In collaboration with Software Product Management, General Manager of Wärtsilä Energy Storage, Rochaira Shah
12:33 pm CET, April 28, the Lights of the Peninsula Aibrin left. Europe’s largest blackout was marked in the widespread event in 20 years. Within less than 30 seconds of the first generator, offline tripping, about 55 55 million people lost electricity – and disconnected from the grid for 12 hours.
Such grid failures are dangerous in Spain and Portugal – and they are not isolated. Such events present a glimpse of the fragility of the systems on which we strengthen modern life. When the lights are over, hospitals, public services, transport infrastructure, payment system, communication channels and other essential equipment are disconnected. The Internet goes down. Traffic lights go out. Lift stall.
On demand power strengthens our world. It is a system designed to meet peak demand – but today, the grid is under pressure as climate change, a changing energy mix, and emerging technologies like AI.
Grid’s complex dance was made for foam fuel
The grid is designed so that the energy supply is equal to every moment. As we have seen in Spain and Portugal, a few seconds of match can send widespread shock views throughout the system. Each time you blink on the light switch, turn on the microwave, or plug in your car, responds to this change in grid demand. When the system is working, we do not feel the grid’s delicate call and response dance, but don’t make a mistake – it is extremely complicated.
Since the Spanish Portugal blackout, this day, Spain has been mostly focused on the high penetration of renewable sources (about 70 70 % of power generation), and whether wind and solar played its role in the volatility of the grid. The fact is: Renewable sources are not a problem. Grid.
Our grid is built around traditional fossil fuel powers and weaknesses. When we move towards a pure zero world, grid operators will have to prepare the future grid: a foolish fuel is not built around, but is made around renewable resources.
Artificial root is a seat belt for future grid
An important piece of this puzzle is to ensure that energy supply is equivalent to demand, because of this law, the motion of the movement is in motion. Traditional foamic fuel and nuclear plants use spinning turbines to generate electricity. Those spinning turbines are sources of stored dynamic strength that can be tapped in the moments of grid fluctuations. When something goes wrong, they strengthen the system. When the plant travels offline, the remaining plants in the grid can increase their contribution by using this stored power for a few seconds. This is very important because foam fuel plants are relatively slow slow – they are extra seconds important so that they can promote their strength. As a result, connecting can be considered as a seat belt for grid. When the grid collides with the collision, it absorbs the trauma.
On the contrary, inverter -based resources, including renewable sources and batteries, naturally do not provide this intetric response to the grid. Even wind power, which uses spinning turbines, provides electricity to the grid through an inverter, which means it does not have hereditary reactions. However, while foam fuels are slow, the inverters are extremely fast. Battery storage, in particular, is the faster the power. This means that although batteries do not provide natural connectivity, they can provide something that is called “artificial root”, which responds faster by responding to the grid disruption of the grid with a power injection to the natural root of the fuel.
The challenge of grid operators is adapting to these new types of generation. Batteries and renewable sources can provide artificial connectivity, but they need to be equipped with grid inverters and sophisticated grid management software. In order to encourage renewable and storage asset owners to provide artificial connectivity to the grid, governments and regulators need to build a market method to compensate assets owners. Artificial connectivity benefits the entire grid, but without the clear stream of income, some grid -forming will invest in the inverters and the technologies needed to provide modern control. Some countries are starting to recognize and deal with this imbalance. For example, the UK and Australia are the leaders of the place and will pave the way for other major markets to award assets owners.
Britain pave the way for a future -proof grid
In particular, the UK is at the forefront of the base industry, with the targets of 23-27 GW battery storage by 2030, which are installed by 4.5 GW in December 2024. The country is looking forward to moving its grid permanently with stability services. In 2022, the UK’s National Grid contracted artificial connectivity with five different battery energy storage facilities through its Path Finder 2 program. This program acts as a global model on how storage decoration goals, grid stability, and a major lunch for a secure power system for the UK and the whole world. The first of these five systems is already at work and is provided by Versestles.
Where the UK goes, other systems will follow it soon, which will create a new opportunity for battery storage, as well as increase protection by destabilizing events like blackout. But there is still more work. When we look at the capacity of summer heat waves, an interruption hurricane and monsoon season, other extreme events of the weather, and the growing project of renewable energy capacity, our grids will continue to be examined.
We cannot afford to patch tomorrow’s grid. We need a need that is made for energy sources today and tomorrow. Artificial connectivity is an important part of the solution. Spain Portugal Blackout should work not only for Europe, but also for every country, as a desire to visit energy transfers and keep the grid reliable.
The time has come to modernize the policies, markets and privileges that run today’s power systems. There are technologies. Required is necessary. If we want clean energy on a scale, we have to create a grid that is ready for it.
About the writer
Rochara Shah is the general manager of software product management in Energy Storage, which focuses on monitoring intelligent reform, control, and energy storage assets. It has ten years of experience in the battery storage space, including product management, proposal management, and business work. Before joining the versus, Roche Hanoha was the director of product management in Qiels/Jelly. It has also played the role of product management in Tesla and SunLink. Rochaira holds a master’s degree in social policy from the London School of Economics.
