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Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

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Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#631

Post by shagie »

kennysmoothx wrote: post #566
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…

This is literally like Factorio. If your Factory uses too much power, theres not enough energy to run the power plants generation, which decreases your power production. Death spiraling until theres no power. You have to disconnect the factory, and independently power your power plants back up until you have enough energy production to connect your factory up again.

Capacitor circuit network warning for alarm for "main grid is drawing on this bank - bad things may happen if capacity is not increased."

Another "trick" is those burner inserters are black start capable. They can pick up fuel and feed themselves to keep running without an electrical network.

I also tend to put Schmitt triggers in low priority areas. They've got a battery on the main grid next to them and if the battery drops below 50% power they remain off until it goes back above 75% power.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#632

Post by htrp »

ajmurmann wrote: post #485
padjo wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was recently told by an electrical engineering lecturer that the black start plan here in Ireland is to use the DC interconnectors with the UK to provide startup power to a synchronous generator.

Did he mention the UK's plan in case they have a full blackout?

Connect with Ireland

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#633

Post by genewitch »

martinald wrote: post #385
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…

Interestingly it seems that the black start drill is considering a smaller zone of impact than what has happened here. Also I suspect there is far more renewables on the grid now than in 2016. This is potentially the first real black start of a grid with high renewable (solar/wind) penetration that I am aware of. Black starts with grids like this I imagine are much more technically challenging because you have genera…

Grid tied solar won't put power into the grid when the grid is down. It's the one reason I didn't grid tie.

Non tied solar won't affect the grid at all. So this is a non-issue.

Grid tie requires the grid to tie to, otherwise it can't synchronize. So it stays disconnected.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#634

Post by mike_hearn »

gwbas1c wrote: post #532
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…

Spain is part of the largest interconnected grid in the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_Europe_Synchronous... Does this really qualify as "black start" when they can rely on the bigger EU grid?

Spain is but Portugal is only connected to Spain and they are currently doing a full black start.

For Spain the external power and synchronization can come from France rather than generators which will help, but the process and complexities are still mostly the same. Call it a dark start, perhaps.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#635

Post by htrp »

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...

> The animal had come into contact with the transformer at the station, disrupting supply to the entire country. There were no immediate details on whether the monkey survived the incident.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#636

Post by olyjohn »

genewitch wrote: post #630
the_duke wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to highlight this: the last significant power outage in Western/middle Europe was 2003. [1] That's 20 years without any significant problems in the grid, apart from small localized outages. It's not hard to start taking things for granted if it works perfectly for 20 years. Many people don't even have cash anymore, either in their wallet or at home. In case of a longer power outage a significant part of the popu…

> a significant part of the population might not even be able to buy food for days. And who's fault is that? Why did europe allow this? Why will the US allow this, eventually?

Why will the US allow this? Because there's too much money to be made by middle men who want their cut of the transactions.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#637

Post by genewitch »

celticninja wrote: post #449
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…

cash is all well and good but if the tills dont work most stores wont be able to serve you. corner shops, vape shops and barbers will be ok though

Stores with tills and freezers etc will have power for the tills but the backing network for payments probably won't be up. That's the concern with being cashless. They can accept cashxl, but no one has any.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#638

Post by martinald »

genewitch wrote: post #633
martinald wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly it seems that the black start drill is considering a smaller zone of impact than what has happened here. Also I suspect there is far more renewables on the grid now than in 2016. This is potentially the first real black start of a grid with high renewable (solar/wind) penetration that I am aware of. Black starts with grids like this I imagine are much more technically challenging because you have genera…

Grid tied solar won't put power into the grid when the grid is down. It's the one reason I didn't grid tie. Non tied solar won't affect the grid at all. So this is a non-issue. Grid tie requires the grid to tie to, otherwise it can't synchronize. So it stays disconnected.

Youre missing my point. I know that; I mean if you are restarting the grid and say you have a segment you think has 5MW of load that will come online, but you connect it and a minute or two later suddenly 2MW of grid tied solar detects the grid and starts exporting and you now have 3MW of load it is going to make it much more tricky to balance the restart. I'm not sure how much of a problem this is in reality but it seems to me restarting a grid is made much more tricky when you have millions of generation assets with no control over.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#639

Post by genewitch »

htrp wrote: post #635
Ayesh wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> The animal had come into contact with the transformer at the station, disrupting supply to the entire country. There were no immediate details on whether the monkey survived the incident.

I'm sure the constituent atoms of the monkey survived.

I saw a video the other day of some human running and jumping on a transformer after hopping a fence, dancing on the transformer in a distribution site.

It ended as you'd expect, a bright light, a lot of curse words from the camera operator who was probably blinded temporarily.

Electricity does not care.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#640

Post by toast0 »

MisterTea wrote: post #618
yannvon wrote: post #577

I experienced it first hand in Madrid. This was much scarier than I would have imagined. News travelled extremely slow: phone coverage was just barely enough to receive a couple text messages every 15 minutes or so. News spread on the street, I even saw a group of 20 people hunched around someone owning a hand-held radio in the streets. Just before power was restored, things started to get worse, as the phone coverag…

When the northeast blackout hit in 2003 in NYC I dont remember any panic. We still had house phones and they still worked in the blackout thanks to telcos being legally obligated to give a shit about reliability. I stopped by a friends house and we then went on a walk. Some stores were open and cash was accepted. We hung out later that night and had a few beers. The sky was amazing as there was next to no light pollu…

> thanks to telcos being legally obligated to give a shit about reliability.

Yeah, they don't need to do that anymore. Around me, enough towers have battery backups that I can count on 2 hours of coverage when utility power goes out (if it goes out late at night or early morning, there's usually coverage until 6-7 am when people start waking up and use up the rest of the power). I don't have a real landline, but the telco DSL would drop instantly with utility power so I don't have big hopes and I wasn't willing to pay $60/month to find out.

Around when I moved, stores would pull out the credit card imprint machines, but those don't work anymore because cards are flat. Cash might work, and I've got some, but I don't think many people in my community do; people don't have cash for the snack shack we run at my kid's sports, so I doubt they have it for restaurants and stores either. And we get frequent 2-4 hour power outages, at least one, usually two or three per year; and ~ 24 hour outages every few years. The snack shack runs during summer where electricity is most reliable, but I doubt people stock up on cash in the fall and use it all up before spring/summer; they probably just don't have any.

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