Wind power slashed 4.6B euros off electricity bills in Spain last year | Hacker News Reader

Wind power slashed 4.6B euros off electricity bills in Spain last year

surinenglish.com

179 pointsmooreds90 comments

An interesting thing I learned from reading the article is that Spain is the 4th largest exporter of turbines behind only China, Germany, and Denmark.

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.

Spain is also big in the utility scale solar and storage industry with the Power Electronics company providing inverters or other components to many of the worlds largest plants.

CATL is building one of the largest battery manufacturing factories in Europe in Spain.

China battery maker CATL to train Spanish workers for battery plant - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46061492 - November 2025

I am interested. Tell me more. Any books / articles you'd recommend ? Given that Spain made such progress, there has to be atleast an FT article.

Search for Siemens Gamesa. Siemens fused their wind power branch with them a few years prior to the pandemic and finalized the full takeover in 2022.

Don Quixote.

There are multiple comments in this thread suggesting that the outage in Spain was caused by wind power.

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...

France was not affected and guarded the rest of Europe because the have reliable, dispatchable power.

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.

Rotating mass is a suspect in this case, not necessarily the primary one but the lack of control authority in the presence of frequency fluctuations is the exact opposite of what you are suggesting. It means that something with a fairly large amount of source/sink capability caused a local stability issue. Almost all modern grid connected windmills are - and this may surprise you - connected to the grid using inverters because that gives them a much better chance at following the grid fluctuations than the older direct connected types did (which did have the potential to cause issues and which resulted in much higher start-up speeds than the present crop). These inverter based interconnects give response times that rotating mass based systems can only dream of, resulting in much smaller errors in phase and thus voltage tracking.

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.

> far more reliable than any other power grid worldwide to the point that most houses and business do not have backup power plans

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.

In Canada and the US it is fairly common to have a genset in rural areas where the power goes out multiple times per year due to fallen trees, lightning and maintenance. And I did not write that it is the grids that have backups, it is the businesses and the residences that have backups. For instance, my rural Canadian gas station had a 6.5KW backup generator to ensure the pumps and the freezers would keep running when the power would go out.

Battery storage, solar, and wind can all operate as grid forming and provide synthetic inertia when provisioned to do so. Thermal grid services are not required for grid reliability.

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...

France guarding the rest of Europe, that's funny! The connection had to be dropped because it did not have the capacity to supply Spain with enough power at that moment. And the connection is so small, because the French do not want competition from cheaper Spanish power generators.

I did not mean to suggest that the outage in Spain and Portugal were caused by wind power or just renewables.

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.

Spain will need to make some very hard choices, they have a relatively - by European standards - fragile grid and some weak interconnects. This situation has been flagged years ago but so far priorities have been to do other things first. The outage has definitely given people food for thought and I expect that when the final report is presented that it will come with some recommendations on how to prevent future recurrence. In particular the voltage / frequency regulation aspect of some of the local grids will become a focal point because these have the potential to destabilize much larger sections than just their own. The real puzzler to me is that there were multiple signals of pending grid instability and no action was taken when they easily could have, this is the bit that I'm most interested in learning about.

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.

> Spain will need to make some very hard choices

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).

https://positive.security/blog/blinkencity-38c3

It's fascinating to see the live electricity sources with Electricity Maps.

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.

I was curious to see how this number was derived and unfortunately the 20.41 euro/MWh “reducing effect” figure has absolutely no explanation as to how it was calculated. Given that AEE is a wind industry lobbying organization I suspect this number is picked in a way that is maximally favorable to wind. I really wish they would tell us how this number was arrived at so I could make up my own mind as to how reasonable it is.

Related today:

UK secures record supply of offshore wind projects

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46614777

Without paywall: https://archive.is/lV7Ng

That's interesting because here in California, $4.6B is slashed off productivity because of wind.

- still angry at pg&e

Can you elaborate? Was that sarcasm?

PG&E bills in California are also going down this year as well.

Power generation is going down, power delivery is going up. Power delivery is way more expensive than the actual electricity.

Sarcasm? Ca electricity costs 33.60 per kWh vs the US average of 17.98. Personally Ive seen my bill double in the last 10 years.

Both are true. Costs have gone up a lot over the past few years and are also going down this year.

but if they go down by 1 cent per kwh then technically the price did go down.

UK energy consumers cry

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Meanwhile the administration of the US says that wind farms are "losers": https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2026/01/09/trump-...

With virtually unlimited donations they are paid to say it.

From that article:

> “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.

Compared to solar, they are kind of noisy though. If you are used to not hearing the constant traffic "rumble" that exists almost everywhere, they add quite a lot of "rumble" themselves.

What's the closest you've lived to a windfarm?

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.

I was gonna say about 500 meters from one big wind turbine, and it was pretty noisy. But now when I look it up, seems it was installed in the 90s sometime, maybe it was just really old or badly maintained.

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.

