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Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

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Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#961

Post by crote »

cesarb wrote: post #424
pjc50 wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Report on a smaller event in the UK: https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/publications/investigation-9-august... (see linked pdf) That started from a combination of a lightning strike and generator trip, but turned into a local cascade failure as lots of distributed generation noticed that the frequency was under 49Hz and disconnected itself. I suspect the Spanish situation will be similar - inability to properly contain a frequ…

> probably with the usual suspects popping up to blame renewables Renewables were a factor in the blackout here in Brazil a couple of years ago: the models used by the system operator did not correspond to reality, many solar and wind power plants disconnected on grid disturbances quicker than specified. That mismatch led the system operator to allow a grid configuration where a single fault could lead to a cascade (…

The problem is that some media have a tendency to present "operators did not properly model renewables" as "renewables to blame for blackout". The cause is poor modeling, but renewables get the blame as it reinforces a pre-existing "renewables bad" mentality.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#962

Post by tiahura »

amirhirsch wrote: post #842
0xbadcafebee wrote: post #724

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I built control computers for nuclear reactors. Those machines are not connected to a network and are guarded by multiple stages of men with automatic machine guns. It was designed to flawlessly run 3x boards each with triple-modular-redundant processors in FPGA fabric all nine processors instruction-synced with ECC down to the Registers (including cycling the three areas of programmable fabric on the FPGAs). They cy…

A bit off topic, but my uncle used to be security at a nuclear plant. Each year the Delta Force (his words) would conduct a surprise pentest. He said that although they were always tipped off, they never stopped them.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#964

Post by crote »

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #946
jventura wrote: post #910

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Experience from Portugal, near Lisbon: fake news and made-up stories traveled fast! My wife called me (before phones went out) saying someone heard on the radio that Portugal was on red alert, it was WW3 (world war 3) and I think she even mentioned "missiles"! Also someone said it was a cyberattack and all Europe was off. Lots of panic reactions, many people buying toilet paper, water, candles, sausages and other can…

I have to ask: what's with "many people buying toilet paper" when there's the smallest probability of a disaster? Why? Why? Why?

Because you're always buying toilet paper in bulk, and everyone needs it.

Toilet paper is cheap and bulky, so stores only stock what they absolutely need. If a store is supplied once a day, it'll have something like two day's worth of toilet paper on its shelves.

Some incident happens, and people start to panic. By sheer coincidence one brand of toilet paper happens to be out of stock. The shelf space is huge, so as you walk past it you immediately notice it and think "geez, wouldn't it be awkward if that were to run out". You don't know how much you've got remaining at home so you grab a pack, just to be sure. Ten people do this, and because the packs are so massive another brand has just run out - making even more people consider picking up toilet paper.

You normally buy toilet paper maybe once every month, so if only 1 in 15 people pick up toilet paper during their panic shopping, those two day's worth of stock will quickly run out!

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#965

Post by petertodd »

egorfine wrote: post #908
petertodd wrote: post #668

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ukraine is interesting in this context because there are so many generators. In the richer parts of Odesa I've even found it hard sometimes to tell whether or not the grid power is on as literally every single building had sufficient backup generators to keep the lights on (also, many big businesses seemed to run their generators even when the power was on, I presume as a civic-minded way to add generation capacity o…

Generators are not in sync with the grid though. And that's the hardest part. Here's why generators were running here despite the grid being available. A generator has a very short lifetime and in order to prolong it, some owners learned to run those in the very optimal schedule. Which sometimes requires a minimum amount of time to run in a single cycle. Thus if you started it you are committed to run for X hours.

> Generators are not in sync with the grid though. And that's the hardest part.

I know. What's interesting re: Ukraine is because there are so many generators there are more options to getting power sufficiently restored for normal life than just rushing to restore the entire grid.

> Thus if you started it you are committed to run for X hours.

I'm skeptical this is the main reason. While fast starting a diesel generator is hard on it, there are other, slower, ways to start big diesel generators with minimal impact on lifespan. The blackouts in Ukraine are almost all on a schedule, so big buildings with dedicated staff and expensive generators can and do startup their generators in advance (I've personally heard this happen on occasion - big generators spooling up multiple minutes in advance of the scheduled blackout).

