Barcelona can become a safe and stable city energetically speaking. A European capital that, like the main cities in Germany or Italy, leaves behind a centralized, overloaded, and insecure system, which can cause new general blackouts when least expected. In Sitges, they experienced it a few days ago. After April 28, a new blackout —of only 10 minutes— affected several areas of Garraf.
Without the need to increase or modify the existing photovoltaic installation, Barcelona can stand out. The reality is that the necessary infrastructure to achieve this does not require the installation of solar panels to become resilient. Barcelona can make a difference against the possibility —and danger— of new blackouts. And it is urgent to guarantee citizens the involvement, rigor, and modernity that they demand and deserve from the public administration.
Barcelona, as a city in general, and neighborhood communities as assets in particular, can contribute to the energy transition and modernization of the urban electrical system. Here the debate is not about nuclear or renewable energy sources, but about the fact that the electrical system in Spain, in Catalonia, and, of course, in Barcelona, is obsolete, centralized, and incapable of taking advantage of surpluses. Totally useless —as demonstrated on April 28— to face the stress of hundreds of thousands of Gigawatts poured into the grid at hours when no one needs them. A volume of energy that is completely lost and useless for having the capacity to turn on the lights later.
We cannot tell the sun to stop shining on our city. We cannot tell the garden to stop giving tomatoes because we cannot cope with eating them. We must learn to preserve. We must know how to store, decentralize, and distribute energy. What we can do, with the help of the municipal authority and neighborhood complicity, is to build a system in which dozens of batteries store energy in all neighborhoods of Barcelona, and at the same time provide stability to the urban system, guaranteeing the viability and sustainability of businesses and homes.
This is possible with batteries installed at key points in the urban plan, which connect to the grid and store their energy in moments of overload, to return it to the system when necessary.
For example, at 12:30 p.m. it is time to store and de-stress the system. Because it is the time of maximum sun exposure and lowest electricity demand due to the time of year, spring, without heating or air conditioning. The same time everything collapsed last April 28.
Citizens and institutions must know that they can be managers of their own energyDistributed batteries are capable, at noon, of storing energy resources ---which would otherwise be uncontrollably dumped into the grid--- to power citizens' needs later, when necessary.And that would provide Barcelona with the energy system that a sustainable, optimized, and above all, safe Mediterranean city deserves.
Barcelona can be a pioneer in the energy transition. It is necessary for citizens and institutions to make informed decisions. They must know that they can be managers of their own energy. And they can take a step forward, not for the future, but for the present.
The possibility of a new general blackout is a real threat that affects the entire city of Barcelona and that the city itself, with all its public and private assets, can be capable of preventing.