Have been abroad this week, but fortunately not on the Iberian peninsular or southern France. cascading blackouts like that are seriously no supposed to happen. Speculation ahead of a proper post mortem is interesting only on an ad hominem basis: what explanation does a particular party instinctively reach for, and what does that tell us?
The continental TV I have been watching hasn't been slow to wonder whether grid decarbonisation doesn't have something to do with it, whilst carefully phrasing this as what "some people" are speculating. Which suggests the green/progressive camp rather fears decarbonisation will ultimately feature in the account. It kinda has to, because there is so much continual changing and tampering going on, and in the middle of all this, the Bad Thing has happened.
A couple of things are worth emphasising. This genuinely is a very Bad Thing (albeit "could have been worse"), which isn't tolerable, even as a once-in-a-while event. It's up there with Boeings operated by competent airlines that fall out of the sky. Wholly unacceptable.
And: spin & framing notwithstanding, we will eventually get a proper account, which doubtless the greens (however technically ignorant) have been told. There is a whole world of grid expertise out there, that (a) wants to know; (b) can detect BS at a thousand paces; and (c) won't be slow to let us all in on what's been found.
ND
