Spain Boosts Natural Gas Capacity After Renewable Energy’s Failure Led to Historic Blackout
Meanwhile, the Iron Law of Electricity prevailed in Portugal’s recent election, as those who enjoy civilized living went to the polls and picked a “far-right” candidate.
Legal Insurrection readers will recall that a sudden and unprecedented power outage struck the entire Iberian Peninsula in late April, plunging nearly all of Spain and Portugal into darkness for several hours.
The blackout, one of the largest in recent European history, also briefly affected parts of southern France and Andorra. Essential services, public transportation, telecommunications, and financial systems were severely disrupted. At least eight deaths have been linked to outage-related incidents.
The blackout was triggered by a rapid, cascading failure in the grid that resulted in the loss of about 60% of Spain’s electricity supply within seconds. The event was linked to the grid’s inability to handle the variability and intermittency of renewables, especially solar and wind, without sufficient backup from more stable sources like gas or nuclear power.
Now, in the aftermath of this blackout that could have been much worse, Spain has significantly increased its reliance on natural gas-fired power plants to stabilize its electricity grid. This strategic shift is the direct result of concerns about the grid’s ability to handle high levels of renewable energy, particularly solar and wind, which accounted for a substantial share of generation during the outage.
The output of combined-cycle gas turbines [CCGT], a more steady generation technology than solar, jumped 37% in the two weeks after the outage, compared with the two weeks prior, data from power grid operator Red Electrica show. Their average share of Spain’s power mix increased to 18% from about 12%.
…CCGTs can be a source of around-the-clock generation, and turbines also provide kinetic energy to the grid, a key element needed to keep the network stable. The day after the blackout, their output soared to 216 gigawatt-hours, a 157% jump compared to the day before the outage, and over three times more than two days before.
Although the grid operator’s mandate is to meet demand at the lowest possible cost, it can also modify the generation mix to maintain an “adequate voltage profile,” Red Electrica said.
The use of CCGTs is probably adding between €5 and €10 per megawatt-hours to costs, according to Javier Revuelta, senior principal at energy consultancy AFRY AB, who estimates that as many as 2 gigawatts of extra gas-fired capacity is being added daily to the Spanish mix compared to the days before the blackout.
The Blooberg article cited above focuses on the increased cost of gas-supplied energy. However, as the people of the Iberian Peninsula discovered, having electricity when you need it (especially after dark) is priceless.
Reliable energy sources are a treasure, and I strongly suspect that is why the recent election in Portugal went as it did.
Portugal’s far-right Chega won a record vote share in Sunday’s snap election and was vying to become the main opposition party as the ruling centre-right Democratic Alliance (AD) again fell short of a majority needed to end a long period of instability.
Prime Minister Luis Montenegro hailed the result as a vote of confidence in his AD which won most seats in parliament.
By “far-right”, what is actually meant is Portuguese who love their country and enjoy civilized living.
As this result follows the historic Iberian Peninsula Blackout, I assert the "Iron Law of Electricity" applies. https://t.co/4lcXqKvJqj
— Leslie Eastman ☥ (@Mutnodjmet) May 20, 2025
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Comments
Spain could only have increased the output of CCGT power because the units were already in place and active. It would take at least a year to add new CCGT units from scratch.
A year? Well, look who’s optimistic.
Well, the physical construction would be less than a year. But the permtting?
For countries with natural gas production possible domestically this makes a lot of sense. For those without they should only use imported natural gas to cover the time it takes to bring a coal plant online. I bet that a hybrid plant plant designed ground up could do the job nicely.
Since China is on the ropes, we should end all their land and mining holdings in America.
Back to basics. Sorry (not!), One-Worlders. “Globalist” solutions to EVERYTHING do not work, and were never designed to.
Far-right means logic and reason. Don’t let the lefties fool you.
Nothing like a blackout due to ruinables to introduce some sanity into electricity generation.
It seems Europe’s parasite class is determined to ape the Soviet Union’s most ideologically-driven economic and energy policies for its citizens.
They see rationed electricity as a necessary curb on the proletariat’s distressing tendencies toward general prosperity and happiness..
Center right, in other words left.
Hard right, in other words centrist.
Center left, in other words hard left.
Look at their actual platforms, if you can find them. Google search doesn’t seem to bring them up.
what a joke…socialism destroys
stfo
I have been given to understand that the actual cause of the blackout was a deliberate experiment to see how far they can push the system before . . . it crashes. Apparently not as far as they thought. But you can be absolutely sure that the same people conducting that experiment are still in charge and will face no consequences.
Another thing in passing. At the site I was visiting before coming here this morning, they were discussing birth rates and population replacement levels. Without going into the details, pretty much all of Western Europe [including Spain and Portugal] are disastrously below the population replacement level and getting worse and have been for at least a generation.
One can argue about the cause of the collapse of the native population, but it seems pretty irreversible. The most likely replacement population is culturally fixated on the 7th century. Their needs for mass access to electricity are going to be significantly less. Just something to factor in.
Subotai Bahadur
good post
That blackout came extremely close to knocking out the whole EU grid.
Is there any hope the “iron law of electricity “ will ever have influence in California?