Thank you Gene and GLF for bringing the tax information to the fore. I was unaware of THAT wrinkle. Thanks for the nod. May I say I was pretty dismayed to see a redacted report given to the public This isn't James Bond folks.
You are welcome. The PSOE has attempted to control the narrative via secrecy. The PSOE's secrecy motivated GreenNUKE to investigate more deeply.. The Spanish nuclear tax scandal and the other scandal that you may learn more about via the suggested search may be sufficient to bring down the PSOE coalition government in Spain. . In GreenNUKE's view, the change to PP is long overdue. The PP already holds more seats than the PSOE. The PP backs continuing to use Spain's seven nuclear power plants. https://english.elpais.com/climate/2025-04-30/massive-blackout-in-spain-reignites-culture-war-over-the-future-of-nuclear-energy.html
It is simply amazing how politicized the whole situation has become worldwide. This points to massive monetary spending on a global scale to move energy into the political arena, this didn't "just happen". Economic Dispatch ruled the power industry, based solely on what it cost to make electricity, for 100 years, we should try it again.
Meredith Angwin noted in her 2020 book that so-called deregulated markets no longer provide economic benefits for providing reliable power. Just the opposite. The states that retain the regulated model with vertically integrated public utilities tend to have reliable, economically-priced power. I believe it is time to reject the RTO - ISO - RO model as a failure and return to state regulation. Unfortunately, the deep-pocketed special interests that foisted this set of policies on us for their economic benefit will resist.
It's been 30 years now, long enough most professional staff has never worked under any other system. Undoing that change would be a stretch unfortunately.
You are quite welcome. This article required extensive research. GreenNUKE remains optimistic that they will be able to learn about the detailed Spanish tax information for the six remaining reactors.
thank you for the great investigation and the part about taxes on nuclear plants. it appears that Ronald Reagan's wisdom of, tax more of something to get less of it is working perfectly in Spain. I guess it is fortunate that people are unlikely to freeze to death there at the next power outage, but their trajectory cannot possibly help their economy going forward .
Thank you. CGNP believes the PSOE government energy policies have led to capital (and employment) flight from Spain. Spain is emulating Germany for the identical ideological reasons.
I don’t believe that two more nuclear reactors would have been enough to stabilize grid frequency in the Spain event. If they are the typical large reactors that means they’re about 1 GW each, and about 12 GWs of solar tripped off line. In my opinion, that math doesn’t work.
Dear Ken: The issue is not generator capacity, it is about the quantity of synchronous grid inertia (SGI) that nuclear power plants provide. Please refer to this 2018 ERCOT paper regarding the importance of nuclear power to stabilize grid frequency. "Inertia: Basic Concepts and Impacts on the ERCOT Grid," April 4, 2018, Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT,) Austin, Texas, USA.
Examination of the mid-day supply stacks after April 28, 2025 for Red Eléctrica (REE) shows the addition of more nuclear and more CCGT has improved the supply of SGI. It does not take much to make a positive difference.
Gene, you know I’m all for nuclear plants and grid inertia, right? I’m just saying that if four nuclear power plants didn’t make a difference, would 33% more really have had a significant impact on grid stability?
Again in my opinion, it probably would not have mattered if two more nuclear plants were online during this major fluctuation voltage in frequency on the grid.
Thank you. GreenNUKE will have more to say about this. Watch for our analysis of the mid-day Red Eléctrica (REE) supply stack before and after April 28, 2025. The problem is the frequency control behavior of the REE system is nonlinear when it gets close to the "Critical Inertia" level. The REE is not well-connected to adjacent power grids, making it more vulnerable to oscillations. The REE system has limited connections to France and Morocco.
The power outputs which you quote are irrelevant to this discussion: the key factor is grid inertia- the ability of rotating assets to damp oscillations in voltage and frequency. This ability can in fact be contributed by non-generating assets such as synchronous condensers - Kilovar notes that the Spanish system has none.
The oscillations in the Spanish grid were eventually traced to a rogue IBR, but because of the lack of SCADA to pinpoint, in real time, such misbehavior, it was not picked up, nor compensated for, in sufficient time to stave off the blackout.
Nuclear assets would have added inertia but, as the article notes, were priced out of contention by tax policy. A purely political, not an engineering, constraint.
Thank you Gene and GLF for bringing the tax information to the fore. I was unaware of THAT wrinkle. Thanks for the nod. May I say I was pretty dismayed to see a redacted report given to the public This isn't James Bond folks.
