701–710 of 1001 posts
What caused it? The Portuguese prime minister, Luís Montenegro, said that the issue originated in Spain. Portugal’s REN said a “rare atmospheric phenomenon” had caused a severe imbalance in temperatures that led to the widespread shutdowns. 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 ‘induce…
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I can appreciate the ability to revert to hand cranking an air compressor, yet I can't help but feel that the 99.99% of events, you'd be better served with keeping a two stroke gas engine ready to go. Air compressors tend to have parts just as or more vulnerable to environmental factors, and you get a lot more power for less elbow grease out of a two stroke.
As an ex small engine mechanic, I'd advise against using a 2 stroke for something like that. A 4 stroke would be a better bet. Better yet would be a natural gas/propane 4 stroke, since gasoline goes stale and plugs carburetors. Small diesels could be an option but they're harder to pull start for a given size.
I once needed to jump-start a small marine diesel, many miles from land...
There was a small lever that cuts compression. You have to get it spinning really fast before restoring compression! It's definitely a lot of work!
EDIT - Here is a cheap modern small marine diesel [1]. The operation manual suggests that you don't have to do anything to get it spinning quickly, you just have to crank it 10 times, put away the crank handle, and then flip the compression switch. That's progress!
[1] https://www.yanmar.com/marine/product/engines/1gm10-marine-d...
Europe still has many megawatts of solar with inverters that disconnect when detecting any grid disruption. This is the absolute worst thing to do when there is a shortage of power - you immediately make the shortage worse and more grid disconnects. The real fix is a grid with second by second pricing based on system frequency, and every individual user allowed to set a daily 'spend cap' of euros/dollars, letting the…
Texas had a pretty free market, with many users on a floating price, didn't work that well either a few years ago when their grid went dawn.
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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 batt…
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You can have physical bitcoins - devices that hold a private key in a tamper free way. The private key holds a fixed amount of BTC
Without power or an internet connection you can't validate that the btc hash is unspent, avoid double spends, or validate that your taking ownership of it made it to the blockchain and was confirmed for a few blocks. Sure you can transfer the private key from one device to another, but (a) you can't know the other person didn't retain a copy of it and (b) you would be limited to spending the exact amount you have in…
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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?
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…
Would this be relevant here? Spain is connected to the French grid, and probably also Morocco. The entire EU runs on one synchronised grid so from that perspective a single 'province' went offline, not the grid.
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…
To remember: in the early hours of this morning there was a huge purchase/transfer of monero that increased the price +30% (highly unusual) and a few hours later before lunch time we see Iberia disconnected from the grid. Monero is the favorite payment coin when ordering real cyber attacks.
Related talk in Berlin 5 months ago detailing how to shutdown energy grids using only radio waves: https://media.ccc.de/v/38c3-blinkencity-radio-controlling-st...
No conspiracy or whatever, just thinking about the complex system which is also vulnerable for some parts.