Genuine question: how is it that Ukraine’s electricity grid still works to any degree despite being bombed for years and no doubt intentionally sabotaged / cyber attacked. But a whole country’s grid can go down like this in an instant?
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Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal
861–870 of 1001 posts
Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal
#862Living in Maine makes you prepared for this type of stuff.
It happens every winter. When I was a kid, we once went 2 weeks without electricity.
Wood stove becomes an obvious necessity. Not just for staying warm. For cooking.
Chickens in the backyard too.
Those moments show you that being self-sufficient is an extremely important skill, and while we're not totally self sufficient in those moments, we get pretty darn close.
Really makes you appreciate the pre-electric era.
People cut down forests with axes. Pulled the stumps out with oxen. Cut the lumber with hand saws. Chiseled foundations with pickaxes. Etc, etc.
With the constant threat of Nuclear War, there's a sword of Damocles hanging over our heads that we will return to this era.
That makes it all the more important to learn these skills.
Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal
#863Earlier quoted context omitted.
> have to hand-crank a tiny air compressor just to start a small emergency generator Similarly, the US Navy maintains banks of pressurized air flasks to air-start emergency diesels. Total Capacity being some multiple of the required single-start capacity
I understand some old radial airplane engines were started with what were essentially shotgun cartridges
I lived for a while on a sailboat equipped with an ancient Saab tractor engine (8 whole horsepower!). Was designed for cartridge starts in cold weather, though someone had fitted an electric starter by the time I saw it
Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal
#864We had power on the canary islands (belong to spain, but located in the atlantic ocean ~80km west of Africa) since it is an independent grid. But couple of hours into the blackout (starting 5-6pm local time), internet issues occured - with confirmed multiple landline providers going offline (Digi, Movistar) while others seems to continue to work (Vodafone). Also some cellular 5G were affected, otheres continued. Interested to see the postmorten - I suspect after 8-10h the data center's diesel generators on the peninsula that route the traffic ran empty. Internet operation resumed during the night (for me around 1am).
Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal
#865Earlier 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…
I remember talking to my ex's dad about his job, which involved planning refuels of a large nuclear-powered generation station in the Lower Midwest. The words "it's a miracle it works at all" routinely popped up in those conversations, which is... something you don't want to hear about any sort of power generation - especially not nuclear - but it's true. It's a system basically built to produce "common accidents". I…
My definition of technology is, “something built by humans that barely works”
Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal
#866Practical Engineer YT religious watcher here.
Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal
#867Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well if the situation happens that people can't buy food, things will easily become nasty quickly. People will break open stores and use violence to get what they need. So cash money won't really help a lot in a serious situation.
Shop owners would just take notes on who buy what and let people go with the items. Looting only ever happens when areas hve started being evacuated and most shop owners + law enforcement are elsewhere.
And then take it up the butt from the taxman once he finds out.
Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal
#868Genuine question: how is it that Ukraine’s electricity grid still works to any degree despite being bombed for years and no doubt intentionally sabotaged / cyber attacked. But a whole country’s grid can go down like this in an instant?
Maybe because it has not been privatized, yet?
Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal
#869Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Just in time" is a phrase I hate with vehement passion. You aren't optimizing the system, you're reducing safety marigns - and consequences are usually similar to Challanger. This is a solution that teenager put in management position would think of(along with hire more people as solution to inefficient processes), not a paid professional. Systems like electric grid, internal water management (anti-flood) shouldn't…
> Systems like electric grid, internal water management (anti-flood) shouldn't be lean, they should be antifragile. How do you make those systems antifragile rather than simply highly resilient?
Things which can’t self improve can’t be antifragile by definition. NNT alludes to this multiple times - systems together with processes and people running them can be antifragile, but just things cannot.
I postulate the grid as a whole is antifragile, but not enough for the renewable era. We still don’t know what was the root cause of the Spanish blackout almost 24h after it happened.
Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal
#870Genuine question: how is it that Ukraine’s electricity grid still works to any degree despite being bombed for years and no doubt intentionally sabotaged / cyber attacked. But a whole country’s grid can go down like this in an instant?
The answer is simple: EU and USA taxpayers billions pumped into Ukraine to buy hundreds of thousands of mobile diesel powered generators and fuel for them, and spare parts and replacement blocks for everything that’s been destroyed.
On top of that, Ukraine inherited a lot of nuclear power plants, and despite losing the largest one in Zaporozhie region, still operates all the other as Russia doesn’t attack them in any serious way.
No miracles, just pumping money non stop.