NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

h/t Joe Public

The Factual Report has now been published by ENTSOE into the Spanish blackout in April:

I would stress this is a preliminary report, which is tasked at establishing the facts.

It notes that the next stage is to look at the causes and recommendations:

Nevertheless there are some relevant takeaways from the report.

First of all, the system operator RE decided during the morning of the blackout that a gas power plant, Thermal 5-Centre/South West, which had been operating overnight was not needed that day:

My post at the time showed the consequent sudden dip in gas power that morning:

And ENTSOE’s database shows that gas output declined from 4.5 GW at 9am to 2.3 GW an hour later:

I recall some claims at the time that some gas power plants failed to switch on as “requested”. This however proves the opposite – that RE actually stood one gas plant down as “not needed”.

The Report continues:

Again, this gives the lie to the claim about gas plants. RE left it far too late to order the CCGT up, as it takes 90 minutes to fire up.

I cannot find anything in the report about what actually caused the oscillations. But it seems abundantly clear that RE deliberately ran gas power to dangerously low levels, presumably because the system was overloaded with solar power.

RE then compounded matters by reacting far too late.