Nationwide electric network blackout - Spain, Portugal, parts of France and Italy without power.

[CEO of Autism]

Not many know this but the UK came very close to running out of power supply this past winter. IIRC, it was somewhere around 450MW away from demand exceeding supply and for context the total consumption is usually in the tens of Gigawatts.

https://www.energydashboard.co.uk/livef

I think supply was only met by bringing in extra from Denmark. I'm happy to Tin Foil Hat as appropriate but Europe's energy supplies are integrated and I see nothing unbelievable about some cascading problem affecting all three countries. Around 20% of the UK's energy needs today are met by imported energy from France, Norway, Belgium and others.

It's gonna be fun if most of Europe goes ahead with the plans of forcing EVs and phasing out ICE vehicles.

 

[Sinner's Sandwich]

My bet is that it's Germany interconnectors pulling more than the grid can handle

Germany's heavy reliance on wind and its lack of conventional supplies (because they turned off all their nukes and mineral fuel generators), means that when the wind stops blowing, Germany starts leaning heavily on its neighbours.

There was no nationwide blackout in Germany tho. Not even in parts of Germany like the first post of this thread states. That's fake news and OP is bullshitting.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

Reports of trains and metro cars that have run out of power mid-journey, forcing passengers to evacuate, sometimes within tunnels. *Edit* Apparently the entire spanish railway network is out of comission, according to the state's managing company:

This is why I never trust trains with electric grids. A diesel train can always finish its journey in time.

In the case of power outages, one of the biggest was the Northeast blackout of 2003. There were flickers and brownouts as far west as Texas, but the basic gist of what happened was a single bug in a power plant's system failed to let engineers know that they needed to adjust the current of the electricity given the loads of the system at the time, and instead it just went undetected, tripping breakers, and shut down, causing all the other power plants to shut down as well in a cascading failure. By the time they were able to isolate the problem, 55 million people were out of power.

Europeans still seem to have figured out to isolate it before plunging the entire continent into a (literal) dark age.

 

[Dawdler]

My understanding is that the European power grid is pretty integrated across national borders, so a cascading failure - where one big failure induces failures further on - is not an impossibility.

It's not. But it is also less of a possibility than multiple island grids.
Failure of N-1 is predicted and calculated for.
Current situation is whole nation can quit and grid can resume and resync.
Previously, you'd had a black start and so on.
1/50 is less than 1/1. Basically spain can run on europe's reserve capacity alone.

 

[Overly Serious]

It's gonna be fun if most of Europe goes ahead with the plans of forcing EVs and phasing out ICE vehicles.

Then to paraphrase Confucius, may you live in fun times!

 

[WULULULULU]

Easy guess, European negligence.

 

[biggacracka]

Is it finally happening?
Or does nothing ever happens?

 

[teriyakiburns]

There was no nationwide blackout in Germany tho. Not even in parts of Germany like the first post of this thread states. That's fake news and OP is bullshitting.

I never said there was. I said I suspected the German grid drew excessive power from the west due to high demand during a wind shortage. Germany can fall back on interconnectors with eastern europe to compensate for the loss of supply from the west; Spain can't.

Portugal’s grid operator REN said that “extreme temperature variations” had produced a “rare atmospheric phenomenon” that caused the cuts.

What they're describing, using retard climate scare language, is a blocking high pressure system knocking out wind generation across western Europe. It's neither rare nor caused by "extreme temperature variations".

 

[ZipDisk]

Spain: It will take hours to fix
France: Opt us out of your lazy spaniard crisis *flips switch to on*

 

[odetquimper]

I know someone on holiday there and got through earlier, but the call disconnected and service unavailable again. Also mobile data.
Just made contact again and the situation seems calm with people enjoying their aperitivo in the sun. Many shops and supermarkets are closed though and transport came to a halt.

 

[Neodanthril]

Third world country problems

 

[Nick Obre]

At least conspiracy theories on KF have some originality in them - such as Chile not being a real country.

I mean, think about it.

Kissinger installed the Pinochet regime and then a bunch of US economists known as the Chicago Boys were allowed to play with the economy as they saw fit (not unjustified of course, after the record-breaking ruination of the economy by communists in just 3 years before it). Everything that's happened there since then has been a US-run experiment.

That's my theory and I'm sticking to it.

 

[raspberry mocha]

Rolling blackouts? Just part and parcel of being a yuropoo.

 

[Oxyjen]

What they're describing, using retard climate scare language, is a blocking high pressure system knocking out wind generation across western Europe. It's neither rare nor caused by "extreme temperature variations".

They used the term “induced atmospheric vibration” which is a very specific thing to do with corona discharge on UHV lines. The hissing sound that you get when it’s raining or very humid is one effect of corona discharge.

Freak weather conditions plus this effect is stated as the primary cause. People are speculating that the high percentage of solar and wind generation at the time contributed to the scale of the blackout, which is not without merit as a theory, but I’ve not seen anything authoritative to back that up.

 

[LaxerBRO]

I expect a SHTF scenario in 48-72 hours if power is not restored. Restaurants can still probably cook most of their food but beyond 36 hours and most refrigerated items are gone.

Another day, there goes most dry goods most people have on hand.

Day three is when hunger starts setting in, along with fatigue and stress due to lack of climate control and climbing up all those stairs, no communication with friends / family, and lack of abundant running water.

I don't think Portugal and Spain are countries where Prepping culture is even remotely widespread.

 

[mold]

africa begins at the pyrenees

 

[Jex]

Spain and Portugal, yeah sure. But parts of France? Something’s fucked, France is a net exporter of electricity and supposedly continued exporting energy to the UK throughout the outage.

 

[666NASTYFUCKINGFREAK666]

You see, Euros don't need this American "electric power". Euros are strong!

hey you little faggot. how the fuck are we supposed to bring electricity over the fucking ocean to them.

 

[ZipDisk]

Jex, it's where the grids connect. When you get failure on one end, you get failure on the other.
When Arizona stole power from California to keep their trailer bound elderly from turning into beef jerky, they caused a cascade failure that took down California.

Essentially, France took that shit for apparently a half hour, then switched off the connection. You're "Not supposed" to do that, but France likely gives zero shits about the spaniards. That's why I said they flipped a switch.

 

[Calandrino]

Not a lot of people seem to know this, but squirrels take down power grids all the time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_disruptions_caused_by_squirrels

Electrical disruptions caused by squirrels are common and widespread, and can involve the disruption of power grids. It has been hypothesized that the threat to the internet, infrastructure and services posed by squirrels may exceed that posed by cyber-attacks.[1] Although many commentators have highlighted humorous aspects of the concern, squirrels have proven consistently able to cripple power grids in many countries,[2] and the danger posed to the electrical grid from squirrels is ongoing and significant.

Why are the squirrels doing this? Do they act on behalf of some other entity, or are they pursuing their own agenda? These are questions they don't want you to ask.