Greg Jackson

South Australia had a very major blackout with some very similar looking characteristics, in that case caused by storms.

There's some characteristics in common.

And of course, we've seen them in Texas as well.

And what they've got in common is an energy island with very little interconnection.

So I think only about 3% of Spain's total capacity is available via interconnectors.

I think technically there is actually a little bit of connection, but it's very, very, very skinny.

And Australia's got a similar thing, energy islands, because obviously the geography of Australia lends itself to that.

So the first thing is energy islands.

The second thing is lack of batteries.

And I think this is really big.

Essentially, you can run a very high proportion renewable grid incredibly reliably.

But you don't do it like you did the old ones.

And we should talk here about market structures as well.

But one key feature of Spain's grid is, I can't remember how, it's got like a fraction of a gigawatt of batteries and actually very little planned in the pipeline.

If I compare that to, for example, the UK at the moment, the UK has got five, six gigawatts of batteries and it's got plans to get to 10 or 20 times that.

And the last bit, I think, is a lack of digitization.

And I think it's shocking around the world how undigital grids are.

We put smart meters in people's homes, but most major substations, components of the grid, are not metered in real time.

There's not much telemetry.

And then we rely upon manual control rooms.