Live data from Hacker News

Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

bbc.com

291–300 of 1001 posts

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#291
post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My supermarket, for example, only has electronic cash registers. That's insane to me, in the EU anyway it's not permitted to only accept electronic payments.. > Retailers cannot refuse cash payments unless both parties have agreed to use a different means of payment. Displaying a label or posters indicating that the retailer refuses payments in cash, or payments made in certain banknote denominations, is not enough…

They have to accept cash in the US as well. The post you're replying to is just saying that they can't ring anything up or accept any payment without power.

Ah okay, that wasn't clear to me, I imagined only being able to use electronic payment types.

But in this case, an emergency, I would assume someone would still know how to take a manual payment receipt!

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#292
post #59

Apparently a local grid overload near France and a cascading failure down the Spanish network, but radio and newspapers don’t agree on root cause. Of course there is a lot of noise. For instance, one reporter asked one of the government flunkies whether it could be a cyberattack and they turned his noncommittal “maybe, we don’t know” into “government says cyberattack may be ongoing”. Be careful of idiot reporters out…

I was going to say something similar. I live in Portugal and I've heard a lot of panic/fear mongering, mainly from the techies in the co-working space I was working on and expats. (apologies for singling out these specific groups of people - my point is that it might be worth to put down news sources like xitter, and read AP/translated local Portuguese news)

"xitter" in Portugese would be pronounced as "shee-tehr", right?

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#293
post #18

Parts of France are also affected according to Sky: https://news.sky.com/story/large-parts-of-spain-and-portugal...

France and Italy. Aliens? Russia? EMP?

Nobody fed the electricity beetles and they are on strike now.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#294
post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The gas station I worked at used a paper bag when offline. Good, not great.

How did the pumps work when there was no power?

No power is different than no internet, so that was different. We were a 24/7 store (7-Eleven) and sometimes we would close if it was a prolonged power outage. No one has 100% uptime, not even 24 hour gas stations.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#295
post #111
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

-> Power outage -> Wild guess that Russia has been doing it, 0 proof or even hint -> "This is a war of agression, we should respond" Are you suggesting to attack Russia, based on absolute thin air?

[flagged]

Amazing! We need more volunteers on the frontline: https://www.volunteeringukraine.com/en/volunteering-opportun...

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#297
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like an incredibly expensive solution to a problem that could be tackled more efficiently at a larger scale.

Didn't we used to pump steam around for heating and now homes have individual furnaces? If the cost for this were about the cost of a furnace I don't see why this wouldn't be viable. I bought a generator for just this situation.

That's a great example of why this is a bad idea. District heating is a lot more efficient than using individual heat sources. Especially so when the heat being used is heat that would otherwise go to waste (e.g. waste heat from industrial processes).

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#298

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.

> My supermarket, for example, only has electronic cash registers. That's insane to me, in the EU anyway it's not permitted to only accept electronic payments.. > Retailers cannot refuse cash payments unless both parties have agreed to use a different means of payment. Displaying a label or posters indicating that the retailer refuses payments in cash, or payments made in certain banknote denominations, is not enough…

[deleted]

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#299
post #233
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.

> whistleblowers Using the term whistleblower in this manner is inappropriate; actual whistleblowers are individuals who bring to light illicit acts by organizations or governments at great personal risk.

Prophets

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#300
post #261

You can see the crash on the ENTSO-E live data: https://transparency.entsoe.eu/generation/r2/actualGeneratio... Three quarter of the production disconnects from the grid between 12:30 and 13:00, with only a bit of solar and onshore wind sticking around.

Spain loses around 15GW of demand at the same time: https://transparency.entsoe.eu/load-domain/r2/totalLoadR2/sh...

I don't think we're able to tell from the data if one is the cause of the other, are we? Since if production was lost, load would have to be shedded to balance the grid, and if load was lost (e.g. due to a transmission failure), production would have to be disconnected to balance the grid.

Post reply on HN