Lights out in Europe?

HRK69 said:
People who think like this must be absolutely exhausted all day

Imagine living in constant fear that every power outage, every glitch, every little inconvenience is the result of some foreign power "testing the waters" lmfao

Not everything is some shadowy 4D chess move
Click to expand...
yeah because Russians don't do this.. one quick Google search brings up a list of incidents . And the hyperbole much? I'm the last person to think everything is a conspiracy.

Bb9WMdb.jpeg
 
Crazy events, hope people stay safe. Shithouse management and redundancy by governments and/or commercial partners.

Glad to have solar and battery systems at my house/business. Can isolate off grid and happily carry on. Do recommend.
 
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Trunx81 said:
Airplane Oops GIF

10 GW loss of demand .. damn, that´s quite huge.

The power grid must keep generation and consumption balanced all the time. A "10 GW loss of demand" means that 10 gigawatts of electricity usage suddenly disappeared, likely because of a blackout or emergency shutdowns. This sudden drop causes the grid frequency to rise sharply, which can damage equipment and destabilize the network. Between Spain and France, such a large event suggests major grid problems, possibly involving automatic protections or a partial system collapse.
Click to expand...


Is ElectroBOOM on vacation in Spain right now







 
p_xavier said:
And here it says cybersecurity. I'm confused.

www.express.co.uk

Spanish region declares power outage 'caused by cyberattack'

The conclusion was reached "solely" based on data relating to one region in Spain after a power outage hit Europe.
www.express.co.uk www.express.co.uk
Click to expand...

According to the president of the Andalusian regional government, Juan Manuel Moreno. No proof, it's based on the idea that such a massive outage could only be because of a cyberattack.

But Portugal's National Cybersecurity Centre says there is "no evidence has been identified to date that points to a cyberattack", according to reports.
Click to expand...
 
kruis said:
You could be right. It must be a covert sabotage action by Russia's FSB of the Spain and Portugal's combined power grid. The combined population of Spain and Portugal is a mere 58 million people so hardly anyone will notice the disruption, the whole thing can be kept out of the news and it will serve as the perfect preparation for a future attack on the Baltics (population 6 million with close to non existent army).

This makes so much sense that I'll disregard any news about more logical explanations.
Click to expand...
Doesn't have to be covert, could be simply a case of look what we can do and by accident they knocked out the whole country and it's neighbour connected to the same grid or..
Flying Sci-Fi GIF by Feliks Tomasz Konczakowski
 
Donald mac Ronald said:
My money is on a foreign power testing the waters in what they can hack and shut off in the west.
Click to expand...

Yeah, there was some chat by ex army head here in the UK about some sensory devices washing up on the beaches, and he recommended you stock up for 72 hours without electricity.

Get yourself a little camping stove, gentlemen.
 
Latest conspiracy theories are using this to attack Solar and Wind energy, with a lot of them (mainly coming from the US and UK) complaining that Solar and Wind are going to be trashed if they attempt to set them up in their areas.
 
I don't know the structure of the power grid but are these multiple countries sharing resources so that the same problem that occurs high up enough in the hierarchy can take down multiple countries at once?

I find it hard to believe they are that centralized even though I don't know. It's kind of an important distinction because without being connected in a way that a single fuck up could drop both, it's hard to believe it's a fuckup. More a success
 




Six days ago, the media celebrated a significant milestone: Spain's national grid operated entirely on renewable energy for the first time during a weekday. At 12:35 pm today local time, the lights went out across Spain and Portugal, and parts of France. Although power was quickly restored in France, it could take a week to fully restore power in Spain and Portugal.
Image

In an instant, the electric hum of modern life — trains, hospitals, airports, phones, traffic lights, cash registers — fell silent. Tens of millions of people instantly plunged into chaos, confusion, and darkness. People got stuck in elevators. Subways stopped between stations. Gas stations couldn't pump fuel. Grocery stores couldn't process payments. Air traffic controllers scrambled as systems failed and planes were diverted. In hospitals, backup generators sputtered on, but in many cases could not meet full demand.
Image

