The Physics Behind the Spanish Blackout

What's net zero is the line voltage. The issue is partly spinning mass, but more important is gross gigawatts available on bad afternoons.

Another time bomb is that (cheap) solar panels and inverters and batteries don't last as long as is assumed in payback calculations. In

That doesn't tell us anything new, and it does so poorly, too. Clearly written by someone with no technical background.

Jeroen Belleman

Lomborg is not an engineer, and we are not his target audience.

His approach is to simply accept that CO2 in the atmosphere is an existential threat, and proceed directly to what it would take to even move the needle. He takes no position concerning climate change.

His arguments boil down to physical and economic practicality.

As I've said in prior postings, bring a big calculator.

Joe

That's a pretty big jump. I don't recall seeing any such thing, but feel free to do some googling.

Joe

Yep. And given the likely end of the mandates and subsidies, replacement may prove expensive, making the business case less attractive.

Joe

We'd all be better off without that toxic pollutant.

Twaddle. Solar panels and wind turbines are the cheapest sources of electricity available - certainly for Australia and Spain.

Pull the other leg.

He gets paid for opinions that suit the climate change denial propaganda machine while misrepresenting the science sufficiently only just enough to keep them happy. It keep him well paid - a very practical advantage.

And a deep enough understanding to be able to work how Lomborg fudges the science.

It's not toxic (except in very high concentrations), and it's not a pollutant. Too much in the atmosphere makes the climate warmer, and has unfortunate side effects.

I remember not too long ago when the climate-change deniers were claiming renewables could never be a significant part of a country's energy profile but I guess when they find out Spain was running 73% one afternoon they have to change their argument, lol.

Just goalpost-shifting forever.

Better question is will the fission nuclear industry ever give up trying to push their obsolete pointless technology that has been nothing but broken promises for 75 years. It's over give up, already.

France will happily sell power to Germany and Spain for maybe 50 cents per KWH, or whatever that is in euros.

Fission works fine, although admittedly it's getting bogged down by regulations and its reputation has suffered from some extensively publicized accidents. Nuclear hasn't caused even close to as many fatalities as has coal. France runs on nuclear power and it's doing fine.

It's fusion that has failed to live up to its promises.

Renewables can be made to work, but need to learn to play well in the existing infrastructure and need some kind of backup which makes it more expensive.

Jeroen Belleman

Hydro was the first to come back online.

Islanding can happen if there is generation of the needed size in the region, of the same power as the power usage. And that did not happen, specially with solar/wind. Nor with nuclear.

Heh.

I should add that the WSJ is focused on purely financial issues, specifically where to invest, covering both equities (which stocks to buy, which to sell) and municipal bonds (loans made to governments to purchase such thing as bridges, roads, and power plants or facilities).

The Financial world does not care about technical details per se, they care that the loans will be repaid. Muni Bond Analysts consider the engineering as a way to assess the likely scale and practicality. Whereupon they encounter the big calculator issue - is the entity large enough to be plausible to accomplish what they claim?

I learned about the financial world by marrying into it - my wife was a Muni bond portfolio manager. I read some of her tutorials, and was stunned to learn that while the stock market got all the news media attention, the Muni market was in fact ten times larger.

Joe

fossil somewhere in the middle, nucs last of all. Gas turbines I think entered second.

Solar and wind can be made to impose a gigantic inertia with appropriate electronics. You can fixate the output at 50Hz, locked no matter what.

Politically biased opinion. Blaming anything for the blackout is reckless, when done before the detailed analysis is completed.

Only if the surplus energy is available to supply the necessary current.