Latest news with #PratheekshaRamdas
The Age
4 days ago
- Business
- The Age
Spain's crippling blackout shows need for gas in a greener world: Woodside CEO
Australian oil and gas giant Woodside Energy has pointed to crippling blackouts that left millions without electricity across Europe last month as a 'forceful reminder' for the Albanese government to prioritise energy security alongside goals to switch to cleaner sources of power. While authorities are still searching for the cause of the unprecedented loss of power in Spain, Portugal and southern France on April 28, Woodside, the largest Australian gas producer, has seized on the consequences of the disruption to drive home the importance of ensuring reliable energy supplies. 'What we can see with certainty is that these events reinforce the need to focus on energy security and energy affordability as well as – and not instead of – emissions reduction,' Woodside chief Meg O'Neill will tell the Australian Energy Producers conference in Brisbane on Tuesday. 'When we lose sight of any one of these, all three are at risk.' As investigations continue, some analysts and commentators have raised questions about the Spanish grid's rapid shift to solar farms and wind turbines, which account for more than half of the country's electricity, and which can make it more challenging to balance fluctuations in supply and demand. Loading Rystad Energy analyst Pratheeksha Ramdas said: 'Spain's high renewable penetration exposed difficulties in balancing intermittent supply, while Portugal's complete reliance on imports underscored its lack of flexibility and energy storage.' Spain's grid operator, Red Electrica, and government leaders have denied any link to the expansion of wind and solar power. O'Neill's comments on the European blackouts come as Australian oil and gas executives seek to press the Albanese government to focus in its second term on making it cheaper and easier to drill for fossil fuels. Actions they are seeking include cuts to red tape, a simplification of environmental permitting and greater clarification on who must be consulted over offshore oil and gas projects to avoid ambiguity and 11th-hour lawsuits that force costly delays.
The Age
5 days ago
- Business
- The Age
Spain blackout shows need for gas in a greener world: Woodside CEO
Australian oil and gas giant Woodside Energy has pointed to crippling blackouts that left millions without electricity across Europe last month as a 'forceful reminder' for the Albanese government to prioritise energy security alongside goals to switch to cleaner sources of power. While authorities are still searching for the cause of the unprecedented loss of power in Spain, Portugal and southern France on April 28, Woodside, the largest Australian gas producer, has seized on the consequences of the disruption to drive home the importance of ensuring reliable energy supplies. 'What we can see with certainty is that these events reinforce the need to focus on energy security and energy affordability as well as – and not instead of – emissions reduction,' Woodside chief Meg O'Neill will tell the Australian Energy Producers conference in Brisbane on Tuesday. 'When we lose sight of any one of these, all three are at risk.' As investigations continue, some analysts and commentators have raised questions about the Spanish grid's rapid shift to solar farms and wind turbines, which account for more than half of the country's electricity, and which can make it more challenging to balance fluctuations in supply and demand. Loading Rystad Energy analyst Pratheeksha Ramdas said: 'Spain's high renewable penetration exposed difficulties in balancing intermittent supply, while Portugal's complete reliance on imports underscored its lack of flexibility and energy storage.' Spain's grid operator, Red Electrica, and government leaders have denied any link to the expansion of wind and solar power. O'Neill's comments on the European blackouts come as Australian oil and gas executives seek to press the Albanese government to focus in its second term on making it cheaper and easier to drill for fossil fuels. Actions they are seeking include cuts to red tape, a simplification of environmental permitting and greater clarification on who must be consulted over offshore oil and gas projects to avoid ambiguity and 11th-hour lawsuits that force costly delays.
