Spain was quedó sin luz, but Nadia was to blame

The CNMC has its official report on the main electrical appliance of Spain’s current history.

And the most important part of the document is not the one that explains April 28, but the one that avoids deciding the cases a year later: here it was sent to a system that remained unknown on the peninsula and for which no one took final responsibility for what happened.

The regulator’s informant describes a “multifactor” foul which seemed a lot to pedrea Loterie: the fault lies with the system operator, transporters, distributors, consumer vehicles, renewable energy sources, voltage management, substations, customer demand, international interconnection and even faulty legislation.

CNMC makes reproductions all over the world, but without an embargo, it concludes that it will not report to anyone in particular.

Spain was quedó sin luz, but Nadia was to blame.

The link is not accidental. En la Odyssey, Ulysses if it appears before the cycle Polyphemus as “Nadie” to run after her cue: when the monster steps forward and yells that “Nadie” is attacking it, the other cycles give her a hit.

Here is something else. The regulator assigns responsibility to a “multifactorial” and from this point the whole world can move home as if it had fallen victim to a cosmic accident and not a series of very specific political, regulatory and technical decisions.

Because human awareness admits three things that are difficult to reconcile with the thesis that it was just a complete coincidence.

First, that regulatory error was part of the problem.

Second, the Spanish electric red was not adapted to the new generation model, in which the rapid decarbonization of the park was combined with a slower development of demand, flexibility and adaptation of the reds.

And third, what was “preventable” because the system operator had the tools to manage the accident.

If there were rules that failed, if the system was not ready and if in any case there were options to stop the collapse, and we were not talking about fatality: we were talking about political responsibility.

Ahí è come la multifactorialidad must be a serious diagnostician and becomes a political euphemism. The explanation was not the blind arrival of electrons, but rather the consequence of an energy policy that accelerated the entry of renewable sources without matching this pace with inversions in red numbers, in flexibility mechanisms and in renewable capacity.

The CNMC’s own text recognizes that decarbonisation is important for infrastructure adaptation and regulation.

Well, we repeat, it is not a coincidence. It is a public political election.

Without embargo, the regulator limits itself to drawing up a detailed catalog of recommendations. Revision of regulations for voltage regulation, harmonization with industrial safety, integration of voltage levels that installations must support into a single standard, interconnection references, revision of operating protocols and power frequency regulation.

It also extends the analysis to sectors such as audiovisual, telecommunications, railways, fuels or gas, with a claim to energy savings and autonomy. so they can function without electricity in crisis situations.

It’s a sensible inventory of everything you had before April 28th and what you’re advised to do now so you don’t want to go back.

But the core of the problem remains intact. No one has ultimate responsibility, nor is any company or company known to have specific authority. The CNMC realizes that it will be able to include expedientes sanctionadores, “caiga quien caiga”, but the informant, which should serve as a political and technical reference for the country, is queda in the middle.

If the fault was as systemic as described, it is necessary to consider the design of this system, so it was decided on the calendar of classic power plants, this impulse was given to the new production structure and here regulations must be introduced in time to guarantee safety.

It is unacceptable that the body charged with ensuring the markets function well and the leaders are unable to clearly define ultimate responsibility for an attack of this magnitude.

Regulatory independence is not about apportioning blame in the abstract, so that no one is misled until it is explained by names and appeals which pieces have failed, which needs to be reinforced and therefore not the reason. By resorting to the idea that everything was “multifactorial”, the CNMC shields itself from the government’s most obvious criticism: that energy policy tensions had reached a red line that was not prepared to bear them.

The questions you ask in your technical notes are telling. It was a multiple error because the red was not adapted to the new model, why did it only happen that day?

What can consumers (industry, businesses, enterprises) do to claim damages?

How will the CNMC sanction in a scenario where the fault was officially both immoral?

Without clear answers, my guess is that the edge of the race (and some of the inversions that now have to come down the road) have started to come together again, while decisions that lead to disaster are cloaked in a comfortable cloak of completeness.

En la Odyssey“Nadia’s” trick allows Ulises to save his life. In Spain, Nadia’s trick will give you an inconvenient explanation to the government, which launches a vigorous transition without enough red to a regulator that does not update the rules of the game over time.