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
18 comments:
"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. "
I'll make a prediction - whatever is published will studiously ignore the Net Zero elephant in the room, and talk about 'lessons for the future' and 'technical solutions' to prevent it happening again etc etc. And the Net Zero cultists will ignore what happened entirely and continue on their merry way, because the alternative would be to admit they've made the mother of all errors, and deserve to be tarred and feathered (at best).
And its no good thinking that 'experts' telling the cultists they've got it wrong is going to have any more impact than a .22 on an elephant. After all grid experts have been telling them this was going to happen for years, so why would they listen now?
My prediction: Joe Bloggs will be invited to concentrate on the secondary issue - the perturbation that kicked off the problem.
Whereas the primary issue is why the grid was being run on the verge of instability. The answer is presumably to do with the high proportion of solar and wind power and the consequent low proportion being generated by stations with spinning kit - steam turbines, gas turbines - which provide the inertia to stabilise the system.
I assume that water turbines in hydro plant also provide useful inertia: anyone here know?
Anyhow, suppose I balance a pencil on its flat end. If someone sneezes nearby, or bumps into my desk, the pencil tumbles over. The key question isn't "sneeze or collision"? The key question is what sort of mug expects a pencil to stay stable indefinitely in that position?
I I’m
Of what I do not know I do not speak.
In the old days of synching 3 phase generators you had filament type light bulbs between the (stepped down) incoming 3 grid phases and your generator's 3 phases. You wound the steam pressure up until the lamps stopped flickering and all held dark (you were equal). Then you heaved the big switch to join the grid. That was the easy bit.
Then you monitored the current on your generator's phases and so long as you were sending power out all was well, just hold the steam pressure to keep it that way. If you started sucking in power your generator would act as a motor and try to suck the boiler dry - not good. So a delicate business for a control system to keep hundreds of tonnes of iron spinning and to keep hundreds of tons of coal loading into the furnaces to keep the steam up. All with long mechanical and thermal inertia lags.
So long as all the machinery was hefty and could stand a bit of abuse then careful work kept the show on the road. What happens now with fast reacting power sources I don't know. But even in the old days it was not unheard of for a violent surge to break the generator/turbine coupling and send it up through the power station roof. But the overall system usually kept going.
Can it be blamed on immigrants - or Trump? Asking for a friend.
Africans tapping into solar power transmission lines like they do in Nigeria on the oil pipelines?
Perhaps the Spanish power companies should be on the hook for the costs as Shell are in Nigeria!
Once more with feeling.
First - I have always responded to renewable energy nuts by saying
"When you can build a turbine using only turbine generated energy, then I might believe in it.
This feller, who does know what he talking about says it will never happen. Energy gradients - which I had never heard of, but once explained makes total sense.
https://richardlyon.substack.com/p/the-physics-of-net-zero
Nick - you know this stuff.
Aside - hugely enjoying Precipice. Only ever read Fatherland before, but Harris spins a fine yarn and writes well. See he wrote three books on Cicero - about to be reserved.
Alderley Park, the Stanleys gaffe in Cheshire, is near where I was brought up. My eldest cousin, father's side, was born there at the end of the war, guess it was requisitioned as a nursing hospital. And nearby is the village of Poynton...
If you're just getting into Harris you have a load of treats to come.
Archangel has a very nice conceit.
Yes - can see me reading them all!
Harris is a perfect author for this age, usually a minority and an oppressed woman heavily featured in every one. And he even managed an intersex/transgender figure in one novel!
@ Elby
I think the energy gradient referred to is moving from a low entropy source to a high entropy (waste heat).
Free energy is proportional to entropy, so diffuse sources (such as sunlight) will always produce less useful work than concentrated ones (nuclear, fossil fuels).
Therefore you'll need so many renewables to provide all our energy requirements you run out of space for them.