It was one of the largest peacetime blackouts Europe has ever seen. And it was not random. It was not an unforeseeable event. It was the exact failure that many of us have been, repeatedly, warning lawmakers about for years — warnings that Europe's political leaders systematically chose to ignore.While Portugal's grid operator REN initially blamed the mass blackout on "extreme temperature variations" and a "rare atmospheric phenomenon," and while some media repeated that framing, the reality is more serious. Weather may have triggered the event, but it was not the cause of the system's collapse.

Image
Spain's national grid operator, Red Eléctrica, revealed that the immediate cause of the blackout was a "very strong oscillation in the electrical network" that forced Spain's grid to disconnect from the broader European system, leading to the collapse of the Iberian Peninsula's power supply at 12:38 p.m

"No one has ever attempted a black start on a grid that relies so heavily on renewables as Iberia," noted
@JKempEnergy "The limited number of thermal generators will make it more challenging to re-establish momentum and frequency control."In a traditional power grid dominated by heavy spinning machines — coal plants, gas turbines, nuclear reactors — small disturbances, even from severe weather, are absorbed and smoothed out by the sheer physical inertia of the system. The heavy rotating mass of the generators acts like a shock absorber, resisting rapid changes in frequency and stabilizing the grid.

In a traditional power grid dominated by heavy spinning machines — coal plants, gas turbines, nuclear reactors — small disturbances, even from severe weather, are absorbed and smoothed out by the sheer physical inertia of the system. The heavy rotating mass of the generators acts like a shock absorber, resisting rapid changes in frequency and stabilizing the grid.

But in an electricity system dominated by solar panels, wind turbines, and inverters, there is almost no physical inertia. Solar panels produce no mechanical rotation. Most modern wind turbines are electronically decoupled from the grid and provide little stabilizing force. Inverter-based systems, which dominate modern renewable energy grids, are precise but delicate. They follow the frequency of the grid rather than resisting sudden changes....
 
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Donald mac Ronald said:
yeah because Russians don't do this.. one quick Google search brings up a list of incidents . And the hyperbole much? I'm the last person to think everything is a conspiracy.

Bb9WMdb.jpeg
Click to expand...
Nobody said it never happens

But jumping immediately to "foreign cyberattack" the second there's a random outage, without any evidence, is still exhausting

Yeah, cyberattacks exist, everyone knows that. But not every technical failure is some grand act of sabotage.

If you're really "the last person" to think everything is a conspiracy, maybe stop treating incidents like it's an act of war
Bojji said:
It's not conspiracy, it's reality. Iran/Russia/China are doing shit like this all the time.
Click to expand...

"All the time"? What does that even mean?

If foreign powers were actually successfully taking down Western infrastructure "all the time," you'd see massive national emergencies, not random, localized outages that are fixed within hours

Governments would be in crisis mode.

Markets would crash.

The media wouldn't be speculating, they'd be screaming.

Instead, what do we get? Some regional blackouts, easily explained by aging grids, weather, accidents, or mismanagement

Get a fucking grip
 
kruis said:




Six days ago, the media celebrated a significant milestone: Spain's national grid operated entirely on renewable energy for the first time during a weekday. At 12:35 pm today local time, the lights went out across Spain and Portugal, and parts of France. Although power was quickly restored in France, it could take a week to fully restore power in Spain and Portugal.
Image

In an instant, the electric hum of modern life — trains, hospitals, airports, phones, traffic lights, cash registers — fell silent. Tens of millions of people instantly plunged into chaos, confusion, and darkness. People got stuck in elevators. Subways stopped between stations. Gas stations couldn't pump fuel. Grocery stores couldn't process payments. Air traffic controllers scrambled as systems failed and planes were diverted. In hospitals, backup generators sputtered on, but in many cases could not meet full demand.
Image

It was one of the largest peacetime blackouts Europe has ever seen. And it was not random. It was not an unforeseeable event. It was the exact failure that many of us have been, repeatedly, warning lawmakers about for years — warnings that Europe's political leaders systematically chose to ignore.While Portugal's grid operator REN initially blamed the mass blackout on "extreme temperature variations" and a "rare atmospheric phenomenon," and while some media repeated that framing, the reality is more serious. Weather may have triggered the event, but it was not the cause of the system's collapse.

