It is true, renewable have been in use for some time but the problem was the point that nobody seems willing to acknowledge, wind and solar was the root cause. Solar generates DC and wind has frequency problems as it depends on the wind speed. Solar has to be converted to AC and both sources have to be synchronised to be grid frequency. The demand on the grid was such that the renewable could not be synchronised quickly enough and the grid started to shut down and affected the largest users the most. Hence no trains were running, those paying close attention to the video would have noticed that local ATMs etc were still powered in some shots but were displaying error messages because they were unable to access the huge data centres which are massive power users. That means that they, like shops etc were unable to process online payments, hence some places were only taking cash. Clearly those displays were operating on local renewable, possibly solar.

This should be a warning to everyone that these renewables are not to be considered as suitable additions to or replacements to the normal means of generation, other than on a very localised area as things depend on the mains frequency being maintained otherwise things will and indeed get nasty.

Edited 30 April, 20251 yr by Graham Butcher

Why do Spain waste their time with experts @Graham Butcher when you can tell them what went wrong?

Edited 30 April, 20251 yr by Ootohere

@Ootohere it has been mentioned loads of times on the internet and did your eyes not witness that some still had power, clearly suggesting that came from maybe rooftop solar on inverters?

Frequency response via inverters are a big opportunity for EV's and stationary batteries.

V2G frequency response in Germany:

https://www.v2g-hub.com/projects/nissan-leaf-to-stabilise-the-german-electricity-grid/

V2G frequency response in Copenhagen

Papers researching V2G frequency response:

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9869748

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8905679

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378779622009981

https://www.nature.com/articles/s44333-024-00010-8

https://spiral.imperial.ac.uk/entities/publication/08f0aaa3-f3c9-437e-9bc4-6c0fdb754199

Stationary battery providing "inertial response" example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornsdale_Power_Reserve#Operation

"After an upgrade in 2022, the battery has 2,000 MegaWatt-seconds (MWs) of grid inertia, about 15% of the state's total grid requirement."

A battery like that most probably could have saved Spain from blackout.

Experts must know what they are talking about, in comparison to armchair keyboard warriors watching youtube videos.

Edited 30 April, 20251 yr by wyx087

@Graham Butcher I watched the news and listened to the radio.

People were eating at places that had their own solar and battery storage.

Off the grid.

What has that to do with the price of bread? Or anything to do with your conclusions.

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250424693631/en/Stellantis-and-Factorial-Energy-Reach-Key-Milestone-in-Solid-State-Battery-Development

Edited 30 April, 20251 yr by Stonekeeper

6 hours ago, Ootohere said:

@Graham Butcher I watched the news and listened to the radio.

People were eating at places that had their own solar and battery storage.

Off the grid.

What has that to do with the price of bread? Or anything to do with your conclusions.

And they were the ones only accepting cash as the digital systems were all down, hence the ATMs were unable to dispense any cash, not because they were empty, but because they were unable to connect to the mainframes and the datacentres as they would have been using grid power. People likewise were unable to access trains or trams and also of course because of the datacentres were offline, so too were the public chargers as they need digital inter connections to accept payment via cards or check on a person's account status.

Edited 30 April, 20251 yr by Graham Butcher

@Graham Butcher That is the news story. That is what we are talking about.

I miss what your point is. That is the facts.

Your reasons for this happening was your educated or uneducated guess.

Like many people who are just bumping their gums without the actual information.

Edited 1 May, 20251 yr by Ootohere

1 hour ago, Ootohere said:

@Graham Butcher That is the news story. That is what we are talking about.

I miss what your point is. That is the facts.

Your reasons for this happening was your educated or uneducated guess.

Like many people who are just bumping their gums without the actual information.

What a massive amount of real estate is being lost to the hub.

1 hour ago, Graham Butcher said:

What a massive amount of real estate is being lost to the hub.

Complains not enough rapid charging infrastructure.

Complains charging hub is a waste of space.

There's no pleasing people......

36 minutes ago, wyx087 said:

Complains not enough rapid charging infrastructure.

Complains charging hub is a waste of space.

There's no pleasing people......

As has been said only about 4% of charging is at public charges, the rest is at work or home where it is half, or a tenth, or free to charge.

Trip to Heathrow earlier in the week. 250 miles, nearly all motorway, I have the smaller 65 kwh battery rather than the 90 kwh battery in most Scenics, made the journey without any need to charge.

Cost of about £5 of charging cost. Mileage tax relief claim on Srlf Assessment will go in later. If I could not charge at home from my two wallboxes would have to find the best public charging deal or use the work ones, some are 33p a kwh, some are free. Getting over 4 miles per kwh currently.

The truth for electric cars are they are very cheap to run ie energy, servicing etc. Sadly still get pictures etc.

10 hours ago, Graham Butcher said:

because they were unable to connect to the mainframes and the datacentres as they would have been using grid power.

If you think anyone runs a datacentre without backup power you live in cloud cuckoo land. For financial institutions in the EU this is a minimal regulatory requirement. Non-bank ATMs might be out due to local power especially the kind located in shops but most will be working in branches with backup power. Comms will be powered by back-up power sources over private circuits. This stuff will be tested regularly for disaster scenarios (regulatory requirement) of which a major power cut is such a scenario.

^^^ This. A critical Services Data Centre typically will have a minimum of two independent incoming power supplies from the grid, backed-up by diesel generators with either static or rotary UPS.

