The recent massive power outage in Spain and Portugal occurred despite those countries having advanced solar power installations. An archived article from Bloomberg explains why some homeowners were surprised by the event:
When the electricity suddenly went out in Spain on Monday, Irene Casas and her husband Luis Morate, who live in an apartment building in a Madrid suburb, lost power along with everyone else. That’s despite the fact that they, along with their neighbors, own a source of electricity: 200 rooftop solar panels installed at the end of 2023.The panels didn’t help them ride out the blackout because they are connected directly to the grid. Each co-owner, including Casas and Morate and their neighbors, gets a discount on their utility bill in exchange for the power they put into the electricity network, but the panels themselves don’t directly supply their apartments with energy...Casas and Morate’s experience goes against what many people would consider conventional wisdom: Solar on your roof provides energy independence. Yet, that’s not always the case. “On principle, solar panels give us power during the day, but in reality we are connected to the grid like everyone else,” said Morate.The predicament may have come as a surprise to some of the thousands of Spanish households who now have rooftop solar... It costs more to set up solar panels so they can quickly switch off the grid. Therefore many people living in places with rare blackouts and a reliable electricity supply may decide it doesn’t represent a good return on the cost, says Adam Bell, director of policy at the consultancy Stonehaven...Carlota Sala, who lives on a century-old farm in Spain’s northeastern region of Catalonia, didn’t even realize the Iberian Peninsula was in the middle of a historical blackout until many hours into the outage. Sala, a 45-year-old mother of five who is a well-known speaker on maternity and childhood issues under the nickname Ninyacolorita, lives entirely off-grid, with solar panels and batteries that store power so the family can use it during the night as well.
Living in Santa Rosa, California. We've had rooftop solar since 2018. Correct, we would not have electricity if the power went out. However, we've already recuperated our investment with lower energy bills. PG&E (Pacific Gas & Electric) has been trying its best to back out of the 20-year payback agreement it made with consumers, but an assembly bill to do that was defeated just last week. I'm sure they'll try again.
ReplyDeleteContrast this with Germany, where the "balcony" solar electric systems that have been catching on do generally provide a good deal of independence from the grid.
ReplyDeleteI'm gobsmacked that anyone who installed solar would be surprised by this.
ReplyDeleteThey do make it clear when you are making plans to get panels installed (although I have seen a lot of new companies coming into our state who do less expensive installations). When we had our panels upgraded two years ago there still wasn't an option to cut ourselves off from the grid in the event of a power outage but we did a work-around by installing batteries which can recharge even if the power is out. I'll add we were fortunate enough to be able to afford batteries which do NOT come cheap. I truly worry about the state of our electrical grid here in the States.
DeleteIt's kinda interesting to see Europe shit their pants over a 1 day outage in Spain in Portugal, while Pittsburgh has been without power for days because of a local storm. And if you don't live there, you would not know.
ReplyDeleteDifferent standards.
i did see (and may have partaken in) some quibbling to that effect. where spain was represented as ‘oh my god, a day of power outage!’ and california as ‘only a day?’ and texas as ‘wait, you guys count the days of outage, not the days it works?’
Deleteraphael
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_1998_North_American_ice_storm
Delete> Three weeks after the end of the ice storm, there were still thousands of people without electricity. In Quebec alone,
Regulations regarding this probably vary widely around the world, but workarounds to this exist, at least here in Texas, USA. If you install a home battery backup system, it will automatically disconnect from the grid in the event of an electrical outage to continue supplying power to the home. This also allows solar to continue generating, and the electricity produced will go toward powering your home first and then toward recharging the battery. (This was hinted at in the article as "islanding" but not fully explained.)
ReplyDeleteI wish I didn't have to know this, but our statewide and local grid has had some serious issues in recent years, and living along the Gulf coast, we're always just one tropical storm away from prolonged outages. Having the solar + battery kept the home powered after Hurricane Beryl despite the neighborhood having no power for 6 days.
I was in the bottom of our city aquarium when the power outage hit. Thank goodness for generators. However, it should be mentioned that April 16th, 2025 Spain's grid ran exclusively on renewables and usually runs on 53%. The country now will need to rethink battery storage issues for home, state and country. My state of Gipuzkoa, regained power within 20 minutes.
ReplyDeleteMy panels do power our house directly, but in the case of an outage they get automatically switched off for the safety of electric company workers making repairs, unfortunately that also cuts off power to our house which is a bit frustrating.
ReplyDeleteBig picture: Solar panels pasted on lives of excess are more distraction than solution. A power outage is a reminder of the truly fragile state of things. We, in the US, use five Earths per capita. The most immediate problem is that this is not taken seriously (anything requiring real sacrifice) as a problem. The solar panel has come to represent the technological hack for our ecocidal lifestyles. Just as recycling was the go to environmental distraction a few years ago.
ReplyDeleteMeh. They cost me about eight grand and save me about a grand a year. The time when it took 20 years to pay back the investment are long over, and this is in the UK. In America I'm surprised they aren't everywhere.
DeleteSacrifice will get you nowhere. You need solid economic reasons to change people's minds.
What is their predicted lifespan? How long before you need to replace or upgrade them?
DeleteFor emphasis -
ReplyDelete>> with solar panels and batteries
Batteries are the missing element in many solar systems. See also "vehicle to grid" -- >
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-to-grid
Yeah, if you are hooked to the grid, you get credits, which is great for me. I only pay the $20 hook up fee monthl, even though I'm in the often gloomy north east. At some point, I would like to get batteries, even if just to back up for the water pump, fridge-freezer. But as it stands now, I don't have to touch anything or be responsible for anything which isn't horrible.
ReplyDeleteI'd love to double the number of panels I have but the National Grid in the UK limits the maximum wattage you can connect. In any event I'd need a battery the size of my house and roughly four times the solar panels to declare independence from the Grid... which really isn't worth it.
ReplyDeleteThe system works well during Summer, a period of time defined in the UK as almost a full week in May when it's "hotter than the continent" here, we get enough sun that with a battery I'd get 100% of my needs.