Yes - article goes into that and makes a lot of sense even to a lay person such as I
A claim of such mind-numbing stupidity given the penetration of non-hydrocarbon sources in the current generation mix (https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/uk-renewable-power-set-to-overtake-fossil-fuels-for-first-time/) — and also hydrocarbons are below 75% of *all energy consumption* — and we’ve hardly even scratched the surface of potential renewable generation. There’s hardly a solar farm or wind turbine round every corner, is there?
Clive demonstrates what happens when you don't bother to read the linked article and pile in with uninformed comment.
The author doesn't claim that the UK can't run 100% off renewables (the point you appear to be arguing). What they are arguing is that the ratio of power in (manufacturing) to power our (from wind/solar) is approximately 1:1 due to the inefficiencies of drawing power from the wind/sum (higher entropy). The point is that the total of energy use is not just electricity to homes and businesses.
If you take into account that the coal and nuclear in China (where the renewables are made) is 30:1 the inference is that we'd need at least 30x the amount of wind and solar generation if other sources were done away with. And that likely doesn't account for the overbuild required for dull days, nightime and weeks of Dunkelflaute.
It was complete rubbish on several fronts.
Several countries’ grids have run perfectly fine on renewables (albeit currently in ideal conditions in terms of generating and demand). To waffle on with some guff about entropy making that impossible is therefore clearly a counterfactual. The other aspect I can’t even begin to fathom, that the demand for energy in terms of delivered capacity isn’t the product of demand from consumers. The grid (for electricity supply) either satisfies the amount of energy required by users (their demand) plus grid distribution losses or it doesn’t. There is no mysterious “other consumption” or “energy leakage” magically arising through some mystic process or force.
Thus, the “there isn’t enough land to house all the needed renewable generation” is similarly crackpot. There seems to be some vague interpretation of what reactive power might be required in any given load profile (I think that’s what’s driving this “theory” here, being generous and attempting so figure out what they are trying to get at) but that is, of course, determined by the reactive power demands of the consumers, which is both predictable and the support for which is entirely within the discretion of the energy system operator to either cater to or price off the grid (if needed).
Sadly, such is the level that typical public debate descends into on this subject. As a result, the loons, both pro-renewable and anti-renewable have taken over both ends of the spectrum and knowledgeable, informed discussion almost impossible in the face of the nuttiness.
In such circumstances, the least whacko camp wins. This is currently Unready Eddy Miliband who is at least being forced to sort out some not completely half baked plan for delivering what the renewables camp is trying to sell us. That the anti-renewables faction is so mind bogglingly off the reservation (as illustrated here with this utterly risible attempt at describing electricity generation and distribution) that it manages to make even Miliband seem vaguely expert with a well-considered approach to energy policy shows exactly why they fail to shoot any of the many, many rotting fish in his barrel.
Since Grok is infinitely patient, unlike me, I asked it for an accuracy assessment. Here is the summary:
### Strengths of the Article
- **Physics-Based Argument**: The article correctly highlights the importance of energy density and EROI, which are often under-discussed in mainstream net-zero debates. These are real constraints that policymakers must address.
- **Skepticism of Oversimplification**: It rightly critiques overly optimistic claims that renewables can seamlessly replace fossil fuels without significant infrastructure or cost challenges.
- **Engaging Analogy**: The swimming pool versus egg pan analogy effectively communicates the concept of energy gradients to a lay audience.
### Weaknesses and Inaccuracies
- **Overgeneralization**: The article’s absolutist tone—“you’ll never get the energy gradient of a gas-fired power station”—ignores incremental improvements in renewable technologies and grid management. It presents a binary (renewables vs. fossil fuels) rather than a nuanced mix.
- **Dismissal of Solutions**: It barely acknowledges storage (e.g., batteries, pumped hydro), grid-scale hydrogen, or nuclear as part of a net-zero mix, focusing narrowly on wind and solar’s limitations.
- **Lack of Quantitative Evidence**: The article uses qualitative arguments and analogies but lacks data to support claims of economic collapse or energy insufficiency. For example, it doesn’t quantify the energy shortfall it predicts or cite specific grid failures due to renewables.
