Spanish Blackout - Net Zero or a “Rare Atmospheric Phenomenon”

Personally I'm betting on Net Zero infrastructure. From Iowa Climate Science Education: Days after Spain reaches 100% renewable, mass blackouts hit, due to mysterious “rare atmospheric phenomenon”

Is this the Net Zero world we’re aiming for?

It could be a coincidence, but Spain’s grid ran entirely on renewables for the first time on April 16th. Less than two weeks later, at lunchtime Monday Spain and Portugal and even parts of France suffered massive cascading blackouts. Thirteen gigawatts of electricity, about half the grid, suddenly disappeared at 12:30pm. Trains were halted, and people were stuck in dark subway tunnels. A tennis tournament was stopped, flights were cancelled and diverted, and prosaically, as an emblem of the Western World, Spain’s nuclear plants shut too, and are now running on diesel back up.

The climate folks are sure it was nothing but a strange weather phenomenon. It couldn't be that Net Zero doesn't work. Or could it? And do we believe the Green-Powers-That-Be when they say "coincidence?"

Notably, Spain has one of the highest proportions of renewable power in Europe — with 50% of the national supply coming from pure unreliable power. Spain has 32 GW of solar power, and 32GW of wind turbines. As it happens, the wind turbines have been largely useless for the last 24 hours. The Telegraph is reporting that solar power was providing almost 60% of Spain’s power two hours before the blackout.

And here is a fact that proponents of solar don't like to advertise. Solar panels become LESS efficient when they get hot. Since most of them are black or dark blue, this is an issue on a sunny day. I forget what the temperature is that most panels are rated at, but I think it is a panel temperature of about 60 degrees Fahrenheit. Note that is not air temperature. On a 60 degree day, those black panels will be much warmer when they have been in direct sun for a few hours. As the panels get warmer, they produce less electricity.

And the extreme temperature event... it was reported to be 23 degrees Celsius in Spain today. That is roughly 73 degrees for those of you who don't speak International System of Units. In other words, it was a beautiful day in Spain. Except for the power outage, which killed trains, closed airports, shut off refrigerators, etc.