Also released on the day, but belatedly noting here, was a 18-page report by REE (Red Eléctrica, the sole transmission system operator (TSO) for the Spanish electricity system) published on the “Blackout in Spanish Peninsula Electrical System on 28th of April 2025” .
Paul was one of the founders of Global-Roam in February 2000. He is currently the CEO of the company and the principal author of WattClarity. Writing for WattClarity has become a natural extension of his work in understanding the electricity market, enabling him to lead the team in developing better software for clients.
Before co-founding the company, Paul worked as a Mechanical Engineer for the Queensland Electricity Commission in the early 1990s. He also gained international experience in Japan, the United States, Canada, the UK, and Argentina as part of his ES Cornwall Memorial Scholarship.
All too often people (including us sometimes, unfortunately) are quick to attribute some particular outcome to a single contributing factor. Almost always this is an over-simplification.
A brief article as a first Case Study looking at Mon 3rd and Tue 4th July 2023, in conjunction with the compilation of GenInsights Quarterly Updates for 2023 Q3.
Given the great interest in the new ‘X5 constraint’, guest author, Allan O’Neil, has invested some time to pick the new constraint equation to understand (and then explain) what it is, how likely it will be to bind, and who is likely to be affected.
This is the fourth of a short series of video snippets extracted from the 17th September 2020 presentation by Marcelle Gannon and Jonathon Dyson for the Clean Energy Council entitled ‘Maximising Profitability in the NEM’ for Wind Farms.
1 Commenton "Red Electrica report on the “Blackout in Spanish Peninsula Electrical System on 28th of April 2025”"
It seems all renewables were operating in constant power factor mode (general practice as per FERC and ENTSO-E in US and Europe is to control to unity power factor according one AI site) They did not participate in dynamic voltage control mode and hence did not do much to help with the overvoltages. The full non confidential Spanish gov report recommends that market rules be changed to allow renewables to be remunerated for taking part in dynamic voltage control. One wonders if the blackout would have been avoided if the renewables had been in this mode.
It seems all renewables were operating in constant power factor mode (general practice as per FERC and ENTSO-E in US and Europe is to control to unity power factor according one AI site) They did not participate in dynamic voltage control mode and hence did not do much to help with the overvoltages. The full non confidential Spanish gov report recommends that market rules be changed to allow renewables to be remunerated for taking part in dynamic voltage control. One wonders if the blackout would have been avoided if the renewables had been in this mode.