Any thoughts/information on what happened? Was it a lack of spinning reserve?
Was it " The Portuguese operator, REN, said the outage was caused by a “rare atmospheric phenomenon”, with extreme temperature variations in Spain causing “anomalous oscillations” in very high-voltage lines."
as is written in the Guardian?
The Italien blackout from a few years ago had a definate cause in the tripping of interconnetors from Switzerland during a storm.
I could be talking about the forum closure, which I definitely did miss, but I am talking about the loss of electricity supply to Spain and Portugal. I was caught in the centre of Madrid when the power went off. There was absolute chaos. I was with my wife and whilst we are both reasonably fit, there was no way we would have been able to walk to our hotel on the outskirts of the city. I thought it was going to be a night on a park bench. Luckily a friend was able to organise a lift around mid-night.
It might be taken for granted but electricity is badly missed when gone!
It will be interesting to find out what caused the departure!
I could be talking about the forum closure, which I definitely did miss, but I am talking about the loss of electricity supply to Spain and Portugal. I was caught in the centre of Madrid when the power went off. There was absolute chaos. I was with my wife and whilst we are both reasonably fit, there was no way we would have been able to walk to our hotel on the outskirts of the city. I thought it was going to be a night on a park bench. Luckily a friend was able to organise a lift around mid-night.
It might be taken for granted but electricity is badly missed when gone!
It will be interesting to find out what caused the departure!
It might be taken for granted but electricity is badly missed when gone!
For some, it might be like the end of the world!
I wonder what happened last week with power outages at Standstead Airport and then the next day on large parts of London Underground
Hello Sergio:
It appears that the UK Power system is working on a knife edge. No one wants to blame net zero as the root cause
The only advice I heard yesterday on a Guardian podcast, is that every UK family needs to have a 72 hour protection Kit to adequately cover black out conditions.
It should be noted that here is Florida everyone is advised to have a hurricane kit consisting of flashlights, water, cash, full tank of gas, canned food, battery powered radio, small LP burner, dry cookies ,medical kit , etc etc. The state government also has special tax free days on these items just before the start of the season (which Is June 1, 2025),
Peter Brooks
Palm Bay
No one wants to blame net zero as the root cause
To be fair lots of things have changed over the years - we no longer have Central Electricity Generating Board whose primary task was to generate sufficient electricity for the nation, rather now we have a loose collection of private generators whose primary responsibility (as with any commercial company) is to create wealth for their shareholders. Load profiles have changed - we have much less heavy industry with large spinning motors that run constantly all day, but more commercial and domestic loads which are naturally more erratic. The nature of loads has changed across the board too - a lot of simple resistive loads have disappeared (filament lighting, resistive heating) and many motors now have electronic drives. Millions of small transformers in all sorts of things have been replaced by SMPSUs. Unlike traditional loads most electronic controls will respond to a reduced voltage by increasing the current demand - so no longer present such a simple load to the grid and traditional regulation methods (e.g. voltage reductions) not longer work as they did. Then there are new kinds of loads like EVs and domestic heat pumps. Also the changes to inverters for generators (esp. wind and solar). Some of that may indeed have been driven by "net zero" but a lot is also done for other reasons - other politics (privatisation and moving away from coal due to 1980s economic policies, or later policies to reduce dependencies on imported fuels (e.g. Russian gas)), just economics in general as the new technology is cheaper to run, or just "progress" in general. Life brings changes, some changes work out for the better, others don't. As ever, finding problems and fixing them is the life blood for engineers.
- Andy.
It probably isn't the fault of ' net zero' as such, or rather, as I suspect you mean, the low carbon sources like solar and wind, as we have lost a lot of nuclear as well, but more a failure of those who write rules and decide how much to invest in what, to keep up with changes in load patterns and the systemic behaviour of increasingly electronic loads. Undersea lines now tend to be DC and inverter driven as well which may not help.
And power cuts are nothing new - its just with computers we notice their effect more than in the 1970s and 1980s for example.
In the UK specifically, quite a lot of kit is old, from the bottom to the top - as a personal example the wiring to my house went in 1969-1970, the cable in the street is slightly older, as are the two pad mount transformers and the 11kV lines that feed the whole estate. That's before we look further back at the pylons ;-) There are a lot of pinch points and bits rotting away.
Mike
Hello Mike:
There is an old quote here in the US-- "Make sure your powder is dry"- meaning "be prepared for the worst".
Are you and Andy (who also responded) going to create a 72 hour home protection Kit?
No need to create one specially in my case.
At home we have always had tinned food for several days, the camping gas and stove to cook it, candles matches and a wood burning stove, HF radio, UHF walkie talkies, and normal battery radio (VHF MW LW ), There is a jerry can of petrol in the garage...
When the water went off for a few days last year as we have rain water butts we were able to keep the loo flushed, and had enough drinking water in stock to not need to even go to the emergency water distribution point.
I have inherited that caution from my parents who grew up in wartime, to be ready to survive for quite a while if need be.
Being ready is also an attitude I try to instill into the Scouts I help lead.
Mike
Mike:
You didn't mention if you have a medical kit?
I spent most of this morning water proofing my wooden hurricane window boards so they are ready to put up.
I also have annual "flood" insurance, which causes most major structural problems.
Peter
we are indeed reasonably well prepared, not for hurricanes, but for common accidents ;-) When I bought the house I made sure we are about 40-50m above the flood line ;-)
Mike.
Are you and Andy (who also responded) going to create a 72 hour home protection Kit?
Well all the comms is already on a small UPS - might not go for 72 hours but should easily see us through the usual 1-2 hour power cuts that seems typical here and probably for a few hours of a national blackout should the worse happen. The only time it was off for longer in my experience was when a cable in the street went bang and we were off for the best part of a week (apart from a short spell when the DNO installed a temporary generator, but that seemed to run out of fuel after 24 hours). There's a rechargable work light that and a log burner for space and domestic hot water heating (which will function adequately enough without electric for pumps), an amount of tinned food on the shelves, and during most of the year some additional fresh from the garden. I can store about 2000l of rainwater (but that's looking rather depleted at the moment after about 2 months without rainfall).
- Andy.
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