Reading the other comments, it's really a shame we can't have a discussion about something happening in the world before it immediately becomes about the US, on topics that are barely relevant.
China battery maker CATL to train Spanish workers for battery plant - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46061492 - November 2025
This has also been suggested by various politicians and others in front of a microphone or a camera without any basis in fact whatsoever. There is a (by now remote) chance that indeed wind power (or renewables in general) were the primary cause but the evidence points in an entirely different direction, the lack of control authority and undampened oscillations getting out of control. In such a situation various safety protocols dictate that sections of the grid disconnect and go into island mode or switch off altogether. This to prevent damage to the grid and to all of the grid connected devices. As these outages go, I think it was handled extremely well, the main question remaining is what the root cause was and what should be done to avoid a repetition.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Iberian_Peninsula_blackou...
It’s not really surprising that an electricity grid becomes fragile if you remove large rotating masses which can act as power reserves which can react to power variations immediately.
The European grid is stupendously reliable, far more reliable than any other power grid worldwide to the point that most houses and business do not have backup power plans (datacenters, hospitals, telcos and some others excepted). France is doing ok but do not pretend that without France this outage would have spread further. The Iberian peninsula has one of the weaker and heavier loaded grids in Western Europe, in spite of the above, they should have probably invested more into their infrastructure but Spain has a lot of other issues it needs to deal with which cost it a fortune every year in terms of crop losses, fires and floodings. Both Spain and Portugal (and to a lesser degree Italy and Greece) are in the line of fire when it comes to climate change damage.
What modern power grids typically have backups for individual residences and businesses? I haven't noticed that in Europe, Japan or South America; and it's certainly not normal in the US.
Europe has languished on battery storage deployment, and as they rapidly deploy it, it will improve grid reliability.
https://www.energy-storage.news/energy-storage-significantly...
It's more related to me in terms of when you look at the economical impact of energy, what sizes are in play. Just reading 4.6B Euro is a bit vague to understand to me, at least without having that put into perspective.
Another topic that has been surfacing every now and then is Electricity theft, partially for in-door cannabis plantation in occupied apartments. Which Endesa is valued 2B Euro per year.
https://www.endesa.com/en/press/press-room/news/energy-secto...
Generally renewables do pose new challenges onto the grid, unfortunately conservatives/fascists are using that for FUD - making a technical conversation harder on that topic.
https://www.brattle.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/2025-Iber...
Even in the hypothetical scenario that renewable energy being more expensive than fossil energy (in production), the climate catastrophe and the impact of that on the economy is undeniable magnitudes bigger than any investment we could currently do to shift quicker stronger to renewable resources.
I look at energy companies about twice every year in some detail and I know that the typical grid operator is extremely careful and pro-active on this subject (at least, in NL and Germany, my work area, they are), the energy market has introduced some potential for abuse and for instability but so far that seems to be under control. Which makes me quite curious about what the root cause here was.
Thankfully there is now more focus and financing available to elevate the network quality - right? Portugal has added 1% onto the electricity price for that purpose alone: https://www.energy-storage.news/portugal-to-invest-e400-mill...
I've followed "expert testimonials" in the Austrian news over the past years, and even there the importance of grid safety is a common theme - there seems to be some gap, even in the networks that on the surface level appear to be tolerant.
> I know that the typical grid operator is extremely careful and pro-active on this subject
That's really good to hear, unfortunately standardization is extremely slow moving and even though a potentially "safe grid" may be much more at risk during "hybrid-war times" (or other civil unrest, as seen in Berlin this year).
Here is Spain: https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/ES/
Throughout the day you can clearly see how the wind and sun power starts kicking in, when it's raining hydro raises, etc.
> “Just about all the windmills are made in China,” Trump said. “They make them and sell them to suckers like Europe and suckers like the United States before."
> “All you have to do is say to China: 'How many windmill areas do you have in China?' So far they're not able to find any," he said. "They use coal and they use oil and gas and some nuclear, not much, but they don't have windmills."
It then goes on to cite data from the US Department of Energy showing how wrong Trump is.
I've lived within 500 meters of a pretty large one and the highway more than a kilometer away from where I lived was far more noisy than the turbines.
And I agree with that highway traffic is way noisier, no doubt. That's why I mentioned in places where you don't have that "traffic rumble" before there is a wind turbine. I guess the difference is more noticeable then, compared to if you always had that traffic rumble anyways.
Work out the tip speed on one of those big machine and you'll be even more impressed.
I think the main reason the difference was so stark, was because that place never had traffic around it, so it went literally from nothing to something, and if there would have been other noises before, it surely wouldn't have been so noticeable.
Couldn't hear anything besides the road several hundred metres away.
The interesting thing would be to hear it when you don't have that constant background rumble, you know like what I wrote about in my comment you replied to.
At approx 256m attenuation is 21dB. Road noise reaches 85dB, which means I was hearing it at 64dB at most.
I should have heard something, anything from the turbine, yet I didn't.
The environment and how long time your ears been in it, matters a lot for how loud or not we perceive noise, I can imagine most modern ears basically tune out the traffic rumble you hear almost everywhere.
I'd much rather they put them in areas that are already ruined with traffic rumble, at least the difference would be minimal instead of "silence" vs "rumble".