Image
Spain's national grid operator, Red Eléctrica, revealed that the immediate cause of the blackout was a "very strong oscillation in the electrical network" that forced Spain's grid to disconnect from the broader European system, leading to the collapse of the Iberian Peninsula's power supply at 12:38 p.m

"No one has ever attempted a black start on a grid that relies so heavily on renewables as Iberia," noted
@JKempEnergy "The limited number of thermal generators will make it more challenging to re-establish momentum and frequency control."In a traditional power grid dominated by heavy spinning machines — coal plants, gas turbines, nuclear reactors — small disturbances, even from severe weather, are absorbed and smoothed out by the sheer physical inertia of the system. The heavy rotating mass of the generators acts like a shock absorber, resisting rapid changes in frequency and stabilizing the grid.

In a traditional power grid dominated by heavy spinning machines — coal plants, gas turbines, nuclear reactors — small disturbances, even from severe weather, are absorbed and smoothed out by the sheer physical inertia of the system. The heavy rotating mass of the generators acts like a shock absorber, resisting rapid changes in frequency and stabilizing the grid.

But in an electricity system dominated by solar panels, wind turbines, and inverters, there is almost no physical inertia. Solar panels produce no mechanical rotation. Most modern wind turbines are electronically decoupled from the grid and provide little stabilizing force. Inverter-based systems, which dominate modern renewable energy grids, are precise but delicate. They follow the frequency of the grid rather than resisting sudden changes....
Click to expand...

That is crazy and interesting at the same time.
 
Renewables aren't the problem. Grid management might be a problem. Or accidents like fires or whatever.

Being 100% renewable without baseload power being provided by a steady source like fossil fuels or nuclear is a problem though.

I don't think there is a single place on Earth that has batteries as a baseload power source so that is still not an option.
 
kruis said:
In a traditional power grid dominated by heavy spinning machines — coal plants, gas turbines, nuclear reactors — small disturbances, even from severe weather, are absorbed and smoothed out by the sheer physical inertia of the system. The heavy rotating mass of the generators acts like a shock absorber, resisting rapid changes in frequency and stabilizing the grid.

But in an electricity system dominated by solar panels, wind turbines, and inverters, there is almost no physical inertia. Solar panels produce no mechanical rotation. Most modern wind turbines are electronically decoupled from the grid and provide little stabilizing force. Inverter-based systems, which dominate modern renewable energy grids, are precise but delicate. They follow the frequency of the grid rather than resisting sudden changes....
Click to expand...



The author of that tweet wrote a prescient article just a few days earlier.

www.bloomberg.com

It’s Electricity Realism, Not Climate Denialism

Electrifying everything comes with plenty of risks of its own.
www.bloomberg.com www.bloomberg.com

The electrification of everything is the biggest shake up the global energy system has seen in decades. Unfortunately, the route to the future is hung up by the culture wars of the energy transition and the fight against climate change. That's putting pressure on the advocates of electric vehicles, heat pumps and wind turbines to address the risks their vision carries.

Confronting them is increasingly important as power consumption booms. Since 2010, global electricity demand has grown almost twice as fast as total energy use. The trend is likely to continue, in part because of electron-hungry new technologies, like data centers and artificial intelligence, and in part simply because the world is getting richer.

