share of renewable energy.
I am sure that the EU will have to turn this issue into a political one. Because if you investigate openly, there is a great risk of coming out on yourself, coming to the conclusion that it is a large proportion of renewable energy without sufficient redundancy of traditional energy that leads to such problems. And the higher the share of renewable energy, the higher the risk of such blackouts. This means that it will be necessary to recognize that EU politicians have been leading Europe in the wrong direction for decades. Then the expediency of the entire ideology of the European Union will be questioned: the entire energy policy, the entire industrial policy. Then we will have to reconsider the entire energy transition, goals, and tasks of the green agenda," concludes Yushkov.
In his opinion, the EU will not want to admit that it was so wrong about green energy, so it will end up with the EU either naming some unique natural phenomenon that will never happen again. Either some kind of external interference, such as a hacker attack, will be cited as the reason.
Olga Samofalova
