Thanks! I am fascinated by the ignorance of those who we elect seem to think their intelligence and foresight exceeds the realities of physics and science. A good ole' ass whoopin' on some of are ignorant decision makers may be in order!! Enough is enough!
Yes, there are a handful of real, truthful, digestible sources of solid information on Substack, and you are one of them.
"Charlaticians™ who do not understand the stability/reliability consequences of forcing a high percentage of wind and solar onto a grid built around synchronized, spinning, inertia-bearing generation sell this to their electorates as a solution to “climate change.”
I couldn't agree more. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, "Physics is a cruel bitch" that doesn't give a damn about the wet-dreams of "charlaticians" or their lying legacy media accomplices.
We’re going to move solar panels to a place where the sun always shines: space. The tech already exists to put the panels in orbit and beam power down. The start-ups are lining up for funding. Best of both worlds.
The costs have dropped significantly for all parts of the process. Japan plans a test launch next year, and at least one private start-up is following a similar timeline.
Innovations will change the energy picture in the future. But you’ll forgive us for being skeptical as to cost, scale and time until we see something very different on this particular concept.
Thank you for the very informative article. My question is, if wind and solar are the culprits themselves, why haven’t we seen more blackouts and failures over the years in Northern Europe? Spain has only achieved this high penetration of renewables in the last few years, but in Scandinavia and the baltics they’ve had very high renewable %ages for years.
Without digging into figures ourselves, we asked Grok what the percents were in 2024. Here's what it returned:
Denmark:
Wind and Solar Combined: 63% of electricity generation in 2024.
Wind: 59.3% of electricity generation in 2024.
Solar: Approximately 3–4% (derived from the combined figure minus wind’s share, as solar is a smaller contributor in Denmark).
Norway:
Wind: Approximately 10–12% of electricity generation in 2023 (2024 data not explicitly available, but wind has been a growing contributor).
Solar: Less than 1% (solar remains negligible due to Norway’s reliance on hydropower, which accounts for ~98% of renewable electricity).
Wind and Solar Combined: Around 11–13% in 2024 (estimated based on 2023 trends and minor growth).
Sweden:
Wind: Roughly 24% of electricity generation in 2024.
Solar: Approximately 1–2% (solar is a minor contributor compared to hydro and wind).
Wind and Solar Combined: Around 25–26% in 2024 (estimated based on wind’s dominance and solar’s small share
So, Norway and Sweden never exceeded 30%. As for Denmark, we're not sure, but if we had to guess it's because they maintain a certain minimum amount of synchronous generation on their grid even when are generating lots of wind. But it's a good question.
Thank you for this article. It gathered all into one place the relevant facts about the stabilizing effect and necessity of system inertia created by all the spinning turbines.
One question: if you had a big enough battery, could this create inertia equivalent to that of, let’s say, a natural gas plant?
Now, could they function in a manner (store then discharge enough energy) to provide the same power as a nat gas plant? In theory, yes. But it's a matter of time/cost. Many studies claiming advanced nations can run entirely on "wind, water, solar" (Jacobson, etal) use storage of 4 hours or 6 hours as the basis of their calculations. We believe these durations are a joke, that absent at least 24 hours storage (and preferably 96), the comparisons are apples and orangutans.
Most people who actually care about the environment and humans would not be thrilled about the enormous resource extraction and human and environmental toll necessary to mine the metals to even try to achieve grid firming with 4 days or more battery storage. Siddharth Kara's book Cobalt Red gives some perspective on this.
A sharp lesson in including resilience into the cost benefit analyses governing investment in different energy generating technologies, one that tips the balance more toward nuclear generation in many cases. This is a trade-off, not a binary nuclear/wind-solar choice.
This post has (at least) two brilliant captions. One is the title, which is front and center. The other is harder to find. It's the caption below the chart that shows the triggering event. It's in small type, and reads, "Thin veneer of civilization, microseconds away from the Hertz locker." "Hertz locker." Now that's a pun to make a geophysicist proud.
Great post about the events in Spain and the quality of analysis on Substack. Bravo. 👍👍
I recall that there was a report commissioned in germany before the last 3 nukes were shut down, a report that was rewritten by Green Party politicians before release to says it is fine to close them.
When the German grid collapses hopefully people will hunt down those politicians.
