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Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

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Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#191
post #185
post #167

> "I currently don't have any internet service and just €15 in my wallet - I can't withdraw any money from the ATM," she added. from: https://news.sky.com/story/large-parts-of-spain-and-portugal... This is literally the whistleblowers about cashless society have been warning everyone about for well over a decade now.

And this is a trial for how a Carrington event will look like.

You mean the part that anything above 130nm technology would be fried?

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#192
post #167

> "I currently don't have any internet service and just €15 in my wallet - I can't withdraw any money from the ATM," she added. from: https://news.sky.com/story/large-parts-of-spain-and-portugal... This is literally the whistleblowers about cashless society have been warning everyone about for well over a decade now.

I wonder if stores would be able to sell anything without power. My supermarket, for example, only has electronic cash registers. And no price tags.

It's not just stores, pretty much our entire socity runs on cheap power, without it the whole thing falls apart.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#193
post #187
post #167

> "I currently don't have any internet service and just €15 in my wallet - I can't withdraw any money from the ATM," she added. from: https://news.sky.com/story/large-parts-of-spain-and-portugal... This is literally the whistleblowers about cashless society have been warning everyone about for well over a decade now.

If anything, it shows how little use there is for physical cash , only as emergency backup

"emergency backup" is a very strong, rational use, and should never be neglected.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#194
post #189
post #167

> "I currently don't have any internet service and just €15 in my wallet - I can't withdraw any money from the ATM," she added. from: https://news.sky.com/story/large-parts-of-spain-and-portugal... This is literally the whistleblowers about cashless society have been warning everyone about for well over a decade now.

Cash is not really relevant to this particular discussion. When the power is out one cannot pay with cash either - because the cash register is offline.

A cash register is not required to make cash transactions

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#195
post #191
post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this is a trial for how a Carrington event will look like.

You mean the part that anything above 130nm technology would be fried?

Yes. For the moment I just want to see for how long the AWS Spain Region will stay up...

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#196
post #189
post #167

> "I currently don't have any internet service and just €15 in my wallet - I can't withdraw any money from the ATM," she added. from: https://news.sky.com/story/large-parts-of-spain-and-portugal... This is literally the whistleblowers about cashless society have been warning everyone about for well over a decade now.

Cash is not really relevant to this particular discussion. When the power is out one cannot pay with cash either - because the cash register is offline.

Let me introduce you to the physical receipt block which is made of paper and can be filled up with a pen, and what is still often used in, for example, Christmas markets.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment is Dunning-Kruger effect in action… Believe it or not, but maintaining an electricity grid is a massive undertaking, and the people in charge of it knows the topic much better than you do. The problem isn't a market problem, it's a physics problem: having a synchronized grid of AC current with many producers over a wide area is a real challenge, even when the underlying issue is resolved it takes a lot o…

Having such interdependent grids seems like a market or political problem not a physics problem to me.

Interdependent grids are usually good: they allow you to average out the effect of a single power station failure over a much larger area, and to amortize prices from a wider area of suppliers.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#199
Older readers may remeber the Northeastern blackout of 2003 in the US and Canada that was caused by cascading overloading, I believe originally triggered by high loads due to hot weather and poor vegetation maintenance under lines.

I was an an adjacent area at the time and iirc we were saved by our nuclear operator releasing some insane amount of steam to bring the supply down and avoid more overloading.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#200
post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if stores would be able to sell anything without power. My supermarket, for example, only has electronic cash registers. And no price tags.

Many situations call for pen-and-paper backups. Giving out receipts the old way should, in theory, be a possibility, then backfill the computer system later.

Sure, but if we are talking about backup in outages you can also get credit card payments when power is down using something like a Stripe Terminal.

This is actually exactly the case that I had in one trip to Andorra: the power was down for 2 hours while we were choosing equipament for skiing. The shop had no issues getting our orders done though, because they just manually filled the orders with pen-and-paper and did the payment with a credit card terminal connected to a smartphone.

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