The downstream server cabinets would be powered via two independently-fed static switches.

14 minutes ago, Luckypants said:

If you think anyone runs a datacentre without backup power you live in cloud cuckoo land. For financial institutions in the EU this is a minimal regulatory requirement. Non-bank ATMs might be out due to local power especially the kind located in shops but most will be working in branches with backup power. Comms will be powered by back-up power sources over private circuits. This stuff will be tested regularly for disaster scenarios (regulatory requirement) of which a major power cut is such a scenario.

I have worked in and on many datacentres and the ones I have seen were more interested in making sure that data was not actually lost, rather than being 100% fully functional. Before I retired I used to work from home and I have actually lost count of the number of times that my laptop lost connection to the server because the datacentre that hosted the server on behalf of my company had suffered a power outage.

Edited 1 May, 20251 yr by Graham Butcher

My entire career has been in mainframes and therefore datacentres. No loss of data in a disaster scenario was the goal of disaster recovery 30 years ago. Things have moved on considerably since then. Remaining operational is both a regulatory requirement and a matter of staying in business for financial institutions these days. Staff losing access to the system due to a gateway or VPN server going down will be part of 'graceful fallback', where non-essetial equipment is powered down to conserve backup power. Most essential staff will be connected via backed up access.

42 minutes ago, Warrior193 said:

backed-up by diesel generators with either static or rotary UPS.

That time I was part of a power out dis/rec test...... power off went well until two hours in when everything went dark! The diesel generators had not kicked in so when the UPS batteries were exhausted everything went off. We could see the generators from the Sys. Prog. office window, so added a step to the run-book to 'Look out the window to see if there is smoke from the generator exhaust' 😊

We tested our procedure for a cold start that day too.... Caused a lot of paperwork.

Sorry will stay on topic now...

Interesting stat today.

Charged car last night before going to bed stopped at 63%

This morning got in to go to work 64%

Just got back home 63%

I wonder what the implications are on charging to 100% in increasing temperatures

23 minutes ago, Stonekeeper said:

I wonder what the implications are on charging to 100% in increasing temperature

Most likely handled by the top buffer of the battery. My ID.4 has an 82kWh battery of which 77kWh is usable (net capacity). The remaining 5kWh is split into a top buffer to prevent over charging and bottom buffer to prevent complete discharge. ISTR its 2kWh for top buffer and 3kWh for bottom buffer on MEB cars.

Edited 1 May, 20251 yr by Luckypants
using % not kWh

I charge to 100% in the MINI and regenaration braking is still available.

In some other EV,s i have driven and in the Corsa Electric i had there was no Regen Braking for a few miles if the battery was at 100%.

The new MINI 99% & Pre Heating / Cooling battery.

Edited 4 May, 20251 yr by Ootohere

Interesting, do you know if the E Mini uses a load-shed heater battery to allow that?

Edited 1 May, 20251 yr by Warrior193
correction

The Mini electric have whopping 11% buffer.

https://ev-database.org/uk/car/1409/Mini-Electric

ID4 have 6% and MY LR have 4%.

https://ev-database.org/uk/car/1314/Volkswagen-ID4-Pro-Performance

https://ev-database.org/uk/car/1183/Tesla-Model-Y-Long-Range-Performance

So I think Mini regen at 100% displayed is simply using the top buffer above usable range. German cars like to do this, Audi Etron (the fat SUV) famously have a HUGE top buffer.

59 minutes ago, wyx087 said:

ID4 have 6%

Looks like I mixed up my units.... corrected.

150 miles would have been possible today rather than the usual 115 or so which is as far as I expect.

Getting 5 miles a kWh today doing 60 and 70 mph roads and 17.5 degrees C. Not bothering with AC on, just setting at 16 degrees C in car. Free charging would have been nice at Stracathro Hospital near Brechin but that must need luck with one post and 2 ports. 3 hours max charge time except for NHS fleet .

Edited 1 May, 20251 yr by Ootohere

6 hours ago, Luckypants said:

If you think anyone runs a datacentre without backup power you live in cloud cuckoo land. For financial institutions in the EU this is a minimal regulatory requirement. Non-bank ATMs might be out due to local power especially the kind located in shops but most will be working in branches with backup power. Comms will be powered by back-up power sources over private circuits. This stuff will be tested regularly for disaster scenarios (regulatory requirement) of which a major power cut is such a scenario.

the data centres will have been fine, it's the network connectivity between them and the ATMs that will have gone down.
Cellular base stations only have hours of capacity.
The DLAMs in the street have a few hours maybe. But if the ATM relies on a local router it will have gone down.

5 hours ago, Luckypants said:

That time I was part of a power out dis/rec test...... power off went well until two hours in when everything went dark! The diesel generators had not kicked in so when the UPS batteries were exhausted everything went off. We could see the generators from the Sys. Prog. office window, so added a step to the run-book to 'Look out the window to see if there is smoke from the generator exhaust' 😊

We tested our procedure for a cold start that day too.... Caused a lot of paperwork.

Sorry will stay on topic now...

I know of one local authority that has large diesel generators for backup, proudly filled with eco biodiesel. The guys forgot that biodiesel goes off, and turns to jelly.
Fired up the gennies for a test, putt putt caputt. Thousands of pounds of rotten diesel had to be removed and the engines cleaned out.