Meanwhile I saw Monty Python’s The Holy Grail a few days back and more than anything Ruinables/netzero advocates increasingly look like the Black Knight, with Graham Chapman’s King Arthur admirably playing the part of reality or Physics.
These guys are bleeding out on the floor but yelling it’s just a flesh wound.
May 28 is when Carney has the lamentable King Charles, fellow WEF/climate insane devotee over the pond to read our throne speech.
1) It's inverter-based resources that follow the grid's frequency, not set it
2) by having no inertia and inverters tending to follow minor fluctuations in the grid, they can create a feedback loop that can pull the frequency down further when it drops. Better power electronics are going to help, but it's a real problem.
They keep blathering about grid forming inverters but until they are actually perfected and tested at scale no grid should be allowed to operate with more than 30% crap power.
I would focus on the costs of all that wind/solar/batteries/hydrogen insanity. Take Utility Solar, which is about half the cost of residential solar, using China dumping cheap solar made with slave labor and mountains of coal energy. That's ~$1500/pk-kw. @ a 25% CF that effectively $6000/kw, which is about as high as nuclear (PWRs) should cost in the West if we had rational regulators and some experienced contractors.
And now that the Green Agenda/UN Agenda 2030 grifters have sunk their hooks into you, the sunk cost fallacy is exploited.
So now we need grid stability fast response battery banks or synchronous capacitors with flywheels, add 50% to that cost so now that's effective $9000/kw.
And to move that solar power from sunny to cloudy regions and installations way out in the desert somewhere, you need long distance transmission lines 4X oversized to handle the intermittent supply. So you are looking at another 50% added cost so now we are up to $12,000/kw.
And then we need battery storage to store daytime solar for the evening load and for one day's low output, 24hrs storage minimum, that will certainly at least double the original solar cost, bringing us up to $18,000/kw. That's utility solar not residential solar, which will be much higher cost.
And then you get into losses from overbuild, curtailments, negative pricing or dumping of subsidized electricity, transmission line losses, degradation. That's a lot.
And you still need to operate & maintain a vast NG infrastructure & power plants, likely low efficiency OCGT, for when the solar craps out for more than one day, or is at seasonal lows, or various bad weather events. That highly peaking fossil electricity supply is very expensive, you need oversized pipelines, generators, turbines, transmission to handle the peak load, whereas avg load is far smaller. Look for a lot of expensive NG storage caverns.
This is for an energy source that lasts about 25yrs. The ACTUAL full lifecycle carbon emissions of that, using REAL data, not the fake data they have been using, is close to the same as ordinary CCGT. 30X that of Nuclear per unit energy.
Build NPPs close to closed Coal power plants and you have a power source that reliably lasts for 60-100yrs. Not subject to the vagaries of weather, And you don't need all of that added hardware. For about 25% of the capital cost over 25yrs. Maybe 10-15% over a full nuclear lifecycle.
This proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that these Climate Change Crisis promoters are grifters extraordinaire. They could care less about climate change. This is all more of the ruling Overlords Malthusian, Misanthropic, Deindustrialization, Feudalization World Totalitarian Tyranny objectives. Obviously.
Great additional color. At $18,000/kw ($18 billion/Gw), you could built two more of Vogtle (5 & 6!). But seriously, Shirvan's work at MIT suggests we should be able to get Gw scale AP-1000s down to $3bn by the 10th unit.
Also matches the linear analysis of Wind + Solar cost in various European nations. There is a linear price relationship between wind/solar grid penetration and price of electricity by Ken Gregory, P.Eng, graph Euro/kwh by country 2019: Conclusion: European Wind Plus Solar Cost 6 Times Other Electrical Sources
6X $3,000/kw for average traditional power sources = $18,000/kw.
I have no doubt that $3B/Gw is achievable with modern nuclear, if the supply chain is rebuilt and regulators are brought to heel, that is ordered to act rationally, not idealistically or even worse corruptly as they are now.
Agreed. But sad that 25 years of engineering and construction refinement in process, improvements in designs and materials, and lessons learned in the field building these over and over was lost.
Hugely informative recap of what occurred, so thank you. Alas, my opinion is a single failure of this nature will not be sufficient to change the thesis into which so many governments have invested so much. but the second time will bring far greater problems for those selling this theory of renewables are the future, and I suspect the third event will signal the demise. the electoral consequences for the proponents of the transition when it proves to be a failure will be swift and sure.
