Spain's blackout highlights renewables' grid challenge
by Naharnet Newsdesk 7 hours
The cause of last week's massive power outage in Spain and Portugal remains unclear but it has shone a spotlight on solar and wind energy, which critics accuse of straining electricity grids.
The rise of renewables presents a challenge for power grids, which must evolve to adapt as countries move away from fossil fuels.
- Maintaining stability -
Grid operators must ensure that electricity is constantly balanced between demand and supply.
A metric of this balance is the frequency of the electricity flowing through the grid, set at 50 hertz (Hz) in Europe and 60 Hz in the United States. If that number drifts too far off, it can jeopardize the grid.
Historically, the electricity system has relied on conventional power plants -- gas, coal, nuclear and hydroelectric -- that use spinning turbines to generate electricity.
These machines keep the frequency stable.
With their gigantic rotors spinning at high speed, they provide inertia to the system.
If a power plant fails or if electricity demand increases too quickly, they help stabilize the grid by releasing the kinetic energy stored in the rotors.
Instead of spinning machines, solar and wind farms use electronic systems that feed power into the grid, making it harder to maintain that delicate balance.
Renewable energy will have to do more than provide carbon-free electricity in the future, said Jose Luis Dominguez-Garcia, an electrical systems expert at the Catalonia Energy Research Institute (IREC).
They will have to "assist the system with additional controls to support the grid, particularly in inertia terms", he said.
Marc Petit, professor of electrical systems at top French engineering school CentraleSupelec, argued that moving away from fossil fuels would make hydroelectric and nuclear power plants "even more essential for stabilizing the system" as they use rotating machines.
- Flywheels -
A range of technical solutions already exist to compensate for renewables' lack of inertia and hence to support grid stability.
These include gravity storage, cryogenic liquid air, compressed air and concentrated solar power.
As it undergoes a transition away from coal, Britain is banking on flywheels, a tried and tested system.
Surplus power from solar and wind farms is used to make the large wheels turn, creating kinetic energy.
This stored energy can then be converted to provide electricity to the grid if needed.
- No sun or wind -
Just before the massive blackout on April 28, wind and solar power provided 70 percent of Spain's electricity output. But renewables are intermittent sources of energy as they rely on nature.
When the wind stops blowing or the sun is hiding, other sources have to step in within minutes, or there need to be adequate systems for storing -- and then releasing -- renewables in place.
Depending on the country, backup supply currently comes from mainly thermal power plants (gas or coal), nuclear reactors or hydroelectricity.
To handle the ups and downs of renewable power, countries must ramp up storage capacity.
The most widespread method is pumped storage hydropower from water reservoirs.
But large stationary batteries, akin to shipping containers, are increasingly being deployed alongside wind and solar farms -- a segment dominated by China.
To meet the global goal of tripling renewable capacity by 2030, storage capacity will have to increase sixfold, with batteries doing 90 percent of the work, according to the International Energy Agency.
Another way to ease pressure on the system would be to shift electricity use -- for example when you charge your car battery -- to the middle of the day, when solar power is at its peak.
- Rescale the network -
Widespread blackouts "have virtually always been triggered by transmission network failures, not by generation, renewables or otherwise", said Mike Hogan, advisor with the Regulatory Assistance Project (RAP), an NGO whose stated goal is to achieve a clean, reliable, equitable and cost-efficient energy future.
Tens of billions of euros, perhaps hundreds of billions, will be needed to renovate ageing power lines and replace them with new ones that are more powerful.
The need to modernize or expand the lines is pressing as energy-hungry data centers are growing and factories are increasingly consuming electricity.
Countries also need to strengthen interconnections between their power systems.
Such cross-border links helped to restore power to Spain as France stepped in to share electricity during the blackout.
