How Invisible Waves Have Changed the World
2026-04-14 [Petri]
The blackout of April 2025 was a devastating example of when a widely shared essential service goes wrong. As a result, both mainland Spain and Portugal went dark for hours, and everything from high-speed trains to elevators stopped. Eight deaths were attributed to the blackout. Only the islands and overseas regions were spared, thanks to their fully separate power grids.
Now, the report of the root causes is out, and contrary to the initial claims of this being caused by the renewable energy sources, it turns out that we were dealing, as in many of such occurrences, with a multitude of unrelated issues happening simultaneously in a grid that is dynamically growing, without full overall oversight.
The report by ENTSO-E, the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity, names the causes for the blackout in a long list, consisting of power consumption oscillations, gaps in voltage and reactive power control, differences in voltage regulation practices across sites, rapid output reductions and generator disconnections in Spain, and finally, unbalanced stabilization capabilities.
The reactive power imbalance mainly comes from inductive loads, like electric motors and transformers, as well as inherent transmission grid effects on hugely varying load situations.
Even as this component in this imbalance can be attributed to renewable energy generators, they are by far not the largest sources for reactive power, and they were not separately singled out as a culprit in this event.
With the increasing instability in the World, a less centralized power grid should be the model of any updates that are going to be planned: a widely cross-connected set of independent grids with a multitude of automated ad-hoc routing options and real-time computer control is the optimal solution.
The sad effects of Russia bombing civilian energy infrastructure in Ukraine has brought home the effects of such a huge single point of failure sites. As a result, Ukraine is now reshaping their grid, and I would not be surprised to find that after the war, Ukraine is not only one of the leading weapon manufacturers, but also exports know-how on how to make power grids more resilient.
If there’s something positive to be found from the latest war in the Middle East, it is again giving a major boost to renewable energy: Trump is now indirectly advancing the groundbreaking transition that Russia started with their “we will freeze Europe” talk.
As someone on the Internet said: “No one ever went to war over solar energy.”
Of course, thanks to Trump again, this seems to apply only to the non-US context, but even there, the financial realities are silently advancing renewable sources, despite of the US handing out billions for foreigners to NOT build wind farms and other similar silliness.
While the US is busy working to cancel as many renewable energy projects they can, the rest of the world moves on.
The dent this will make to the US competence in a rapidly expanding industry is going to have long-lasting consequences.
The full ENTSO-E report can be found here.
Permalink: https://bhoew.com/blog/en/164
Earlier entries
No, it wasn’t our fault [Erich Westendarp@Pixabay]
You can purchase A Brief History of Everything Wireless: How Invisible Waves Have Changed the World from Springer or from Amazon US, CA, UK, BR, DE, ES, FR, IT, AU, IN, JP. For a more complete list of verified on-line bookstores by country, please click here.
Earlier entries:
You can purchase A Brief History of Everything Wireless: How Invisible Waves Have Changed the World from Springer or from Amazon US, CA, UK, BR, DE, ES, FR, IT, AU, IN, JP. For a more complete list of verified on-line bookstores by country, please click here.
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