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Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

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Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#311

Post by bilekas »

daveoc64 wrote: post #285
bilekas wrote: post #258

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…

>That's insane to me, in the EU anyway it's not permitted to only accept electronic payments.. That's not the case. There are individual laws in each country that govern this. https://fullfact.org/online/UK-not-only-europe-country-legal...

I guess I was taking the recommendation as a regulation, my mistake.

Either way, there should be no reason grocery stores don't accept cash imo.

https://www.ecb.europa.eu/euro/cash_strategy/faqs/html/index...

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#312

Post by ptsneves »

pmlnr wrote: post #186
leereeves wrote: post #181

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.

In Lisbon's airport they are temporarily back to just stamping the passports without the biometric stuff. There are already reports that the checks are being lax.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#315

Post by throw9393r8r9rj »

skc wrote: post #219
pmlnr wrote: 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.

Another reason why itcoin is a pipedream too, particularly for third world countries

[flagged]

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#316

Post by stavros »

mango7283 wrote: post #106
stavros wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do people forget how to drive if there are no lights? I can't imagine many people would think "well, there are no lights, which means GREEEEEEEN!". Over here, a traffic light that doesn't work means it's now a stop sign.

That's still a recipe for massive gridlock as treating most traffic junctions as stop signs doesn't scale unless there are traffic cops to manually direct traffic

It won't be fast, but it shouldn't really be dangerous.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#318

Post by xlii »

pmlnr wrote: post #196
lpapez wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Depending on the country it’s not that easy. Maybe something changed in the meantime but where I am those blocks are prefilled-numbered and stock needs to be controlled.

It’s not like you can (could?) keep a block „just in case” and thus many shopkeepers wouldn’t even bother in case of outages.

Depending where you live a good old trust can be a currency. Humans are great when it comes to adaptation, I bet I could just write on paper name, CC number and leave it on a paper for shopkeeper and everything would resolve just fine..

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#319

Post by mike_hearn »

This sounds big enough to require a black start. Unfortunately, those are slow and difficult.

If an entire nation trips offline then every generator station disconnects itself from the grid and the grid itself snaps apart into islands. To bring it back you have to disconnect consumer loads and then re-energize a small set of plants that have dedicated black start capability. Thermal plants require energy to start up and renewables require external sources of inertia for frequency stabilization, so this usually requires turning on a small diesel generator that creates enough power to bootstrap a bigger generator and so on up until there's enough electricity to start the plant itself. With that back online the power from it can be used to re-energize other plants that lack black start capability in a chain until you have a series of isolated islands. Those islands then have to be synchronized and reconnected, whilst simultaneously bringing load online in large blocks.

The whole thing is planned for, but you can't really rehearse for it. During a black start the grid is highly unstable. If something goes wrong then it can trip out again during the restart, sending you back to the beginning. It's especially likely if the original blackout caused undetected equipment damage, or if it was caused by such damage.

In the UK contingency planning assumes a black start could take up to 72 hours, although if things go well it would be faster. It's one reason it's a good idea to always have some cash at home.

Edit: There's a press release about a 2016 black start drill in Spain/Portugal here: https://www.ree.es/en/press-office/press-release/2016/11/spa...

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#320

Post by pjc50 »

leomca wrote: post #300
tux3 wrote: 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.

Report on a smaller event in the UK: https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/publications/investigation-9-august... (see linked pdf)

That started from a combination of a lightning strike and generator trip, but turned into a local cascade failure as lots of distributed generation noticed that the frequency was under 49Hz and disconnected itself. I suspect the Spanish situation will be similar - inability to properly contain a frequency excursion, resulting in widespread generator trips.

(I suspect this is going to restart a whole bunch of acrimony about existing pain points like grid maintenance, renewables, domestic solar, and so on, probably with the usual suspects popping up to blame renewables)

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