Spain’s impossible dream of ‘green’ electricity

Something is seriously amiss when: ‘If France hadn’t shut off its connection to Spain’s cascading problems, all of Europe could have shut down.’ Net zero mania is a disorder of the mind, or of government minds at least, that urgently needs correcting. In the critical moment, batteries of course proved useless. Ditching dispatchable power is like sawing off the tree branch you’re sitting on.
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Updated Man of La Mancha lyrics could read: “To dream the impossible dream of clean, green, net-zero electricity, to fight the unbeatable foe of manmade climate cataclysms, we must run where the brave dare not go”, writes Paul Driessen @ CFACT.

Don Quixote saw windmills as malevolent and dangerous dragons. Spain’s governing classes view them from the Chinese perspective: benevolent and magical dragons.

They’ve erected over 22,000 gigantic windmills to harness the wind and generate electricity. Portugal has nearly 3,000. Together, when conditions are perfect, they can generate almost 38 gigawatts.

Like Cervantes’ hero, the elites also want “to reach the unreachable star” – or at least capture the energy from one star: the sun. Spain and Portugal together also have 38 GW of photovoltaic solar panels.

However, the Iberian Peninsula neighbors have long ignored the dark sides of the forces they seek to commandeer.
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On April 16, for the first time, for a few minutes, Spain generated 100% of its electricity with wind, solar, and hydro power.

A fortnight later, on April 28, a prolonged blackout sent Iberia into chaos. Lights, televisions, refrigerators, cell phones, and traffic lights went dark. Trains, subways, and elevators trapped passengers. Airports canceled flights. Hospital backup power provided only basic and emergency services.

The outage even struck parts of France and Belgium. It was Europe’s biggest blackout ever. If France hadn’t shut off its connection to Spain’s cascading problems, all of Europe could have shut down.

Just a week later, another blackout hit Spain’s Canary Islands.

Power outages are nothing new. But the Spain-Portugal blackouts underscore fundamental problems with the supposedly “inevitable transition” from coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear electricity to wind, solar, and battery power [Talkshop comment – meaning battery *storage*].

They show that the only inevitability will be more frequent and severe blackouts – because of our soaring reliance on electricity … political decisions to mothball or destroy reliable generating systems … and ideological commitments to “green” energy.

We’re effectively being told: You’ll have electricity when it’s available – not necessarily when you need it. In this modern technological era, that is absurd, outrageous, intolerable, and dangerous.

Full article here.