On the menu today: Spain and Portugal lose power for nearly a full day; that arrested judge in Milwaukee gets suspended but assembles an all-star team of lawyers to prepare for her defense; and in a long overdue move, there’s a sign that the New England Patriots are finally getting shipped off to Gitmo.
The Iberian Blackout
Spain and Portugal endured a blackout that began Monday afternoon and only ended Tuesday morning, with some parts of France affected as well. This is uncommon, and it is equally uncommon — and unnerving — for authorities a day later to say publicly that they have no idea why it happened.
From El Pais, one of the most-read newspapers in Spain:
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has been meeting with the National Security Council, chaired by King Felipe VI, since 9:00 a.m. In a public appearance on Monday night, Sánchez stated that an investigation is underway into why electricity generation was “suddenly” lost at 12:33 p.m. on Monday. “It had never happened before,” he said. The Spanish Cabinet is also meeting on Tuesday to discuss the situation and the government’s actions.
The government has stated that all possible causes are still on the table, while REE reiterated the phenomenon that caused the grid failure: a power fluctuation in which 15 gigawatts of generation suddenly disappeared for a few seconds, although it did not clarify whether this was due to natural causes or if it could have been human action, whether intentional or not.
The Spanish grid operator Red Eléctrica issued a statement declaring the outage was “not caused by a cyberattack, human error, or by any unusual meteorological or atmospheric phenomenon.” That feels like an awfully fast conclusion and one that rules out too many possibilities, although I suppose that leaves the option of an equipment failure. CNN’s report had a few more details:
Spain’s electrical grid was running as normal until 12:33 p.m. when, suddenly, it suffered a disturbance.
Eduardo Prieto, the director of services for the grid operator Red Eléctrica, said the grid recovered after that first shock. But a second disconnection, one and a half seconds later, caused “a degradation of operating variables” of the system, leading to a “massive generation disconnection” and “disconnection of the connection lines with France.”
In the space of a few seconds, 15 gigawatts of energy suddenly dropped from Spain’s supply, Spanish government sources told CNN — equivalent to 60 percent of the electricity being consumed at the time — and the entire Spanish grid collapsed as a result.
Even if you’re not that familiar with electricity, you probably remember Doc Brown gasping about “1.21 gigawatts” in Back to the Future, and what an enormous amount of electrical power that was in 1955. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, to generate one gigawatt, you would need nearly 2 million solar panels, 294 wind turbines on land, 103 offshore wind turbines, 1.3 million horses, or half a Hoover Dam. With one gigawatt, you could power 100 million LED Bulbs, 2,627 Tesla Model 3s, or almost one time-traveling DeLorean.
In other words, in an instant, Spain and Portugal lost seven-and-a-half Hoover Dams’ worth of electricity.
The Spanish Audiencia Nacional — something akin to the U.S. Supreme Court, specializing in major crimes — is not accepting the “no cyberattack” explanation at face value and is ordering investigations:
Spain’s Audiencia Nacional, the central criminal court, has opened an investigation into the massive power outage that hit the Iberian Peninsula on Monday. In a decision issued on Tuesday, investigating Judge José Luis Calama authorized a probe into whether the massive energy crisis “could have been an act of cyber-sabotage against critical Spanish infrastructure.” In his statement, the judge admitted that the cause of the system failure “remains unknown at the current time,” but considered it necessary to initiate an investigation into the possibility of a “cyber-terrorist” attack, a crime that would fall within the court’s jurisdiction.
Before the court’s decision was announced, Red Eléctrica de España (REE), the grid operator, had ruled out the possibility that the blackout was caused by a cyberattack, human error, or by any unusual meteorological or atmospheric phenomenon. In a public appearance, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez added that the government has “no conclusive information that it was a terrorist attack.” Although he did not rule out any theories, Sánchez called for caution until the matter is fully investigated. . . .
Calama has ordered Red Eléctrica and the National Cryptology Center, part of the CNI national intelligence services, to send him separate reports on the causes that led to the blackout, for which he has given them a “non-extendable” deadline of 10 days. The judge has also requested a report from the National Police Intelligence Headquarters. . . .
Calama also emphasized that the 2017 Cyberthreat Report from the National Cryptology Center stated that “the greatest danger lies in attacks originating from foreign states.” “This was the case of cyberattacks on Ukrainian electricity companies that caused a blackout in 2016, leaving millions of people without power.”
As much as I’d like to blame the Russians for this (and all the ills of the world), Spain and Portugal would make a particularly odd choice of targets for any Russian hackers; those two countries aren’t particularly enthusiastic supporters of Ukraine compared to other countries in Europe. According to the Kiel Institute Ukraine Support tracking database, Spain ranks 13th in financial aid to Ukraine, 28th in military aid, and 34th in humanitarian aid. Portugal ranks 31st in financial aid, 24th in military aid, and 37th in humanitarian aid. Portugal spends just 1.55 percent of its gross domestic product on defense and Spain clocks in dead last among NATO countries at 1.28 percent, well below the 2 percent NATO guideline.
The potential explanations fit into three broad categories — deliberate human action (hacking or sabotage), inadvertent human action (error), or catastrophic equipment failure. No less a source than the New York Times is acknowledging that the Spanish and Portuguese grids rely heavily on renewable energy, an inconvenient fact that is making green-energy advocates sweat almost as much as the loss of their air conditioning:
Spain’s power company, Red Eléctrica, proudly declared on April 16 that enough renewable energy had been generated to cover demand. “The ecological transition is moving forward,” it said.
