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Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

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Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#471

Post by Vox_Leone »

mike_hearn wrote: post #319

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…

The fewer resources we dedicate to grid resilience and modernization, the harder black starts become. And as grids get more complex and interdependent, recovering from total failure becomes exponentially harder.

A rare but sobering opportunity to reflect on something we usually take for granted: electricity.

We live in societies where everything depends on the grid — from logistics and healthcare to communications and financial systems. And yet, public awareness of the infrastructure behind it is shockingly low. We tend to notice the power grid only when it breaks.

We’ve neglected it for decades. In many regions, burying power lines is dismissed as “too expensive.” But compare that cost to the consequences of grid collapse in extreme weather, cyberattacks, or even solar storms — the stakes are existential. High-impact, low-frequency events are easy to ignore until they’re not.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#472

Post by dv_dt »

mike_hearn wrote: post #319

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…

I would think that renewable infrastructure could be the fix, at least if you start installing larger battery capacity to meet renewable store and usage shifts, the grid essentially is installing the resources that can also be used to respond to & contain sudden source losses and prevent cascades.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#473

Post by moooo99 »

nicoburns wrote: post #216
moooo99 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People seem to love those expensive solutions though. I know so many people who invested in overly expensive battery storage systems for their solar. Power in Germany is expensive, but even with that expensive power many of those battery systems will never hit a positive ROI. But they’re still happy for the feeling of being „independent“. I’ll turn 26 in a few months. The first time I experienced a power outage in my…

It's likely that battery backup solutions won't be expensive for long. Battery prices have been falling exponentially similar to Solar, and there is no reason to think it will slow down anytime soon (there is still room for improvement just from economies of scale). I predict that home batteries will become a "no brainer" from a financial perspective (for anyone who has the upfront capital to purchase them) within th…

I haven't seen battery price quotes for retail customers for a while now, everybody I know who wants one has one. But not too long ago a battery bank including installation was easily in the range of 800 to 1000 EUR/kWh of storage.

Battery storage may become a bit of a no brainer from a purchasing price point of view, but I don't think it will actually be more beneficial for people, especially if BEV adaption continues at a similar rate and bi-directional charing becomes widespread

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#474

Post by bobthepanda »

hersko wrote: post #367
red_admiral wrote: post #253

I'm going with: never attribute to malice what can be explained by ... an incredibly complex system that can fall over even if no-one's being stupid. I would want very strong evidence before I believe this is an attack. There is precedent for major power outages, a huge majority of which are not malicious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_major_power_outages I remember the day when the Swiss railway power networ…

I seem to recall a tree falling in Ohio knocked out the power to NYC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003

There was also a race condition in some management software that hadn’t tripped in over thirty years of usage.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#475

Post by oilman »

mike_hearn wrote: post #319

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…

In another life I worked as an engineer commissioning oil rigs and I’ve seen how tricky even a small-scale black start can be. On a rig, we simulate total power loss and have to hand-crank a tiny air compressor just to start a small emergency generator, which then powers the compressors needed to fire up the big ~7MW main generators. It's a delicate chain reaction — and that's just for one isolated platform.

A full grid black start is orders of magnitude more complex. You’re not just reviving one machine — you’re trying to bring back entire islands of infrastructure, synchronize them perfectly, and pray nothing trips out along the way. Watching a rig wake up is impressive. Restarting a whole country’s grid is heroic.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#476

Post by hirako2000 »

Ayesh wrote: post #434
hersko wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I seem to recall a tree falling in Ohio knocked out the power to NYC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003

A monkey took out the whole grid in Sri Lanka this year https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/13/asia/sri-lanka-power-outa...

If that's all it took to turn Srilanka off.Even if that country lags behind western Europe, what would it take for a few humans who intentionally cut off power.

Trying to stay on the facts, this incident is likely accidental but some people even the very workers at energy companies could send a message for, I don't know. A pay raise?

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#477

Post by mardifoufs »

somelamer567 wrote: post #452
aubanel wrote: 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?

> thin air Except for the mountain of evil, violent, underhanded and illegal stuff Russia keeps getting caught doing, and has so far escaped scot-free due to Western cowardice?

No, they were suggesting attacking it based on speculation about this specific event, so yes out of thin air.

I agree that Russia is evil, but saying that it got away with it Scot free is just insane. In fact it even plays into Russian propaganda, to say that nothing really harmed them even after the past 3 years of international sanctions and consequences.

And western cowardice? Apart from nuclear war (which I'm glad people are being "cowardly" about), what do you suggest? It's also funny when war mongers online talk about cowardice. Why dont you go volunteer in Ukraine if you're such a non coward?

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#480

Post by oliwarner »

chippiewill wrote: post #442
mike_hearn wrote: post #319

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…

The frequency aspect of a black start is presumably a bit easier in Europe because there's an interconnected synchronous grid so they can bootstrap it from France essentially. It's far more problematic for the UK because all the interconnects are DC.

Does the source of "truth" matter? You still have to turn everything off, bring your generators up, each in sync and then allow load back on slowly.

The UK keeping its own time just makes things easier for it IMO.

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