The Spanish government has conceded it needs to install more battery inverters on its grid, after blaming the dramatic country-wide blackout in April on some bad decisions by the grid operator, and the failure of some thermal plants to do what they were paid to do.
The blackout on April 28 was immediately seized upon by renewable naysers and the nuclear and coal lobbies as proof that grids with high shares of renewables are inherently vulnerable.
But the initial report points to the lack of grid management technologies – asynchronous installations that can apply power electronic solutions to manage voltage fluctuations.
In other words, as we wrote at the time – No batteries, no flexibility: Spain could have avoided blackout with lessons learned in South Australia – the government now accepts it needs more grid smarts and battery inverters. The Spanish grid had only a tiny amount of these at the time of the system collapse.
Sara Aagesen, Spain’s minister for ecological transition, who is responsible for energy and climate policies, blamed the partly state-owned grid operator, Red Eléctrica, for miscalculating the power capacity needs for that day.
In particular, she cited a decision not to call on another thermal plant after the operator of one had advised them a day earlier that a plants would be unavailable.
“The system did not have enough dynamic voltage capacity,” she said. The regulator should have switched on another thermal plant, but “they made their calculations and decided that it was not necessary”.
But the ability to control wild fluctuations in voltage – the exact cause of which is still being investigated – was compromised by the fact that thermal generators that had been paid to respond had failed to do so, and actually made the situation worse.
“Generation firms which were supposed to control voltage and which, in addition, were paid to do just that did not absorb all the voltage they were supposed to when tension was high,” Aagesen ssaid.
The committee looking into the event has made a series of recommendations. The first of which is important, as it requires technical measures, and checks, to ensure voltage control is maintained and that the system is protected against fluctations.
“Key to this is the implementation …. that will allow asynchronous installations to apply power electronics solutions to manage voltage fluctuations and can contribute to cost savings through the introduction of more competitive technologies,” the report says.
This is clearly a call out for more batteries, and specifically grid forming inverters that can respond quickly and accurately to control such situations, as has been highlighted in Australia on numerous occasions.
“The analysis should serve to accelerate the energy transition process and adapt our network infrastructure,” said Ismael Morales, the head of climate policy at Fundación Renovables.
“In other words, it should decisively promote hybrid storage with renewable plants and commit to technologies that provide stability to the system, such as grid forming.”
Australia has been going through similar problems, finding that thermal generators were failing to respond adequately to system disturbances, and in some cases making them worse.
This was highlighted by the speed and versatility of the first big batteries introduced to the Australian grid, and authorities have since required coal and gas fired generators to tighten their controls, and are looking increasingly to grid forming inverters, or machines such as synchronous condensers, to fill the gap in system strength.
Australia now has more than 6 gigawatts of grid connected battery storage in operation, in commissioning and under construction. That is 100 times more than in Spain, which had just 60 MW of battery storage. And Australia has double or treble that capacity again in the near term pipeline.
“The blackout in Iberia was a rare event with multiple, complex factors,” says Sarah Brown, Europe program director with the European energy transition think tank Ember.
“However, the Spanish government has stated that conventional power plants were a key contributor to the incident due to failure to provide voltage control services, along with possible grid management issues.
“This appears to contradict weeks of unhelpful and inaccurate speculation that wind and solar were entirely to blame. In fact, renewables played a crucial role in restoring system stability and getting the power back on so quickly.
“This event reinforces what we already knew. As power systems evolve, enhanced grid optimisation and flexibility are essential for resilience.”
Paddy Finn, the CEO of energy management company Viotas, says the Spanish government’s findings reinforce the central message that the issue isn’t renewable technology, but how authorities prepare the grid to work with it.
” Just as the body needs vitamin C to absorb iron, a grid rich in wind and solar requires complementary support — like synchronous inertia and sub-second contingency reserves — to stay healthy,” he said.
“These aren’t fundamental flaws in the energy transition, but natural challenges of adapting systems built for a different era. The events in Spain remind us that the focus must now shift from whether we use renewables to how we integrate them.”
Others emphasised the importance of storage.
“Supporting this growth requires focusing investment on strengthening and smartening the grid, appropriately dimensioning frequency reserves, and expanding energy storage capacities,” said Jonathan Bruegel, Power Sector Analyst, Europe, at IEEFA.
“What is needed now is a serious push on grid modernisation, rapid integration of digital solutions, and updated grid governance that unlocks the full potential of new storage, flexibility and renewable technologies,” said Vilislava Ivanova, research manager on clean economy at think tank E3G.
“Although we are yet to see the full report, it is clear from the Minister’s comments today that clean energy was not to blame for the massive blackout in Spain on 28th April,” said Bram Claeys, a senior advisor on power at energy equipment supplier RAP.
“Instead, there was a failure in grid management, and apparently some (thermal) power plants were not showing up when they had to.”
