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Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

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Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#641

Post by throwup238 »

zymhan wrote: post #559
gwbas1c wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Presumably not > A black start is the process of restoring an electric power station, a part of an electric grid or an industrial plant, to operation without relying on the external electric power transmission network to recover from a total or partial shutdown.[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_start

The key part of the phrase is actually "electric power station, a part of an electric grid or an industrial plant." Note how the definition doesn't include an entire grid.

Only the first power plant in a black-start (like a hydroelectric dam or gas plant started by a backup generator) is truly "black started." The rest don't fit that definition because they depend on an external power source to spin up and synchronize frequency before burning fuel and supplying any energy to the grid. If they didn't, the second they'd turn on they'd experience catastrophic unscheduled disassembly of the (very big) turbines.

Only the first power plant can come online without the external transmission network.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#642

Post by d1sxeyes »

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?

The UK has pumped storage facilities that we can use to black start the national grid.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#643

Post by abdullahkhalids »

baq wrote: post #582
kennysmoothx wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They should allow you to build automatic rate-of-change-of-power-generation breakers...

Factorio has logic circuits which allow you to do this.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#645

Post by SoftTalker »

oilman wrote: post #475
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 g…

Hand crank? I'd think something like an oil rig would have a propane or gasoline or diesel generator with an electric start and batteries.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#646

Post by Kkoala »

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…

That sounds like the sensible reaction, at the time at least.

It's interesting to think about and realize how much things have changed now though, and how reliant people are on everything, and especially their tiktoks etc. working all the time.

Some of the panic is likely related to the war in Europe too, and especially the general talk about war

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#647

Post by ithkuil »

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?

I don't know but I find it very practical to not carry piles of cash in my pocket and home and know that we're less likely to get robbed just because of the cash we have.

I don't know how true the relationship between the cashless lifestyle and safety actually is, but it works and I feel ok; I'm not sure that the prospect of a few hours of national blackout once in 20 years will make me change my mind significantly.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#648

Post by detaro »

SoftTalker wrote: post #645
oilman wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 g…

Hand crank? I'd think something like an oil rig would have a propane or gasoline or diesel generator with an electric start and batteries.

and if the entire thing depends on it, you'll give that generator a handcrank as a backup too instead of assuming the batteries ever dying or getting flooded or whatever is entirely impossible.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#649

Post by beefnugs »

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…

And if you are a mere mortal in this world, play Factorio : Space age expansion on the planet Aquilo. To learn the precious importance of reliable multi stage power bootstrapping

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#650

Post by perihelions »

- "[Portugese electric network Redes Energéticas Nacionais (REN)] said: “Due to extreme temperature variations in the interior of Spain, there were anomalous oscillations in the very high voltage lines (400 kV), a phenomenon known as ‘induced atmospheric vibration’. These oscillations caused synchronisation failures between the electrical systems, leading to successive disturbances across the interconnected European network.”"

- "The risks posed to electrical systems by big variations in atmospheric temperatures are well known in the industry, even if it is rare for problems to manifest on this scale."

- "“Due to the variation of the temperature, the parameters of the conductor change slightly,” said Taco Engelaar, managing director at Neara, a software provider to energy utilities. “It creates an imbalance in the frequency.”"

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/apr/28/spain-and-p... ("Spain and Portugal power outage: what caused it, and was there a cyber-attack?")

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