Hacker News

This approach of blaming renewables is the typical one that the press is spreading, without clarifying ALL the aspects that make some renewable energy generation facilities inflexible.

Antonio Turiel explains very well what has happened and, in fact, some time before the blackout, in view of important alterations in frequency and voltage, he had already warned that this could happen.

In the new installations, according to the new regulations, photovoltaic plants must have systems to have a reaction margin in case of fluctuations. But in older plants this was not mandatory and, in order to give flexibility to the system, as has been commented here, it is necessary to have a reserve of other generation sources.

At the time of the blackout, there were many photovoltaic plants without response capacity and the necessary plants, especially gas plants, were not prepared to respond to the disturbance.

This was a combination of greed and incompetence. Greed for wanting to save money by disconnecting gas plants or for not updating the technology in photovoltaic plants. Incompetence on the part of government and regulators to put in place the necessary means to force corporations to take the necessary measures to avoid what has happened.