Sydney Morning Herald
5 days ago
- Business
- Sydney Morning Herald
Spain blackout shows need for gas in a greener world: Woodside CEO
Australian oil and gas giant Woodside Energy has pointed to crippling blackouts that left millions without electricity across Europe last month as a 'forceful reminder' for the Albanese government to prioritise energy security alongside goals to switch to cleaner sources of power. While authorities are still searching for the cause of the unprecedented loss of power in Spain, Portugal and southern France on April 28, Woodside, the largest Australian gas producer, has seized on the consequences of the disruption to drive home the importance of ensuring reliable energy supplies. 'What we can see with certainty is that these events reinforce the need to focus on energy security and energy affordability as well as – and not instead of – emissions reduction,' Woodside chief Meg O'Neill will tell the Australian Energy Producers conference in Brisbane on Tuesday. 'When we lose sight of any one of these, all three are at risk.' As investigations continue, some analysts and commentators have raised questions about the Spanish grid's rapid shift to solar farms and wind turbines, which account for more than half of the country's electricity, and which can make it more challenging to balance fluctuations in supply and demand. Loading Rystad Energy analyst Pratheeksha Ramdas said: 'Spain's high renewable penetration exposed difficulties in balancing intermittent supply, while Portugal's complete reliance on imports underscored its lack of flexibility and energy storage.' Spain's grid operator, Red Electrica, and government leaders have denied any link to the expansion of wind and solar power. O'Neill's comments on the European blackouts come as Australian oil and gas executives seek to press the Albanese government to focus in its second term on making it cheaper and easier to drill for fossil fuels. Actions they are seeking include cuts to red tape, a simplification of environmental permitting and greater clarification on who must be consulted over offshore oil and gas projects to avoid ambiguity and 11th-hour lawsuits that force costly delays.
New York Times
29-04-2025
- Business
- New York Times
How Spain's Success in Renewable Energy May Have Left It Vulnerable
Spain's power company, Red Eléctrica, proudly declared on April 16 that enough renewable energy had been generated to cover demand. 'The ecological transition is moving forward,' it said. Less than two weeks later, Spain and Portugal experienced an 18-hour blackout that disrupted daily life, shutting down businesses and schools and crippling trains and mobile networks. Officials have given few details on the cause of the outage. But the incident exposed how Spain and Portugal, promoted as success stories in Europe's renewable energy transition, are also uniquely vulnerable to outages, given their relative isolation from the rest of the continent's energy supply. 'This disruption serves as a clear warning,' wrote Pratheeksha Ramdas, an analyst at Rystad Energy, a consulting firm. 'Future grid failures could have even more severe consequences,' she added. What role may reliance on renewable energy have played? The widespread outage raises questions about the resilience of the power infrastructure in Spain and Portugal — and to an extent, Europe. The two countries have invested heavily in building renewable energy sources like wind turbines and solar farms. More than half of Spain's electricity came from renewable energy as of last year, up from about a quarter 15 years ago. That rapid increase has put Spain at the forefront of Europe's transition to renewable energy and led to much lower electricity prices and less reliance on fossil fuels. This shift, though, may also have made the grid more prone to the sort of disruption that occurred on Monday. 'When you have more renewables on the grid,' Ms. Ramdas said, 'then your grid is more sensitive for these kind of disturbances.' Old-line generation sources like gas turbines and nuclear plants have a spinning momentum known as inertia, which helps buffer the fluctuations that are more common with intermittent sources like wind and solar power. When the Spanish grid became unstable about midday on Monday, it might have been easier to keep the system functioning if conventional power sources like natural gas or nuclear turbines had a larger presence, analysts say. 'This stored rotating energy can help maintain grid frequency until sufficient backup capacity is brought online,' said Henning Gloystein, director for energy at Eurasia Group, a research firm. The blackout could bolster the argument for retaining conventional generation sources, Mr. Gloystein said. He noted that Germany plans to build gas-fired power plants as backups for renewable energy. How is Europe preparing for renewable power? As renewable energy expands across Europe, the need for grid upgrades and storage has become critical. But over the last 15 years, investment in grids has lagged behind investment in alternative energy, which has doubled in that period, according to the International Energy Agency. Spain requires more investments in grid infrastructure and additional storage facilities, like batteries to provide backup power, said Federico Santi, a senior analyst at Eurasia Group. 'So they're almost a victim of their own success,' he said. There are also calls for more investment in critical energy infrastructure beyond renewable energy. Another major power outage occurred in March at London's Heathrow Airport, when a fire shut down the airport, one of the world's busiest, for a full day, disrupting more than 1,000 flights. The incident raised questions about whether there had been enough investment in key infrastructure. What is an 'energy island'? Spain and Portugal are often said to be on an energy island. Spain is connected to France by power cables, but the volumes of electricity that can flow through these conduits is a fraction of what can move between Germany and its neighbors. As for Portugal, it is completely dependent on Spain. These conduits, known as interconnectors, help balance power systems on a daily basis and, during crises, serve as emergency sources of energy. During the blackout, France cut them off to prevent the disruption from spreading to Central Europe, according to Rystad. That worsened Spain's power deficit and further squeezed Portugal. As the situation stabilized, France resumed electricity exports to Spain, which helped the country restart its grid. Had the Iberian Peninsula been better connected to the rest of the continent, it might have been able to compensate more quickly for the power loss. Several projects to improve connectivity are likely to gain momentum after the outage, Mr. Santi said, adding that pressure may increase to delay or cancel the phaseout of nuclear power stations in Spain, which was on track to be done by 2035. Will this be a setback for renewable energy? European countries are realizing that the push for more renewable energy and electrification of economies will be jeopardized unless they spend more on grids and other related infrastructure like batteries and other sources of energy that can be quickly tapped. More thought and money will need to go into managing renewable energy because the power produced by these sources waxes and wanes with the wind and sun. 'Pursuing net zero does not have to lead to power outages,' Georg Zachmann, a senior fellow at Bruegel, a research organization, said, referring to cutting emissions.