Also, it makes sense to turn on generators in advance anyway: gives you a chance to diagnose any issues.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#966

Post by IAmGraydon »

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #946
jventura wrote: post #910

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Experience from Portugal, near Lisbon: fake news and made-up stories traveled fast! My wife called me (before phones went out) saying someone heard on the radio that Portugal was on red alert, it was WW3 (world war 3) and I think she even mentioned "missiles"! Also someone said it was a cyberattack and all Europe was off. Lots of panic reactions, many people buying toilet paper, water, candles, sausages and other can…

I have to ask: what's with "many people buying toilet paper" when there's the smallest probability of a disaster? Why? Why? Why?

I've asked the same question. I think people are so pampered in western societies that the worst thing they can possibly imagine is not being able to wipe their ass with a fresh piece of toilet paper.

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#967

Post by throwup238 »

bombcar wrote: post #713
throwup238 wrote: post #641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 synchroniz…

That’s not necessarily 100 true, as you could have multiple plants black start and then synchronize later. In fact, if you’re not sure which will start first, you might go that way. They’re all disconnected from the grid at that time anyway.

You’re absolutely right, there are a lot of variations. In this case I think Portugal started from their own hydroelectric dam and restarted everything North to South while Spain started several in parallel from the interconnects to the rest of Europe (can’t tell which interconnect it was though).

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#968

Post by voytec »

p0w3n3d wrote: post #696
toast0 wrote: post #640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> thanks to telcos being legally obligated to give a shit about reliability. Yeah, they don't need to do that anymore. Around me, enough towers have battery backups that I can count on 2 hours of coverage when utility power goes out (if it goes out late at night or early morning, there's usually coverage until 6-7 am when people start waking up and use up the rest of the power). I don't have a real landline, but the…

Meanwhile (some) politicians in my country (Poland) and EU say that we should limit cash handling or eradicate it at all

Please point at particular people and parties without wording it as "some politicians".

In Poland alone we have far right, a lot of centric parties and some more or less leftist parties.

The most popular (by popular votes) "right wing" PiS is not "right" for the most part for several years now, had a Marxist/socialist prime minister and gave so many social benefits away to grab votes that it made "left" blush. They are "right" only on the level needed to get church-goers votes.

And, with antisemitist agenta, PiS was buying Pegasus subscriptions from NSO to spy on opposition and unvafourable journalists just in hopes that they'll get something from it.

So - which "particular politicians" are you quoting?

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#969

Post by avh02 »

enopod_ wrote: post #273
rcarmo wrote: post #32

CNN story: https://edition.cnn.com/2025/04/28/europe/spain-portugal-pow...

In contrary to the CNN headline, air traffic doesn‘t seem to be affected. (As one would expect, as airports all have backup power systems)

Except Heathrow apparently

Re: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

#970

Post by BrandoElFollito »

lisper wrote: post #744
tpmoney wrote: post #716

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Funny thing is, those are the exact words I use when talking to people about networking. And realistically anytime I dig deep into the underlying details of any big enough system I walk away with that impressi…

> those are the exact words I use when talking to people about networking Or the U.S. financial system. Or civilization in general.

For me it is the financial system as a whole.

I am an ex-scientist and an engineer and had a look at the books of my son who studies finance in the best finance school in the world (I am saying this to highlight that he will be one of the perpetrators, possibly with influence, of this mess)

The things in there are crazy. There are whole blocks that are obvious but made to sound complicated. I spent some time on a graph just to realize that they ultimately talk about solving a set of two linear equations (midfle school level).

Some pieces were not comprehensible because they did not make sense.

And then bam! A random differential equation and explanation as it was the answer to the universe. With an incorrect interpretation.

And then there are statistics that would make "sociology science" blush. Yes, they are so bad that even the, ahem, experts who do stats in sociology would be ashamed (no hate for sociology, everyone needs to eat, it is just that I was several times reviewer of thesises there and I have trauma afterwards).

The fact that finance works is because we have some kind of magical "local minimum of finance energy" from which the Trumps of this world somehow did not maybe to break from (fingers crossed) by disrupting the world too much.

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