We almost went black in Alberta Jan 13 2024 at -42c, all renewables at zero and the underinvested gas generation at its limits. We had emergency alerts asking all to turn off lights and anything “unnecessary”.
At -42C.
Thankfully that gave Danielle Smith the hammer to pull back on ruinables and focus on the useful grid, she needs to keep that up.
Short of a meteor strike or nuclear war, there would be nothing worse than no grid at -42C
I’m glad the Spain thing happened where and when it did. Some will never learn.
Not sure that we have a black start plan today. We used to have one with a hydro dam that was kept full and a dedicated transmission line connected to a coal fired plant. But the coal fired plants are all gone.
I heard recently through my sources that the idea of electrification of the gas delivery network in AB is dead or dying, if true that is something at least.
Next reopen a couple shuttered coal plants with some upgrades, and start the approval process for our first large CANDU.
All financed with all the $$ not spent on more useless crap renewables, of which we already have 50% penetration, too much already.
Thanks! I am fascinated by the ignorance of those who we elect seem to think their intelligence and foresight exceeds the realities of physics and science. A good ole' ass whoopin' on some of are ignorant decision makers may be in order!! Enough is enough!
environMENTAL,
Well done.....again!
Yes, there are a handful of real, truthful, digestible sources of solid information on Substack, and you are one of them.
"Charlaticians™ who do not understand the stability/reliability consequences of forcing a high percentage of wind and solar onto a grid built around synchronized, spinning, inertia-bearing generation sell this to their electorates as a solution to “climate change.”
I couldn't agree more. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, "Physics is a cruel bitch" that doesn't give a damn about the wet-dreams of "charlaticians" or their lying legacy media accomplices.
We would go so far as to say physics doesn’t care for them very much. 😉
You're much more polite than am I.
We’re going to move solar panels to a place where the sun always shines: space. The tech already exists to put the panels in orbit and beam power down. The start-ups are lining up for funding. Best of both worlds.
That would be swell, but we're realistic about the possibility of success and skeptical about the cost.
The costs have dropped significantly for all parts of the process. Japan plans a test launch next year, and at least one private start-up is following a similar timeline.
How significantly?
Innovations will change the energy picture in the future. But you’ll forgive us for being skeptical as to cost, scale and time until we see something very different on this particular concept.
On par with coal, $35-$45/mWh. I’m not sure what Aetherflux is projecting; I’m basing this off Virtus Solis Technologies’ plan.
Thank you for the very informative article. My question is, if wind and solar are the culprits themselves, why haven’t we seen more blackouts and failures over the years in Northern Europe? Spain has only achieved this high penetration of renewables in the last few years, but in Scandinavia and the baltics they’ve had very high renewable %ages for years.
Without digging into figures ourselves, we asked Grok what the percents were in 2024. Here's what it returned:
Denmark:
Wind and Solar Combined: 63% of electricity generation in 2024.
Wind: 59.3% of electricity generation in 2024.
Solar: Approximately 3–4% (derived from the combined figure minus wind’s share, as solar is a smaller contributor in Denmark).
Norway:
Wind: Approximately 10–12% of electricity generation in 2023 (2024 data not explicitly available, but wind has been a growing contributor).
Solar: Less than 1% (solar remains negligible due to Norway’s reliance on hydropower, which accounts for ~98% of renewable electricity).
Wind and Solar Combined: Around 11–13% in 2024 (estimated based on 2023 trends and minor growth).
Sweden:
Wind: Roughly 24% of electricity generation in 2024.
Solar: Approximately 1–2% (solar is a minor contributor compared to hydro and wind).
Wind and Solar Combined: Around 25–26% in 2024 (estimated based on wind’s dominance and solar’s small share
So, Norway and Sweden never exceeded 30%. As for Denmark, we're not sure, but if we had to guess it's because they maintain a certain minimum amount of synchronous generation on their grid even when are generating lots of wind. But it's a good question.
Excellent!
Substack is becoming the news site for real information about what’s happening in our world.
Very good summary of what happened and will continue to happen if we continue along this path of economic insanity.
Thanks!
Thank you for this article. It gathered all into one place the relevant facts about the stabilizing effect and necessity of system inertia created by all the spinning turbines.
One question: if you had a big enough battery, could this create inertia equivalent to that of, let’s say, a natural gas plant?