The designs made in the 90's were relatively inefficient which is one reason why they're noisy. But at the same time: it's impressive that a turbine from those days is still up and running today and that says something about the engineering that went into that thing. Lots of lessons have been learned and a modern turbine is so quiet you can stand right underneath it and barely hear it, which I find absolutely incredible. A 75 meter diameter rotor intuitively should make a lot of noise, but they really don't. The main driver is the precision with which the filament is laid on the blade was well as how close the back edge of the blade approaches zero. That's the biggest source of noise and you'll always have some either because you don't quite get there or because you do and the back edge starts to flutter. It is one of those very annoying engineering trade-offs where you're damned if you do and damned if you don't.

Work out the tip speed on one of those big machine and you'll be even more impressed.

I remember quite vividly, first the weeks of construction, and then that our silence was just gone. Used to be you sat in the garden and heard nothing but birds and wind, no traffic, no nothing. After it appeared, there was always this rumble (like you hear when living close to a road/highway/traffic), but also a swooshing sound as they rotated.

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.

One time I drove up to the very base of a ~2MW wind turbine.

Couldn't hear anything besides the road several hundred metres away.

Yes, I don't think people think how noisy traffic and roads really are :)

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.

Thing is, I couldn't hear anything at all from the turbine and the only noise I could pick up was the road.

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.

Yeah, I guess modern turbines are better than the one they put next to us. We used to have complete silence (no roads nearby), but after installing it the silence was gone. Not sure what else to tell you, I'm sure we wouldn't have noticed it if we already were used to road rumble, but we weren't, guess that's why it was so noticeable.

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.

That isn't true. We have several turbines near us. One just across the street. Even on days without traffic noise, we can't hear them.

Which is why you put them in the sea or in places with sparse population.

Which is awesome for us who move to places with sparse population to get a silent environment :)

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".

Which greatly increases the cost of setting them up.

Are they? I haven't noticed the sound myself, although I don't live next to windmills and just travel in areas with wind power from time to time... I also grew up next to train tracks and now live next to an interstate near an airport so may have a high tolerance for background noise!

There is one turbine near where I live in Scandinavia that is very noisy. It is a low thumping sound that penetrates houses and is horrid. Those living within a km perhaps more won a court case to remove it but the owner has appealed and appealed and during the years or appeals the thing keeps turning and keeps being noisy so people can’t sleep. My understanding is the simulation and calculations of the noise that were part of the planning process were flawed and did not accurately model the terrain.

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.

That sounds very much like either tower thump or a broken bearing, I think the neighbors would have a better case if they pushed the safety angle because a turbine in a bad state of maintenance is dangerous.

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.

In this case it is the terrain. The sound is funnelled somehow. In the planning process the owner has to commission a study that reports if the terrain shape is ok and compute the noise on nearby houses etc. Apparently you can get what you pay for. In the appeal a more independent study pulled the original study apart.

Trump also said solar is bad.

It slashed a lot of birds too...

Did those savings actually trickle to end costumer bills? I often read how renewables are making electricity cheaper but I only pay more and more despite the share of them increasing here in electricity generation.

Well we can see how much we would even expect this to matter.

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...

[1] https://www.opg.com/reporting/financial-reports/

One reason cost might be going up is because the grid needs upgrades.

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.

The more variability there is in the grid, the more the grid need to invest in balancing, reserve energy and transmission. Each of those are expensive to build out and maintain. They are usually paid through taxes and grid fees, and here in Sweden you will generally pay more for those than for the energy that you consume.

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.

I was more thinking of increasing throughput on existing power lines. That's a lot of work/money that'll need to be spent if we want to switch cars and heating to electric.

I'm in Austria and I pay separate bills for the grid and the electricity.

in the UK the price everyone pays is set according to the marginal price

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)

This is the right move. The marginal price is the price that balances supply and demand by definition, and this must be the case on the grid at all times, even to the last milliwatt, or you immediately get a Spain situation with cascading blackouts where huge parts of the grid go dark.

That happened once, and the causes are still unclear/ being investigated. We don't have blackouts unless extreme weather or bad grid sectors (e.g. semi abandoned rural). Also, we have marginal pricing, and we had this pricing for years before the Blackout.

And you can have other pricing schemes, for example pay-as-bid, that also balance supply and demand.

Yes that's sound weird but this is to make sure gas peaker plants which by definition run only a fraction of time can be profitable and be built.

yeah I understand the theory behind the system

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)

At a glance, it sounds as if those power stations need to pay for themselves in a few hours per week, and as soon as you get more transmission capacity from Scotland they're dead.

Give those constraints, of course they must be expensive if they are to exist at all.

Do I misunderstand anything?

second paragraph of the article starts with:

> 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.

In Spain they probably do because the government is heavily involved in the electricity production. It's not really a free market, and it didn't have to be. In fact I'd prefer it to be more in the government's hands then it is. But Spain is a country that's much more socialist than the US and as such I'm very happy to live here.

For example when energy prices rose during the pandemic and the Ukraine war the government put limits on price increases and also lowered VAT.

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