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https://www.politico.eu/article/spain-portugal-power-cut-europe-electric-grid-pedro-sanchez/
How does such an incredible amount of electricity just poof, disappear?
Illegal grow ops and cryptominimg operations can be pinpointed relatively quickly and use a miniscule amount of power in comparison. A substation failure or cut line, etc... Also, pinpointed quickly.
Me being in an asian third world country, the last nationwide grid failure here was in 1999 i think, affecting the whole nation for the whole night.
Eu already faced nationwide grid failure twice in a decade already. Last time being in 2006 if I'm not mistaken. So much for being supposedly first world.
There is so much misinformation in this thread which it is not worth addressing individually.
This power outage does not have much to do with EU centralization, and our grid has been historically reliable by first world standards, which is remarkable considering the amount of wind and solar in our pool. Renewables also have great and obvious advantages most of the time: for example, my long term 8 cents per kWh contract.
As of now, approximately 12 hours after the start of the outage, power is restored in most regions but not all, being Madrid one of the most affected since they have lots of demmand but virtually no generation and are far from international partners. Being connected to other national networks (France and Morocco) has also allowed our country to recover faster than if we were isolated.
People in countries where hospitals would charge them a diesel generator fee in case of an outage, should probably refrain from laughing at our national infrastructure in the worst and very exceptional day we've had in decades.
You shouldn't take MikePT as a source. I thought you would have learned that by now.
Spain, Portugal and some parts of southern France (which, all together, is pretty much the same size area as Texas) were affected, but most of them have already regained power.
It's not a competition but if memory serves me correctly, Texas went through much worse and it took for days. According to Wikipedia "At least 246 people were killed directly or indirectly, with some estimates as high as 702 killed as a result of the crisis". Nothing like that happened in Spain and Portugal yesterday. They handled this like pros compared to the Texans.
140km from Lisbon more or less.
I have no UPS at all. Outages are very very rare.
Happened with last storms but to certain areas of the city etc.
We have electricity since 18:00 aprox . Mediterranean cost of Spain . I have had some internet during 45 minutes via WiFi unstable but better than nothing. No phone coverage at all . Since 3:15am aprox se have some some phone coverage and internet via WiFi . seems stable for the moment. Hopefully everything would be all right soon.
I corrected it once I learned the proper scale of the outage. I had posted it according to a well known website but yeah, fake news. Oh well.
I'm curious to see what results the investigations will yield. I guess that... Shit happens!
Investigation will never tell exact reason for outage. It is sabotage, clear as a day, but they will cover this.
My guess is a cascading failure. Rooftop solar - by design - will shut off if grid frequency goes out of spec. Grid interconnectors with other countries will be shut down by the other side for the same reason.
If Spain lost one of their larger generators suddenly, both of the above could happen quickly.
Information provided to me from a well positioned insider source about the cause:
"This type of generation is growing rapidly, but it's very unstable—you can't predict the output"
I don't get this, it is so predictable that the expected kwh price is available one day in advance on an hourly basis. Also there are graphs available of expected solar production for the next day. (or even week)
https://www.elia.be/en/grid-data/generation-data/solar-pv-power-generation-data
Production figures are estimations. Pricing calculation is complex and considers all the sources in the energy pool.
I have now seen further evidence which I can not share, but confirms the first things to trip in the grid were frequency protections in multiple stations. Source of those frequency imbalances is a different matter.
The power went out again in some areas around here in the evening, and the internet was unusable. By morning, the power seemed to be mostly restored, and the internet is now stable (at least on the Vodafone network).
Look on the elia website, they give you a graph of the forecasted solar production and they overlay the real observed production. The diffrence is never significant.
Pricing is compelx but I can assure you that here in Belgium, the expected kwh price on the electricity market is known and traded a few days in advance.
Prices per MWh today PM : (https://my.elexys.be/MarketInformation/SpotBelpex.aspx )
29/04/2025 23:00:00 € 96,50
29/04/2025 22:00:00 € 104,79
29/04/2025 21:00:00 € 127,03
29/04/2025 20:00:00 € 119,62
29/04/2025 19:00:00 € 113,59
29/04/2025 18:00:00 € 96,90
29/04/2025 17:00:00 € 72,07
29/04/2025 16:00:00 € 11,00
29/04/2025 15:00:00 € -0,01
29/04/2025 14:00:00 € -1,66
29/04/2025 13:00:00 € -1,90
29/04/2025 12:00:00 € -0,76
The Spanish prime minister gave a statement about the outage: https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c9wpq8xrvd9t?post=asset:488a8b74-0e10-466b-b41e-9a066b636101#post
In Spain we also have accurate predictions and commitments from private operators. The official cause of the outage is now stated as two very close in time sudden loss events which were not predicted and caused unrecoverable instability.
in Cascais power was restored around 9:05PM, just as I exited Aldi with a few cans of tuna for dinner
could have been worse, I was worried that if it lasted till later into the night there could be some looting taking place
I'm glad you got your tuna. I'm eating almost every day tun
Have the emergency numbers failed? Any people harmed due to the power outage?
It is not believed to be a hacker attack and the background is likely to have been atmospheric anomalies, at least that's what the prime minister said yesterday
As my grandpa used to say, "Son, never let a good conspiracy theory go to waste."
Video - 38C3 - BlinkenCity: Radio-Controlling Street Lamps and Power Plants - YouTube
Home Page - BlinkenCity: Radio-Controlling Street Lamps and Power Plants - media.ccc.de
Gripping novel? - Blackout: The addictive international bestselling disaster thriller : Elsberg, Marc, Yarbrough, Marshall: Amazon.co.uk: Books
All these troubles are from trying to cut investments in real power production by integrating the grids and transferring power one from place to another when needed.
So you have the situation where consumers in Sweden and Norway have to face higher energy prices because Germany stopped buying gas from Russia, their renewable energy is quite useless in winter, and they have bid up the prices so other countries have to pay for more for another countries foolish political and woke economic agendas.
So does this mean the EU is over? I never liked the idea of you people coming together to deny the supremacy of the USA. Glad you came to your senses finally!
The hackers of CCC say you are very wrong.
Europe's electricity grids are very vulnerable to fluctuations in power output. An 18GW drop in power output will bring Germany and other countries interconnected to their grid to its knees.
The interconnections have been an excuse to reduce investments in raw power production in the various excuse in the hope of transferring excess power from one country to another and making profits from energy trading and speculation.
Check the video.
Which of the multiple statements in my message is very wrong?
It's not a big deal, it happen from time to time
A loose analogy would be Mike Tyson's comment - Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth
It is easy to say everything is nice and wonderful until the unexpected happens. About a month ago Heathrow airport was shutdown for hours because of a fire at a nearby power station, when it was supposed to have been capable of running inspite of that incident.
The hackers are saying that the grid is very vulnerable to sudden changes in power production, which is in the nature of the physics of the grid itself and not related to its vulnerability to a cyberattack.
You should check the part where he says an 18GW fall in power production of the power networks Germany is connected can bring the grid to its knees, and that is a small proportion of the power usage of that grid.
That's some defective electricity. Are you confused about what electricity is?
Centralization? Who brought that up? That's not how any robust power grids are designed. You will get a lecture on how mistaken your confidence in Texas power grid really is.
You seem to be mistaken that Texas has a well designed grid. They do not. Not only were they told this was going to happen a decade in advance, they wasted money to investigate the issue and again did nothing.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Texas_power_crisis
Feel free to lecture others after Texas makes the appropriate improvements. Until then, don't pretend Texas never fucked up royally less than 5 years ago.