Interesting OpEd on the recent power failure in Spain and Portugal.

[begreen]

The author posits a hypothesis on complex systems and how they are destined to fail. Tightly engineered, just in time systems are particularly vulnerable in his eyes. "Catastrophic failures are not rare. They are built in. The question is not if another system will collapse — but when." There is already talk of bolstering the renewable grid in Spain with large battery backup and super-capacitors to increase resilience (to give it more slack). This is more costly, but they hopefully have learned, so are nationwide outages.

Opinion: The power blackout in Spain and Portugal wasn’t a fluke. It was the future | Chattanooga Times Free Press

At 12:33 p.m. local time on a crystal blue Monday, the system that provides the power essential to the daily lives of 50 million-plus people collapsed.

www.timesfreepress.com

 

[woodgeek]

Ugh, I don't think so.

First, countries and companies can underinvest in things like storage or equipment maintenance (usually due to greed and wanting to line their pockets) and then the resulting systems can fail. The solution is inspection, regulation and investment of energy grids. For example, think about that Texas grid and recent spectacular failures.

Second, I find in hilarious that the ed writer is invoking complexity theory and Per Bak. Hahahaha. I have spend decades in and adjacent to that field of research, and a colleague of mine was at the Santa Fe institute last week. Honestly, Per Bak's original paper (from decades ago) has been debunked. It contained a simple mathematical error that made his model look more surprising than it was. Rather than retract the paper when the error was discovered (bc it was already going viral) Bak hastily made a 'new' model that did something similar without the math mistake. He claimed it explained EVERYTHING from stock markets to electronic noise to tectonics on neutron stars.

In 2025 we know better. It doesn't.

I could go on... but I would say that Benoit Mandelbrot (of similar vintage) discovered fractal geometry throughout nature (think clouds, trees, Fibonacci spirals in pinecones), and that we now know that that has myriad causes. One effect of such fractal geometry is peculiar noise spectra that Bak was trying to explain.

My own research (lately) shows that much unexplained phenomena in various material systems is NOT explained by Bak or his followers cheesy models (as they insisted decades ago, but have never proven), but by a previously hidden fractal geometry in the energy function of those materials.

Another interesting fact is that modern (deep learning) AI systems have found and exploited a similar hidden fractal geometry in myriad IA learning tasks. Where all that comes from is very much a current research problem, and a big part of why people say 'we don't know how AI works'.

 

[begreen]

Indeed, in the case of Spain's failure it sounds like lack of investment in buffering and poor regulation were some of the causes.

Spain’s grid collapsed in 5 seconds. The U.S. could be next.

Across Spain and Portugal, more than 50 million people recently experienced the largest blackout in modern European history. Thousands of commuters stood

reason.com

Thanks for the clarification. Interesting note on Per Bak, I don't follow large systems causiality but find the connection to hidden fractal geometry intriguing.

 

[Whitenuckler]

The author posits a hypothesis on complex systems and how they are destined to fail. Tightly engineered, just in time systems are particularly vulnerable in his eyes. "Catastrophic failures are not rare. They are built in. The question is not if another system will collapse — but when." There is already talk of bolstering the renewable grid in Spain with large battery backup and super-capacitors to increase resilience (to give it more slack). This is more costly, but they hopefully have learned, so are nationwide outages.

Opinion: The power blackout in Spain and Portugal wasn’t a fluke. It was the future | Chattanooga Times Free Press

At 12:33 p.m. local time on a crystal blue Monday, the system that provides the power essential to the daily lives of 50 million-plus people collapsed.

www.timesfreepress.com

It is my understanding the failures can be expected because they don't have enough spinning generation anymore. These wind farms and solar are not easy to couple/sync, they need a power system to sync to. You probably could never cold start a power grid if all you started with was wind and solar. Oh well, I guess they are still working on this fusion reactor.