Spain's Energy Advances and Vulnerability

 

Toledo, Spain. On the right is the castle-fortress known as the Alcazar

Spain's dependence on renewable energy sources has been growing significantly, with over 50% of its electricity generated from renewable sources, including wind, solar, and hydropower. This increase has been accompanied by a reduction in fossil fuel use, making Spain a global leader in renewable energy deployment.

In 2024, Spain relied on fossil fuels for 23% of its electricity. Its emissions per capita were below the global average. Spain is the European country with the third highest renewable energy generation capacity and 11th lowest CO2 emissions per inhabitant.

Spain is fortunate to have a very sunny southern region with offshore generation sources, and a high windy Plateau (remember Quijote's windmills?)

The main source of energy in the homes is electricity, generated by wind, nuclear power and natural gas. However, as with most countries, the electric power grid in Spain is vulnerable. On April 28, 2025, there was a major power blackout through Spain. The outage affected airports, shops and offices across Spain, Portugal and parts of France. 

Many people had to be rescued from stalled elevators and the subway lines were not operating. There were long lines of people waiting to take busses. The outage cut phone service and shut down traffic lights and ATM machines.

Backup systems provided power to hospitals, prisons, airports and nuclear power plants.

As to the possible cause of the massive outage, an engineer explained, "One possible cause for a highly connected network is for one area to go down due to substation transformer failure or shorted/failure of a transmission line which can cause additional circuits to open, sort of a domino effect as the system tries to stabilize (and fails)! As the dominos continue to fall - the failure area gets larger and larger."

A power engineer from the U.K. explained, "The Iberian grid suffered a disturbance in the south-west at 12:33. In 3.5 seconds this worsened and the interconnection to France disconnected. All renewable generation then went off-line, followed by disconnection of all rotating generation plant. The Iberian blackout was complete within a few seconds."

Related reading: Spain - Energy; Massive power outages hit Spain, Portugal and France; I’m a power engineer. The Iberian grid collapse makes me very afraid for Britain

Spinach Power!

 

"Eat your spinach," is a common refrain from many people's childhoods. Spinach, the hearty, green vegetable chock full of nutrients, doesn't just provide energy in humans. It also has potential to help power fuel cells, according to a new paper by researchers in AU's Department of Chemistry. Spinach, when converted from its leafy, edible form into carbon nanosheets, acts as a catalyst for an oxygen reduction reaction in fuel cells and metal-air batteries.

An oxygen reduction reaction is one of two reactions in fuel cells and metal-air batteries and is usually the slower one that limits the energy output of these devices. Researchers have long known that certain carbon materials can catalyze the reaction. But those carbon-based catalysts don't always perform as good or better than the traditional platinum-based catalysts. The AU researchers wanted to find an inexpensive and less toxic preparation method for an efficient catalyst by using readily available natural resources. They tackled this challenge by using spinach.

Read it all here.

Moving Toward Artificial Photosynthetic Energy

Credit: Jan Kern and Isabel Bogacz/Berkeley Lab

Using a unique combination of nanoscale imaging and chemical analysis, an international team of researchers has revealed a key step in the molecular mechanism behind the water splitting reaction of photosynthesis, a finding that could help inform the design of renewable energy technology.

Vittal K. Yachandra, senior scientist at the Department of Energy's Berkeley Laboratory believes this is a step toward building artificial photosynthetic systems that can produce clean, renewable energy from sunlight.

Researchers from around the world have contributed to this potentially ground-breaking technology. The chemical process of Photosynthesis is now being captured in a “molecular movie” that shows the S2 to S3 transition step, where the first water (as shown in Ox) comes into the catalytic center after the photochemical reaction at the reaction center. 

Related Reading:  Showtime for Photosynthesis

France's Wattway is a Design Failure

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France's Wattway is a solar roadway that was built outside Tourouvre-au-Perch in Normandy in 2016. It has proven to be an expensive failure. The 1 kilometer (less than 1 mile) road in Normandy cost 5 million Euros to build, which is around 5.5 million US dollars for a single lane of a two-lane highway!

The solar roadway has a photovoltaic surface constructed from panels with a silicon resin used to protect the driving surface. The designer, a company called Colas, claimed it would stand up to a heavy trucks and tractors, but farm trucks and tractors have caused the silicon layer to flake and crack, damaging the delicate solar panels underneath.

There is also the problem of noise pollution when traffic passes on the road. The noise is so loud that the local government has limited traffic to just 70 kilometers per hour (around 43 miles per hour) to cut down on the sound.

The Wattway also is a failure at generating solar energy. According to the designers of the system, it was meant to capture 790 kilowatt-hours per day. That sounds good, but that part of Normandy averages only around 44 days of strong sunlight per year; too little to reach the designer's anticipated levels of energy.