No battery creates inertia, no matter the size.
Now, could they function in a manner (store then discharge enough energy) to provide the same power as a nat gas plant? In theory, yes. But it's a matter of time/cost. Many studies claiming advanced nations can run entirely on "wind, water, solar" (Jacobson, etal) use storage of 4 hours or 6 hours as the basis of their calculations. We believe these durations are a joke, that absent at least 24 hours storage (and preferably 96), the comparisons are apples and orangutans.
Most people who actually care about the environment and humans would not be thrilled about the enormous resource extraction and human and environmental toll necessary to mine the metals to even try to achieve grid firming with 4 days or more battery storage. Siddharth Kara's book Cobalt Red gives some perspective on this.
A sharp lesson in including resilience into the cost benefit analyses governing investment in different energy generating technologies, one that tips the balance more toward nuclear generation in many cases. This is a trade-off, not a binary nuclear/wind-solar choice.
A energy is a tradeoff. It would be well for "environmentalists" to learn to become realistic about this. In a damn hurry.
Agree. But it is public decisionmakers that have actually to deal with the tradeoffs, including the costs of CO2 emissions.
This post has (at least) two brilliant captions. One is the title, which is front and center. The other is harder to find. It's the caption below the chart that shows the triggering event. It's in small type, and reads, "Thin veneer of civilization, microseconds away from the Hertz locker." "Hertz locker." Now that's a pun to make a geophysicist proud.
Great post about the events in Spain and the quality of analysis on Substack. Bravo. 👍👍
Thanks. We're glad someone got those jokes!
This level of wind and solar requires batteries. I don’t understand what the Spanish utilities are thinking.
It's the European way.
Until it's not any more.
I recall that there was a report commissioned in germany before the last 3 nukes were shut down, a report that was rewritten by Green Party politicians before release to says it is fine to close them.
When the German grid collapses hopefully people will hunt down those politicians.
Meanwhile I saw Monty Python’s The Holy Grail a few days back and more than anything Ruinables/netzero advocates increasingly look like the Black Knight, with Graham Chapman’s King Arthur admirably playing the part of reality or Physics.
These guys are bleeding out on the floor but yelling it’s just a flesh wound.
May 28 is when Carney has the lamentable King Charles, fellow WEF/climate insane devotee over the pond to read our throne speech.
Will wait to see if he learned anything.
Betting is hard on “no”.
No is a lock. Don't even need to bet on it.
Germany is going to reopen some of those plants. It's only a matter of time.
Getting Habeck out of the way was as small win. More work to do there. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/germanys-habeck-give-up-leading-role-greens-after-election-result-2025-02-24/
Good recap of the event. So it's not solar or wind per se but a technical problem of stabilizing the grid. Get the engineers on it. Time to modernize.
I agree
To much 18th century tech on the grid already
It is wind and solar, and it's two things:
1) It's inverter-based resources that follow the grid's frequency, not set it
2) by having no inertia and inverters tending to follow minor fluctuations in the grid, they can create a feedback loop that can pull the frequency down further when it drops. Better power electronics are going to help, but it's a real problem.
They keep blathering about grid forming inverters but until they are actually perfected and tested at scale no grid should be allowed to operate with more than 30% crap power.
Especially in winter
Bingo.
an EXCELLENT overview of the event & the coverage. I will be passing it on.
Thank you
Thanks!
Ha! I’ve got a beautiful piece of engineering that runs on good ol’ American gasoline 🤣
I would focus on the costs of all that wind/solar/batteries/hydrogen insanity. Take Utility Solar, which is about half the cost of residential solar, using China dumping cheap solar made with slave labor and mountains of coal energy. That's ~$1500/pk-kw. @ a 25% CF that effectively $6000/kw, which is about as high as nuclear (PWRs) should cost in the West if we had rational regulators and some experienced contractors.
And now that the Green Agenda/UN Agenda 2030 grifters have sunk their hooks into you, the sunk cost fallacy is exploited.
So now we need grid stability fast response battery banks or synchronous capacitors with flywheels, add 50% to that cost so now that's effective $9000/kw.
And to move that solar power from sunny to cloudy regions and installations way out in the desert somewhere, you need long distance transmission lines 4X oversized to handle the intermittent supply. So you are looking at another 50% added cost so now we are up to $12,000/kw.