- **Selective Framing**: It emphasizes renewables’ weaknesses without comparing them to fossil fuels’ externalities (e.g., air pollution, geopolitical risks) or nuclear’s challenges (e.g., waste, build times).
@Clive: What you're ignoring is that even if every KwH of electricity currently used in the UK was generated by renewable energy, that electricity is a small fraction of the amount of energy that is necessary for the UK to maintain its current standard of living. All the things that the UK imports that were created, mined or harvested by fossil fuels (or are actual fossil fuels themselves) go towards creating our standard of living. Take the ability to do that (import steel from China created with coal generated power, import gas and oil from the Middle East, import clothing produced from oil, food grown with artificial fertilisers etc etc etc) away, and our standard of living would equal that of the very poor countries listed in this chart (https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff8e9f2a9-7f17-4bbe-b94a-73cfb382cb20_1272x1030.jpeg) - the Somalias, the Etheopias, the Haitis.
All we are doing at the moment is pretending if something is made abroad using fossil fuels that 'doesn't count' towards our emissions. Thats like me powering my house with solar panels and a battery (which were produced somewhere else by fossil fuels of course) and declaring my lifestyle is 'Net Zero' because I buy all my food from Tesco , my car from VW and my clothes from M&S. None of which was produced in my 3 bed semi in suburbia, so 'doesn't count'.
For the UK to maintain its current standard of living and ensure EVERYTHING it consumes (which includes everything in the production chain, right down to the digger mining aluminium ore, the ship transporting it, the smelter refining it, the factory creating the finished item) was created by renewable energy would indeed require the entire country and God knows how much more space to be covered in solar panels and wind farms. And would still have no power when the sun didn't shine and the wind didn't blow.
As the chart linked above shows - energy consumption equals wealth. Take away the energy and you take away wealth. If you can't see that you are either stupid or blinded by your ideological obsessions.
Oh, absolutely. Embedded energy calculations for goods consumed (or services provided) cannot be excluded from any particular country)s total energy requirements.
But one thing we can say with complete certainty is that primarily fuels, like hydrocarbons, are finite. They’ll probably last 50 years at current or projected rates of consumption. They may last a hundred years. You could even make a case for two hundred years. But you cannot with any shred of credibility say they’ll last three hundred or four hundred years.
Sooner or later, we will have to transition away from them. It’s a strawman to say (as the particularly ridiculous article we had foist on us above skewedly tried to suggest) only renewables will be the complete answer. But a big part of the answer they will be, alongside nuclear, hydro, possibly hydrogen and inevitably some (albeit declining to minuscule levels) remaining hydrocarbon resources.
It’s not going to be easy and it’s not going to be cheap and it’s not going to be done without a fair few saying, oh, don’t worry, it’s not our responsibility, we can happily kick that can down the road for future generations to fix. Because it is undoubtedly true to say that we, if we’re over, say 20 or 30, could probably get by without having to move away from hydrocarbons in our lifetime.
How much we do today — and how much we leave undone for those being born today to sort out — is a broad societal question. If we choose to do nothing and just spend the next thirty or forty or fifty years sucking the Permian Basin dry (or the Saudi oilfields, or frack everything in the South Weald) then we can do exactly that.
The more we take, though, the less there’ll be left in terms of easy access to readily-recoverable high grade reserves with which to bootstrap the inevitable migration away from hydrocarbons.
Again, it’s a broad, complex question for civil society to ponder and answer. Such pondering can and should be done and all intelligent, thoughtful views should be considered. But what should be given short shrift is utter dimwitted claptrap like that laughable “energy density fundamentals” piece of nonsense which someone (who I can only conclude was dropped on their head as a child) was asking us to be guided by. Sadly it, and drivel like it, forms so much of the clueless railings we have to wade through when this subject comes up for debate.
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