In case you hadn’t heard, the power grids of Spain and Portugal went down hard a week ago on April 28, affecting France and even Belgium. Spain has gone tremendously into the whole “energy transition,” hook line and sinker, with an enormous build out of wind and solar, particularly solar generation. Just a few weeks prior, Spain was boasting about not using any carbon-based power sources for a day. Well, Saskatchewan’s own John Gormley happened to be in Spain at the time, and found out what “Net Zero” really means. We hope to get him on the Pipeline Online podcast to talk about the experience in the near future.

 

In the meantime, the Energy Realities Podcast dug deep into what happened. Here’s their podcast from Monday, May 5.

What it is looking like so far is that there was a frequency event which tripped off much of the grid. You’ll hear a lot about “grid inertia” which literally comes from the inertia of the mass of a generator’s rotor spinning within the generator. Inverter-based power like wind and solar has no inertia, and that turns out to be an important thing. These are important considerations as Alberta has added a tremendous amount of wind and solar, and Saskatchewan continues to add to its fleet, although nowhere near the proportions Spain or Alberta have done.

 

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Williston Basin Petroleum Conference: Moe on Energy, Trade and the Federal Election