Meanwhile, not 5 km away, there are a bunch of turbines with people living around them and no problem.
So the exact slopes etc of the terrain is very important.
Then they'll be forced to fix it and it will be quiet again. You can ask them if it always was that noisy, if it wasn't then that's an extra arrow in their quiver. I'm very much pro renewables but safety is a major concern and operators that do not work safely and/or ignore valid complaints are a net negative for renewables.
The root cause was insufficient dispatch of reactive power due to non compliance of some power providers, and ultimately traceable to outdated procedures for the dispatch of reactive power.
Well thanks but I really don't want to have a taste of the US' problems. We have enough of our own thanks.
American soldiers have also killed thousands of American soldiers; should the US punish itself?
These things don’t happen overnight. That thing has been boiling for at least a decade.
As a non American, that’s evident…
Perhaps that's also part of the downfall: the US unlearnt the necessity to use sticks to stamp down the ugly side of capitalism.
Go through a list of IRA projects, though, and you'll see two things: 1) they weren't generally killed by Trump, and 2) the IRA still did not get the US competitive with China. Let's take the largest one, the Toyota plant in NC, which is operational, and impressive in that it makes the batteries from raw materials BUT it has an eye-watering cost for the capacity ($~14B for 30 GWh/yr vs. $>4B for 30GWh/yr at Hyundai's plant.) Compare that to a Chinese plant at $50-100M/GWh and you can see that despite huge subsidies at several levels - including a $35/kWh subsidy for domestic cell production - the US is far behind here.
Look at the others and you'll see similar stories. Ford-SK On just split up because the F-150 is too expensive, demand is soft, and SK On wants to do energy storage. If we could make the F-150 competitively, demand would be higher, but it's incredibly expensive relative to a Chinese EV.
The more promising story is in solar (panel manufacturing and installs) but again, not a cure-all under Biden or a catastrophe under Trump. The US solar industry just had its third largest quarter on record, and we can now make every part of a solar panel in the US in volume. Module production capacity is at 60 GW, up 37% from Dec 2024, and cell production is at 3.2 GW, up from 1.2 GW a year ago [1.] That's a much prettier picture (regarding manufacturing) than in the EU, where manufacturing capacity is far lower and not growing nearly as quickly, although the EU has a larger installed base of (mostly Chinese) panels.
[0] https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/biden-...
[1] https://seia.org/news/third-largest-quarter-on-record/
Good explainer of PV panel production process: https://www.iea.org/reports/solar-pv-global-supply-chains/ex...
I don't understand why your reply is so aggressive though.
What is upsetting you by others talking about the blackout?
Especially understanding the economic impacts better, seems to be a reasonable thing to do?
Overall, there seems to have been very little effect on the economical growth of both countries - even though it has been a regular business day.
Some slide-deck that covers the situation well: https://www.brattle.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/2025-Iber...
I'm not trying to "throw shade on something good" - in contrary, even with a "once in a decade event", the benefit of renewables speaks mountains (not even to speak of the severe damage fossil energy causes that's currently unaccounted in the price of expelling greenhouse gasses).
If renewable energy increases the chances of such events happening, only with accurate numbers you can do the appropriate risk management and operate an efficient, yet stable, grid.
My original comment is flagged now so well, didn't mean to fuel some awful views trying to pretend renewable energy is bad - something I strongly disagree.
For example take the 2024 Financial Report of Hydro One (distributor for Ontario) [0].
Apparently they earned 8,484M in revenue, and spent 4,143M in Power, and Net Income was 1,156M. Putting these together you can sort of conclude that the price of the electricity is around 1/2 their expenses.
If I then go to Ontario Power Generation financial reports 2024 [1], Revenue was apparently 7,187M, with Fuel Costing 1,049M, and net income around 1,006M. This sort of tells you that the price of fuel is only around 1/6th of their expenses.
I spent some time thinking about this and I'm not sure what to conclude other than probably a lot of what you pay is just paying for staff and maintenance and so even if fuel was free where I live it would be like a 1/12th change. Assuming the big savings in Wind are supposed to be from not having to pay for Fuel.
[0] https://www.hydroone.com/investorrelations/Reports/Hydro%20O...
A house might have a typical peak power demand of 1kWH. Now? It might peak at 10. I'm making up these numbers by the way.
Everywhere that I know of, you pay for the grid through your bill.
Any saving on the production side will only effect part of the bill, and the total bill can go up even as the average wholesale price goes down.
essentially this means if there's one milliwatt of gas on the grid: everyone pays the gas price
as a result consumers see very benefit from renewables
(but the renewable generators are making out like bandits)
And you can have other pricing schemes, for example pay-as-bid, that also balance supply and demand.
however the market participants have "adapted" to it
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/jan/08/two-power-s...
it works pretty well on a short-term basis but due to the way the system works there's no ability to price-in a long term signal
the government is currently consulting on a changes to introduce this mechanism (as is the EU)
Give those constraints, of course they must be expensive if they are to exist at all.
Do I misunderstand anything?
> The sector contributed 0.25% to GDP and enabled savings on consumers' electricity bills of more than 4.6 billion euros in 2024, with an average reduction in the wholesale price of close to 20 euros per MWh.
For example when energy prices rose during the pandemic and the Ukraine war the government put limits on price increases and also lowered VAT.