And then we need battery storage to store daytime solar for the evening load and for one day's low output, 24hrs storage minimum, that will certainly at least double the original solar cost, bringing us up to $18,000/kw. That's utility solar not residential solar, which will be much higher cost.
And then you get into losses from overbuild, curtailments, negative pricing or dumping of subsidized electricity, transmission line losses, degradation. That's a lot.
And you still need to operate & maintain a vast NG infrastructure & power plants, likely low efficiency OCGT, for when the solar craps out for more than one day, or is at seasonal lows, or various bad weather events. That highly peaking fossil electricity supply is very expensive, you need oversized pipelines, generators, turbines, transmission to handle the peak load, whereas avg load is far smaller. Look for a lot of expensive NG storage caverns.
This is for an energy source that lasts about 25yrs. The ACTUAL full lifecycle carbon emissions of that, using REAL data, not the fake data they have been using, is close to the same as ordinary CCGT. 30X that of Nuclear per unit energy.
Build NPPs close to closed Coal power plants and you have a power source that reliably lasts for 60-100yrs. Not subject to the vagaries of weather, And you don't need all of that added hardware. For about 25% of the capital cost over 25yrs. Maybe 10-15% over a full nuclear lifecycle.
This proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that these Climate Change Crisis promoters are grifters extraordinaire. They could care less about climate change. This is all more of the ruling Overlords Malthusian, Misanthropic, Deindustrialization, Feudalization World Totalitarian Tyranny objectives. Obviously.
Great additional color. At $18,000/kw ($18 billion/Gw), you could built two more of Vogtle (5 & 6!). But seriously, Shirvan's work at MIT suggests we should be able to get Gw scale AP-1000s down to $3bn by the 10th unit.
Also matches the linear analysis of Wind + Solar cost in various European nations. There is a linear price relationship between wind/solar grid penetration and price of electricity by Ken Gregory, P.Eng, graph Euro/kwh by country 2019: Conclusion: European Wind Plus Solar Cost 6 Times Other Electrical Sources
friendsofscience.org/index.php?id=2550
6X $3,000/kw for average traditional power sources = $18,000/kw.
I have no doubt that $3B/Gw is achievable with modern nuclear, if the supply chain is rebuilt and regulators are brought to heel, that is ordered to act rationally, not idealistically or even worse corruptly as they are now.
Agreed. But sad that 25 years of engineering and construction refinement in process, improvements in designs and materials, and lessons learned in the field building these over and over was lost.
Hugely informative recap of what occurred, so thank you. Alas, my opinion is a single failure of this nature will not be sufficient to change the thesis into which so many governments have invested so much. but the second time will bring far greater problems for those selling this theory of renewables are the future, and I suspect the third event will signal the demise. the electoral consequences for the proponents of the transition when it proves to be a failure will be swift and sure.
So, you're setting the over / under at 3.
Before we consider our bet on that one, does the Iberian blackout count as "1" in this game?
Yes
OK, we like the game.
We'll take the over (and hope we lose!)
We almost went black in Alberta Jan 13 2024 at -42c, all renewables at zero and the underinvested gas generation at its limits. We had emergency alerts asking all to turn off lights and anything “unnecessary”.
At -42C.
Thankfully that gave Danielle Smith the hammer to pull back on ruinables and focus on the useful grid, she needs to keep that up.
Short of a meteor strike or nuclear war, there would be nothing worse than no grid at -42C
I’m glad the Spain thing happened where and when it did. Some will never learn.
We watched that wondering what it would be like to be in Carcajou on the Peace in January with no electricity.
And shivered at the thought.
Not sure that we have a black start plan today. We used to have one with a hydro dam that was kept full and a dedicated transmission line connected to a coal fired plant. But the coal fired plants are all gone.
I heard recently through my sources that the idea of electrification of the gas delivery network in AB is dead or dying, if true that is something at least.
Next reopen a couple shuttered coal plants with some upgrades, and start the approval process for our first large CANDU.
All financed with all the $$ not spent on more useless crap renewables, of which we already have 50% penetration, too much already.
CANDU’s in AB and SK, please!!!
Attaboy, 'Mental. Thanks for the shoutout. There's more to write about the Iberian blackout...
Thanks. Look forward to your next post on it. If it’s to do with Juice, you’re the man to write about it!