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Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

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Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#881

Post by ricardobayes »

bill3478 wrote: post #802
citrin_ru wrote: post #669

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many people don't even have cash anymore, either in their wallet or at home. Even if you have cash many shops would not sell anything in case of a mass outage because registers are just clients which depend on a cloud to register a transaction. Not reliable but cheap when it works.

Many supermarket chains (in the West at least) have satellite links at their major locations because they can't afford to close a store just because the local ISP had an issue. The real question is how long can some of the smaller banks' datacenters stay up.

That's true, I went shopping cca. 4-5 hours after the blackout started and had no issues, even card transactions worked. Whoever designed the retailer, they clearly had this scenario in mind. Even the "self-service" computer kiosks all worked.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#882

Post by ricardobayes »

miki123211 wrote: post #818
citrin_ru wrote: post #669

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many people don't even have cash anymore, either in their wallet or at home. Even if you have cash many shops would not sell anything in case of a mass outage because registers are just clients which depend on a cloud to register a transaction. Not reliable but cheap when it works.

And in many places in Europe, registers are literally required by the government to be this way, for VAT fraud avoidance reasons.

It's probably just Hungary though, I don't know of any other country mandating an always-online cash register.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#883

Post by ricardobayes »

holoduke wrote: post #692
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…

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.

The "civism" was well noted in the Spanish case, as far as I know, the whole country passed this incident without a single case of security issue. During the whole thing, people were extremely kind and polite. People sitting in dark bars was kind of "funny" how people clinging to their normal lives even in emergencies.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#884

Post by hsuduebc2 »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #724
lenerdenator wrote: post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If people knew how crappy, insecure, and unreliable nuclear computer systems were, there'd be a lot more existential dread about cyber security

I guess the biggest security advantage of any of these old critical systems is fact that they are not connected to the internet. At least I hope they are not.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#885

Post by fifteen1506 »

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…

Black Start achieved! Not at 100% yet. Apparently we have [at least] 2 blackstart stations in Portugal, both were used.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#886

Post by ricardobayes »

petertodd wrote: post #665
genewitch wrote: post #630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

> And who's fault is that? Why did europe allow this? In Spain it's now illegal to pay with cash for transactions over 1000EUR. Absurd. In Norway they recently made it mandatory in most circumstances to accept cash for transactions up to 20,000kroner (~1700EUR): https://www.norges-bank.no/en/topics/notes-and-coins/the-rig...

The 1000EUR limit doesn't apply between private individuals; for businesses, you will find many other European countries also don't take large cash payments, for security or convenience reasons. E.g. you can't buy a car from a dealership for cash in "cash is king" Germany either. They expect a wire in almost all cases.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#887

Post by throwaway2037 »

bradgessler wrote: post #865
lenerdenator wrote: post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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”

Modern aircraft? Those are excellent and work well. I am thinking of a B787 and A350. More: How about medical implants, like a heart pacemaker?

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#888

Post by torcete »

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

I was able to buy some groceries and pay with card. The tills had a battery backup and the network infrastructure that supports card payments was apparently working.

That said, lots of people hit the cafés and had to resource to cash payments. There was also lots of people buying bottled water at the shops.

So basically, you could divide people in two groups. Those that took it like an extra Sunday, and those that took it like the beginning of a war or something :-D

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#889

Post by moffkalast »

makeitdouble wrote: post #444
reitoei wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a.k.a. Hanlon's Razor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor

As far as we know stupidity isn't a primary cause, and local authorities are also probably competent at scale.

On the other hand this is Spain we're talking about, the expectations of people giving a fuck about anything are slightly lower than average.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#890

Post by moffkalast »

tux3 wrote: post #261

You can see the crash on the ENTSO-E live data: https://transparency.entsoe.eu/generation/r2/actualGeneratio... Three quarter of the production disconnects from the grid between 12:30 and 13:00, with only a bit of solar and onshore wind sticking around.

Wow that's interesting, solar was absolutely peak at the time. Maybe related to poor frequency leading from solar powerplants coupled with some other spike that drew it out of sync?
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