By 2028, exchange capacity between the two neighbors is expected to increase from 2.8 to 5.0 gigawatts, reducing the peninsula's relative electrical isolation.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Nahar Net
4 days ago
- Nahar Net
Private Japanese lunar lander heads toward touchdown in moon's far north
by Naharnet Newsdesk 05 June 2025, 16:14 A private lunar lander from Japan is closing in on the moon, aiming for a touchdown in the unexplored far north with a mini rover. The moon landing attempt by Tokyo-based company ispace on Friday Japan time is the latest entry in the rapidly expanding commercial lunar rush. The encore comes two years after the company's first moonshot ended in a crash landing, giving rise to the name Resilience for its successor lander. Resilience holds a rover with a shovel to gather lunar dirt as well as a Swedish artist's toy-size red house that will be lowered onto the moon's dusty surface. Long the province of governments, the moon became a target of private outfits in 2019, with more flops than wins along the way. Launched in January from Florida on a long, roundabout journey, Resilience entered lunar orbit last month. It shared a SpaceX ride with Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost, which reached the moon faster and became the first private entity to successfully land there in March. Another U.S. company, Intuitive Machines, arrived at the moon a few days after Firefly. But the tall, spindly lander face-planted in a crater near the moon's south pole and was declared dead within hours. Resilience is targeting the top of the moon, a less forbidding place than the shadowy bottom. The ispace team chose a flat area with few boulders in Mare Frigoris or Sea of Cold, a long and narrow region full of craters and ancient lava flows that stretches across the near side's northern tier. Once settled with power and communication flowing, the 7.5-foot (2.3-meter) Resilience will lower the piggybacking rover onto the lunar surface. Made of carbon fiber-reinforced plastic with four wheels, ispace's European-built rover — named Tenacious — sports a high-definition camera to scout out the area and a shovel to scoop up some lunar dirt for NASA. The rover, weighing just 11 pounds (5 kilograms), will stick close to the lander, going in circles at a speed of less than one inch (a couple centimeters) per second. Besides science and tech experiments, there's an artistic touch. The rover holds a tiny, Swedish-style red cottage with white trim and a green door, dubbed the Moonhouse by creator Mikael Genberg, for placement on the lunar surface. Takeshi Hakamada, CEO and founder of ispace, considers the latest moonshot "merely a steppingstone," with its next, much bigger lander launching by 2027 with NASA involvement, and even more to follow. "We're not trying to corner the market. We're trying to build the market," Jeremy Fix, chief engineer for ispace's U.S. subsidiary, said at a conference last month. "It's a huge market, a huge potential." Fix noted that ispace, like other businesses, does not have "infinite funds" and cannot afford repeated failures. While not divulging the cost of the current mission, company officials said it's less than the first one which exceeded $100 million. Two other U.S. companies are aiming for moon landings by year's end: Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and Astrobotic Technology. Astrobotic's first lunar lander missed the moon altogether in 2024 and came crashing back through Earth's atmosphere. For decades, governments competed to get to the moon. Only five countries have pulled off successful robotic lunar landings: Russia, the U.S., China, India and Japan. Of those, only the U.S. has landed people on the moon: 12 NASA astronauts from 1969 through 1972. NASA expects to send four astronauts around the moon next year. That would be followed a year or more later by the first lunar landing by a crew in more than a half-century, with SpaceX's Starship providing the lift from lunar orbit all the way down to the surface. China also has moon landing plans for its own astronauts by 2030.
Nahar Net
4 days ago
- Nahar Net
Join scientists as they drive into hailstorms to study costly weather extreme
by Naharnet Newsdesk 05 June 2025, 16:09 As severe storms once again soak, twist and pelt the nation's midsection, a team of dozens of scientists is driving into them to study one of the nation's costliest but least-appreciated weather dangers: Hail. Hail rarely kills, but it hammers roofs, cars and crops to the tune of $10 billion a year in damage in the U.S. So in one of the few federally funded science studies remaining after Trump administration cuts, teams from several universities are observing storms from the inside and seeing how the hail forms. Project ICECHIP has already collected and dissected hail the size of small cantaloupes, along with ice balls of all sizes and shapes. Scientists in two hail-dimpled vehicles with special mesh protecting the windshields are driving straight into the heart of the storms, an area known as the "shaft" where the hail pelting is the most intense. It's a first-of-its-kind icy twist on tornado chasing. "It's an interesting experience. It sounds like somebody on the outside of your vehicle is hitting you with a hammer," said Northern Illinois University meteorology professor Victor Gensini, one of the lead researchers. A team of journalists from The Associated Press joined them this week in a several-day trek across the Great Plains, starting Tuesday morning in northern Texas with a weather briefing before joining a caravan of scientists and students looking for ice. Driving toward the most extreme forecasts The caravan features more than a dozen radar trucks and weather balloon launching vehicles. At each site, the scientists load and unload drones, lasers and cameras and other specialized equipment. There are foam pads to measure hail impact and experimental roofing material. There are even special person-sized funnels to collect pristine hail before it hits the ground and becomes tainted with dirt. Already in treks across Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas, the team has found hail measuring more than 5 inches (13 centimeters) in diameter — bigger than a softball, but not quite a soccer ball. The team's