Less than two weeks later, Spain and Portugal experienced an 18-hour blackout that disrupted daily life, shutting down businesses and schools and crippling trains and mobile networks.
Officials have given few details on the cause of the outage. But the incident exposed how Spain and Portugal, promoted as success stories in Europe’s renewable energy transition, are also uniquely vulnerable to outages, given their relative isolation from the rest of the continent’s energy supply.
The defensive spin is already beginning, over at Reuters:
While it may be tempting to blame the unprecedented power outage that hit the Iberian peninsula this week on the rapid growth of wind and solar power in Spain, reliance on renewables is not to blame. Rather, the issue appears to be the management of renewables in the modern grid. . . .
One possible contributor is the lack of so-called ‘grid inertia’ as a result of the relatively small share of nuclear and fossil fuel generation in Spain’s power mix.
Inertia is the kinetic energy created by the rotation of spinning generators. In the case of a sudden loss of power, this provides a temporary supply of energy that can help maintain grid frequency, thus acting as a shock absorber.
Inverter-based wind and solar power, which generated just under 70 percent of Spain’s total electricity at the critical moment on Monday, does not involve physical rotation and therefore inertia could not compensate for the sudden loss of power.
An obvious short-term solution to avoid a repeat of the blackout would be to maintain a higher baseload of rotating power generation.
Over the long term, however, power systems will need to invest heavily in battery capacity to store electricity as well as technologies for synchronizing the grid that are critical to maintaining the 50 Hz frequency.
“Don’t blame the renewables, blame the management of the renewables” sounds a bit like John Kerry’s “I actually did vote for the $87 billion, before I voted against it.”
Our Andrew Stuttaford recommended this analysis by Javier Blas of Bloomberg; apparently, the International Energy Agency is belatedly acknowledging that getting rid of nuclear, coal, gas, etc., has created a less stable and reliable electrical grid in certain places:
The second risk is matching a demand that requires 24/7 supply with a generation system that, at the margin, depends today on whether the sun is shining and the wind is blowing. “Systemic challenges will emerge from balancing increasingly renewable-dominated grids during extended low-generation periods,” the IEA said on its confidential paper, which was seen by Bloomberg Opinion.
In plain English: It’s unclear how the grid will work when the weather isn’t helping. That’s a reality that the IEA — and renewable advocates — have long downplayed. It’s refreshing that’s now acknowledged openly.
There’s an additional headache. Under pressure to meet green targets, utilities are shutting down so-called dispatchable power plants that can be turned on and off on demand, like atomic reactors and coal- and gas-fired plants. Germany, which shut all its nuclear power stations, is a textbook example. “Current vulnerabilities stem from premature retirement of dispatchable generation without adequate replacements,” the IEA warned.
The environmentalists had better hope it was the Russians or some other terrorists.
Wisconsin State Supreme Court Suspends Accused Judge
A few follow-ups to Monday’s newsletter about Hannah Dugan, the Milwaukee judge arrested for helping a man evade immigration authorities. On Tuesday the Wisconsin Supreme Court suspended Dugan, arguing that it is in the public interest to relieve her of her duties as she faces two federal charges. The AP reports:
In its two-page order, the court said it was acting to protect public confidence in Wisconsin courts during the criminal proceedings against Dugan. The order noted that the court was acting on its own initiative and was not responding to a request from anyone. Liberal justices control the court 4-3.
It’s been reasonable to wonder if Wisconsin’s legal establishment would circle the wagons to defend one of their own; this is an indication that at least some other judges in the state see her alleged actions as the sort of thing that really shakes the public’s confidence in the objectivity and prudence of the judicial branch.
Significantly better news for Dugan is that she’s assembling an all-star team of lawyers for her defense. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports:
Leading Dugan’s legal team is Steven Biskupic, the former U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Wisconsin from 2002 to 2009. Republican President George W. Bush selected Biskupic, who oversaw a series of public high-profile corruption and police misconduct cases, including the convictions of seven Milwaukee police officers in the beating of Frank Jude Jr. Biskupic was a career prosecutor before his term as U.S. attorney. He is now in private practice.
The most prominent member of the defense team is former U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement, a Cedarburg native. As solicitor general from 2005 to 2008, Clement argued more than 100 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. Clement, a conservative who was appointed by former Republican President George W. Bush, currently represents the law firm WilmerHale, which is suing the Trump administration after it was targeted by an executive order. Clement has been dubbed by some “the LeBron James of lawyers.”
I’ve interviewed Clement in the past about other cases, and he is as talented a litigator as they come in the legal world.
Then again, LeBron James’s Los Angeles Lakers are currently down three games to one in the NBA playoffs.
ADDENDUM: Huffington Post headline: “Patriots Team Plane Makes Trip to Guantánamo Bay.” America is indeed great again! Alas, they’re not dropping off team owner Robert Kraft. “A spokesperson for Kraft’s company told HuffPost that ‘there were no detainees on the plane,’ but that the Patriots current charter operator does work with the Department of Defense to transport military personnel and others for ‘no financial gain.’”