You are welcome. The PSOE has attempted to control the narrative via secrecy. The PSOE's secrecy motivated GreenNUKE to investigate more deeply.. The Spanish nuclear tax scandal and the other scandal that you may learn more about via the suggested search may be sufficient to bring down the PSOE coalition government in Spain. . In GreenNUKE's view, the change to PP is long overdue. The PP already holds more seats than the PSOE. The PP backs continuing to use Spain's seven nuclear power plants. https://english.elpais.com/climate/2025-04-30/massive-blackout-in-spain-reignites-culture-war-over-the-future-of-nuclear-energy.html
It is simply amazing how politicized the whole situation has become worldwide. This points to massive monetary spending on a global scale to move energy into the political arena, this didn't "just happen". Economic Dispatch ruled the power industry, based solely on what it cost to make electricity, for 100 years, we should try it again.
Meredith Angwin noted in her 2020 book that so-called deregulated markets no longer provide economic benefits for providing reliable power. Just the opposite. The states that retain the regulated model with vertically integrated public utilities tend to have reliable, economically-priced power. I believe it is time to reject the RTO - ISO - RO model as a failure and return to state regulation. Unfortunately, the deep-pocketed special interests that foisted this set of policies on us for their economic benefit will resist.
Note the informative March 2021 article coauthored by current National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) executive director and former FERC Commissioner Tony Clark, "At the Precipice: The Perils of Utility Restructuring" https://www.wbklaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/At-the-Precipice_-The-Perils-of-Utility-Restructuring-3.16.21.pdf raises a number of relevant points.
It's been 30 years now, long enough most professional staff has never worked under any other system. Undoing that change would be a stretch unfortunately.
I did not say it would be easy. However for grid reliability, the rollback is necessary.
Thanks, Gene, for verifying (much more elegantly) what I initially suspected and wrote about in "The Pain in Spain" right after the blackout. https://alchristie.substack.com/p/the-pain-in-spain?
You are quite welcome. This article required extensive research. GreenNUKE remains optimistic that they will be able to learn about the detailed Spanish tax information for the six remaining reactors.
thank you for the great investigation and the part about taxes on nuclear plants. it appears that Ronald Reagan's wisdom of, tax more of something to get less of it is working perfectly in Spain. I guess it is fortunate that people are unlikely to freeze to death there at the next power outage, but their trajectory cannot possibly help their economy going forward .
Thank you. CGNP believes the PSOE government energy policies have led to capital (and employment) flight from Spain. Spain is emulating Germany for the identical ideological reasons.
and here I thought it was a two horse race, Germany and the UK, but perhaps Spain is a dark horse in this race
Yes. The PSOE plan is to tail Germany.
I don’t believe that two more nuclear reactors would have been enough to stabilize grid frequency in the Spain event. If they are the typical large reactors that means they’re about 1 GW each, and about 12 GWs of solar tripped off line. In my opinion, that math doesn’t work.
Dear Ken: The issue is not generator capacity, it is about the quantity of synchronous grid inertia (SGI) that nuclear power plants provide. Please refer to this 2018 ERCOT paper regarding the importance of nuclear power to stabilize grid frequency. "Inertia: Basic Concepts and Impacts on the ERCOT Grid," April 4, 2018, Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT,) Austin, Texas, USA.
https://www.ercot.com/files/docs/2018/04/04/Inertia_Basic_Concepts_Impacts_On_ERCOT_v0.pdf
Examination of the mid-day supply stacks after April 28, 2025 for Red Eléctrica (REE) shows the addition of more nuclear and more CCGT has improved the supply of SGI. It does not take much to make a positive difference.
Gene, you know I’m all for nuclear plants and grid inertia, right? I’m just saying that if four nuclear power plants didn’t make a difference, would 33% more really have had a significant impact on grid stability?
Again in my opinion, it probably would not have mattered if two more nuclear plants were online during this major fluctuation voltage in frequency on the grid.
Thank you. GreenNUKE will have more to say about this. Watch for our analysis of the mid-day Red Eléctrica (REE) supply stack before and after April 28, 2025. The problem is the frequency control behavior of the REE system is nonlinear when it gets close to the "Critical Inertia" level. The REE is not well-connected to adjacent power grids, making it more vulnerable to oscillations. The REE system has limited connections to France and Morocco.
The power outputs which you quote are irrelevant to this discussion: the key factor is grid inertia- the ability of rotating assets to damp oscillations in voltage and frequency. This ability can in fact be contributed by non-generating assets such as synchronous condensers - Kilovar notes that the Spanish system has none.
The oscillations in the Spanish grid were eventually traced to a rogue IBR, but because of the lack of SCADA to pinpoint, in real time, such misbehavior, it was not picked up, nor compensated for, in sufficient time to stave off the blackout.
Nuclear assets would have added inertia but, as the article notes, were priced out of contention by tax policy. A purely political, not an engineering, constraint.