TH Mannheim alumnus Robert Beuchert from Netze BW delivered an interesting and informative lecture as part of the lecture series organized by the Working Group on Renewable Energy at TH Mannheim. The seminar room in Faculty E was filled to capacity, and the option to follow the lecture online was also widely utilized. In addition to students and professors, numerous VDE members from the North Baden region were present, which impressively underscored the significance of and interest in this topic.

Mr. Beuchert did an excellent job of illustrating the technical sequence of the blackout and explaining to the interested and knowledgeable audience the various mechanisms that can lead to such an outage. In addition to the technical explanations, the various reactions from politicians, the media, and the public were also discussed. A significant portion of the technical discussion focused on the high levels of PV feed-in in Spain and Portugal, the load conditions, and the low feed-in from conventional power plants prior to the onset of the failure. In addition, Mr. Beuchert discussed the design of grid protection and communication channels in grid management. Among other things, the astonished audience learned that even in 2025, processes in critical infrastructure will not be fully automated but will still be initiated the old-fashioned way via telephone lines. It goes without saying that this results in valuable response time being lost during incidents. 

“The power outage should not be viewed as having a single cause; rather, many factors play a role,” said Mr. Beuchert. Ultimately, an imbalanced reactive power balance, problems with voltage maintenance, and an inadequate protection design were identified as the triggering factors. In the discussion that followed the presentation, the role of renewable energy systems in these problem areas was discussed in particular. The audience agreed that there are no simple solutions and that complex questions require complex answers. The event, another successful gathering of the Renewable Energy Working Group, concluded with further discussions in small groups after the presentation. (Author: Prof. Dr. Thomas Hunger)