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Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

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Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#851

Post by nakeru »

sparky_ wrote: post #48
djuc wrote: post #23

i had an appointment in Barcelona, but can only guess it’s not safe on the roads

Traffic lights are out across Iberia apparently, better stay home.

I work in Barcelona and live in a town 20Km outside it. I drove back home just fine at around 16PM. Some traffic in the city, but manegable. My town has had electricity in homes since 15PM, some neighbourghs told me. At night I drove to my parent's (different town, 10km away) since I couldn't communicate with them and was worried. Their town was pitch black. People were driving mostly safe and slowly. Of course you get the random POS that doesn't care, but I didn't feel in danger at any moment. My parents were fine. I drove back home later and same story. I just woke up (it's 7AM here) and the Internet is back and I have a message from my parents, their electricity is back too. Overall, I didn't see any crazy behaviour.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#852

Post by _whiteCaps_ »

iancmceachern wrote: post #828
kryogen1c wrote: post #749

Earlier 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

Not just radials. The Napier Sabre H24 engine in Typhoons used cartridges as well.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#853

Post by hibikir »

alickz wrote: post #469
red_admiral wrote: post #253

I'm going with: never attribute to malice what can be explained by ... an incredibly complex system that can fall over even if no-one's being stupid. I would want very strong evidence before I believe this is an attack. There is precedent for major power outages, a huge majority of which are not malicious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_major_power_outages I remember the day when the Swiss railway power networ…

>an incredibly complex system that can fall over even if no-one's being stupid I only have a layman's understanding of power grids, but I thought they were incredibly hardened, with backups and contingencies in depth Are the grids at this scale really this brittle? Would there be a death toll from this? I also wouldn't blame malice without corroborating evidence

What Spain's PM is saying (and is being reported by Spanish newspapers), 15 gigawatts of energy production went down all in 5 seconds. Hardening to tolerate that much of a change, that fast is a more extreme event than a grid the size of Spain's preps for.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#854

Post by alexey-salmin »

pjc50 wrote: post #504
CGMthrowaway wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably didn't help that before the outage hit, Spain was running its grid with very little dispatchable spinning generation, and therefore not much inertia. Solar PV/thermal + wind: ~78% Nuclear: 11.5% Co-generation: 5% Gas-fired: ~3% (less than 1GW)

> Solar PV/thermal + wind: ~78% This is (a) incredibly impressive to achieve and (b) definitely the point at which the battery infrastructure needs to catch up in order to reduce the risk of such incidents.

> battery infrastructure needs to catch up

This non-existent technology will surely catch up very soon, I wonder what takes them so long.

The only battery available at this scale is hydro and it doesn't do very well in Spain because of droughts.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#855

Post by findingMeaning »

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…

I come from a world where I faced power outage for 17 hours for weeks. Each day there would be power at random time of the day. Life is just bleak. And when I see these kind of posts, I sympathize with them. You can't do anything in that situation. Modern world itself is so complex, you are left to thoughts. If this continues for a month, most people will go insanse especially those who rely on technology to stay sane.

I hope this comes back ASAP.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#856

Post by prmoustache »

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.

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.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#857

Post by Helmut10001 »

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.

Interesting - when you realize that nuclear energy is not as reliable as solar (nuclear disappears completely around 1 pm, while solar keeps a stable input share).

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#858

Post by prmoustache »

rini17 wrote: post #664
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…

There are now ubiquitous wireless POS terminals for card payments that can be recharged from emergency sources of electricity(like cars). As long as the mobile internet works it's possible. Of course this only little alleviates the disruption.

Surely there are still card POS systems that can buffer transactions? Sure you loose some part of the system like payment authorizations but the potential loss of money is lower than closing shop.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#859

Post by greggsy »

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…

Sounds like my last Satisfactory build.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#860

Post by ricardbejarano »

bgwalter wrote: post #819

The privatization of infrastructure in Europe has been a disaster. The only area where at least prices went down are telecommunication companies. The postal services are worse now. Railway is more expensive and a disaster. Energy prices are sky high and apparently now we also see unreliability.

Can't you just wait for a minute 'til we know what happened to point fingers? sigh
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