equipment and vehicles already sport dings, dimples and dents that scientists show off like battle scars. "We got a few good whacks," said forensic engineer Tim Marshall, who was carrying roofing samples to see if there were ways shingles could better handle hail. "I look at broken, busted stuff all the time." At Tuesday's weather briefing, retired National Weather Service forecaster David Imy pointed to potential hot spots this week in Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico. Computer models show the potential for a "monster storm down here near the Red River" later in the week, he said. Acting on the latest forecasts, Gensini and other leaders told the team to head to Altus, Oklahoma, but be ready to cross the Red River back into Texas at a moment's notice. A few hours after his briefing, Imy had the opportunity to chase one of the bigger storms, packing what radar showed was large hail at 8,000 feet (2,438 meters) in the air. Because of the warm air closer to the surface, the hail was only pea sized by the time it hit the ground. But the outing still provided good data and beautiful views for Imy, who was with a group that stationed themselves about a half-mile from the center of the storm. "Beautiful colors: turquoise, bluish green, teal," Imy said, pointing to the mushroom shaped cloud dominating the sky. "This is beauty to me and also seeing the power of nature." A costly but overlooked severe weather problem This is not just a bunch of scientists looking for an adrenaline rush or another sequel to the movie "Twister." It's serious science research into weather that damages a lot of crops in the Midwest, Gensini said. Hail damage is so costly that the insurance industry is helping to pay for the mission, which is primarily funded by the National Science Foundation. "These are the stones that do the most damage to lives and property," Gensini said. "We want the biggest hail possible." A 2024 study by Gensini found that as the world warms from human-caused climate change, small hailstones will become less likely while the larger ones become more common. The bigger, more damaging ones that the ICECHIP team is studying are projected to increase 15% to 75% this century depending on how much the world warms. That's because the stronger updrafts in storms would keep stones aloft longer to get bigger, but the heat would melt the tinier ones. The experiment is unique because of the combination of driving into the hail and deploying numerous radars and weather balloons to get an overall picture of how the storms work, Gensini said, adding that hail is often overlooked because researchers have considered it a lower priority than other extreme weather events. Outside scientists said the research mission looks promising because there are a lot of unanswered questions about hail. Hail is the No. 1 reason for soaring costs in billion-dollar weather disasters in the United States, said meteorologist Jeff Masters, who cofounded Weather Underground and is now at Yale Climate Connections. "Now a large part of that reason is because we simply have more people with more stuff in harm's way," said Masters, who wasn't part of the research. "Insurance has become unaffordable in a lot of places and hail has become a big reason." In Colorado, hail is "actually our most costly natural disaster," said Lori Peek, director of the Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado, adding that "hail does such incredible damage to property."
Nahar Net
4 days ago
- Nahar Net
A long wait for the Nintendo Switch 2 launch, and very long lines
by Naharnet Newsdesk 05 June 2025, 16:07 Eager customers lined up outside electronics stores in Tokyo hours in advance to collect their pre-ordered Nintendo Switch 2 video game consoles. The much anticipated Switch 2, being released around the world Thursday, is an upgrade to its eight-year-old predecessor with new social features meant to draw players into online gaming. Nintendo is counting on the Switch 2 to boost sagging sales. In the U.S., a chaotic pre-order process in April left some fans frustrated after the consoles quickly sold out. Still, some eager fans lined up early Thursday at retailers such as Target in hopes of purchasing a unit. "I'm just rolling the dice here," said Edgar Huo, who was eighth in line of about 25 outside of a Target in the Tribeca neighborhood of Manhattan, New York. Many of those waiting for the store to open had ordered online, but a few like Huo hoped for a chance at purchasing any extra inventory the store had. In Japan, the new consoles were sold through a competitive lottery system that Nintendo said got about 2.2 million applications. Outside the official draw, some retailers offered their own lotteries to pre-order the devices. Koji Takahashi was among those who missed out on the official draw but he was selected in the second round of a lottery held by a major electronics retailer in Japan. He was first in line waiting outside the store, arriving four hours ahead of its opening. He hoped to secure a limited supply of Nintendo accessories to buy along with his pre-ordered Switch 2. "I feel very sorry for those who weren't successful in the lottery. But I also had tough time getting this far, so I hope they forgive me!" Takahashi said. The new console comes with a larger and higher resolution screen than its predecessor, with improved processing power, offering smoother and more vivid graphics. Nintendo has said it expects to sell 15 million Switch 2 consoles for the fiscal year through March 2026. The company has promised to roll out attractive software for the Switch 2 later this year, including "The Legend of Zelda" games, a Pokemon title and a Kirby game, as well as offerings from outside software companies. Nintendo is capitalizing on the launch with the opening of a store in San Francisco and the Super Nintendo World amusement facility in Orlando, Florida, both set for this month. The Switch 2's rollout arrives at an uncertain time for much of the gaming industry due to new tariffs implemented by U.S. President Donald Trump. In the U.S., the Switch 2's baseline launch price is $449.99 — significantly higher than the original Switch's $299 price tag. U.S. preorders for the Switch 2 were delayed for several weeks so the company could assess the potential impact of tariffs.