Local Spain
29-04-2025
- Science
- Local Spain
Q&A: How can Spain's entire electricity grid go down in five seconds?
General power outages like the one that hit Spain and Portugal this week can have multiple causes but the blackout highlighted how vulnerable the regional system on the Iberian peninsula can be. Why has the cause not yet been identified? The electrical grid is a backbone with complex branches consisting of thousands of interconnected components. "The grid operators must carefully analyse massive amounts of real-time data like frequency shifts, line failures, generator statuses and protection system actions to trace the sequence of events without jumping to conclusions," Pratheeksha Ramdas, senior new energies analyst at Rystad Energy, told AFP. What are the usual causes? Outages are often caused by a sudden shutdown of a source of production like a power plant due to a technical fault or a fuel shortage supplying thermal power plants. In recent years, natural disasters such as storms, earthquakes, forest fires, extreme heat or cold sometimes intensified by global warming have damaged infrastructure or created peaks of demand for heating or air conditioning. Other possible causes include overloads on high-voltage power lines, which force excess electricity to move to other lines, and cyberattacks, which Spain and Portugal have ruled out, but which are an increasingly mentioned threat as networks become more digitised. Was there an imbalance between supply and demand? In Spain on Monday evening, grid operator REE mentioned a "strong fluctuation in power flows, accompanied by a very significant loss of production". In Europe, the electrical frequency on the network is calibrated to a standard of 50 hertz (Hz). A frequency below that level means not enough electricity is being produced to meet demand. In contrast, a frequency above 50 Hz means that less electricity needs to be made. Operators have to order power plants in real time to produce more or less electricity according to demand to keep a frequency of 50 Hz. "Maintaining that frequency is a matter of balance," said Michael Hogan, senior advisor at the Regulatory Assistance Project, an NGO. If the frequency moves away from 50Hz, automated protection systems kick in to cut off parts of the grid to prevent damage to equipment in a domino effect. "Once power stations begin to shut themselves down for protection the situation can quickly get out of control," Hogan told AFP. "But... it's very rare for that to reach the state it did in Iberia yesterday (Monday)." How Monday's problem all started is difficult to determine. "One of the factors that most likely contributed to the instability is the weak interconnection between the peninsula and the rest of the western European grid, which meant that there wasn't much inertia in that part of the network to dampen the oscillations on the Spanish side of the interconnection," said Hogan. But that is likely only a contributory factor and not the root cause. "It will probably be the failure of one or two major transmissions facilities, which then cascaded to other connected parts of the network," said Hogan. "But what would have caused that initial transmission failure remains to be learned." What effect did renewable energy have? In Spain, about 40 percent of electricity comes from solar or wind power. At midday on Monday it was even more at about 70 percent. Unlike gas-fired power stations which need several minutes to start, "solar and wind generation cannot be controlled on demand and must often be curtailed", Rystad Energy's Ramdas told AFP. The European Network of Transmission System Operators (ENTSOE) warned on April 18 about the risks of solar overproduction as good weather approaches. Ramdas said Monday's disruption was a "clear warning". "Without stronger domestic resilience and improved regional coordination, future grid failures could have even more consequences," she wrote in a client note. "Without sufficient flexibility measures like storage, fast-ramping plants or strong interconnectors, large swings in renewable output can destabilise the grid," she told AFP. Lion Hirth, an energy consultant and professor of energy policy at the Hertie School in Berlin, said it was "likely" that "a system with very little conventional generation online (nuclear, gas, coal, hydro) has less dampening inertia, (in other words) is more prone to such oscillations getting out of control. "So, despite the uncertainty, I think it is fair to say that it didn't help that the Iberian system was mostly running on wind and solar on Monday noon," he added.