At the same time, the way the world meets electricity demand is changing beyond recognition: Weather-dependent generation sources like solar panels and wind turbines are becoming the largest source of incremental supply in contrast to the dependable sources the world has relied on for the past century — atomic reactors, coal-fired power plants and large hydropower projects.

Still, the global mindset when it comes to energy security is firmly focused on the geopolitics of fossil fuels and the Middle East, rather than in the new world of electrons. Energy officials have yet to map properly the risk implications of electrifying everything. Fortunately, governments are starting to wake up to them.

The International Energy Agency, which was born out of the 1973 oil shock, is proposing to elevate "electricity security to a strategic policy priority." In a confidential background paper ahead of a meeting on energy security organized with the UK government in London April 24-25, it told delegates that "electricity security is more important than ever." Hardly anyone in Britain would disagree: Only a few weeks ago, Heathrow Airport shut down after a single transformer at an old substation caught on fire.

Unfortunately, green activists, who hardly see any problem with electrifying everything, believe any concerns represent little more than attempts to delay a needed transition away from fossil fuels. Climate deniers only see trouble in renewables, EVs and the other greener technologies, forgetting all the risks that oil, gas and coal bring along. In between both positions lays the reality.

The first risk of electrifying everything is meeting the huge extra demand for electrons. From 2025 to 2027, global electricity consumption is expected to rise every year by the equivalent of what Japan consumes today. If renewables can't match that increase, alternatives sources will be needed. Sadly, China is still relying on coal-fired stations to meet the growth in electricity demand. That's a huge risk for the environment.

Often forgotten as the growth in renewable generation attracts headlines, coal is still the world's favorite source of electricity, providing just over a third of all the electrons. Add natural gas and the two account for roughly 50% of the world's electricity supply.

The second risk is matching a demand that requires 24/7 supply with a generation system that, at the margin, depends today on whether the sun is shining and the wind is blowing. "Systemic challenges will emerge from balancing increasingly renewable-dominated grids during extended low-generation periods," the IEA said on its confidential paper, which was seen by Bloomberg Opinion.

In plain English: It's unclear how the grid will work when the weather isn't helping. That's a reality that the IEA — and renewable advocates — have long downplayed. It's refreshing that's now acknowledged openly.

There's an additional headache. Under pressure to meet green targets, utilities are shutting down so-called dispatchable power plants that can be turned on and off on demand, like atomic reactors and coal- and gas-fired plants. Germany, which shut all its nuclear power stations, is a textbook example. "Current vulnerabilities stem from premature retirement of dispatchable generation without adequate replacements," the IEA warned.

The third risk is the spiderweb-like grid that connects hundreds of power plants, substations, and consumers. Bottlenecks mean that renewable plants often have to wait months, if not years, to start producing. The not-in-my-backyard attitude means that investments needed to accommodate more renewable production are delayed. If investment in overhead power lines is lacking, spending in the last few miles of connection is even more sorely missing. The world needs many more transformers and low-tension distribution lines to accommodate the growth in demand. Investment in grid storage is also lacking.

The fourth risk is the special nature of electricity. Supply and demand of electrons must match every second, every minute, every hour, every day. The coal, gas, and oil markets have many buffers and stockpiles, smoothing out any glitches. Electricity doesn't have that luxury. That makes the system more vulnerable. A pylon that goes down can trigger a regional blackout; a cyberattack can disconnect large swatches of the network.

The fifth risk is price volatility. Compared to fossil fuels, electricity prices had swung incredibly over the last five years. In Germany, day-ahead wholesale power prices had been since 2020 as high as €687 ($782) per megawatt hour and as low as minus €5 per MWh. The extreme volatility means not only pain for consumers, but also difficult investment decisions by producers. Renewable energy — and the need for costly gas-fired power plants as backup during bad weather periods — are the main reason behind that volatility.

The first step to solve a problem is to acknowledge it. It's good news that governments are openly talking about the risks of well-intended green policies. Now, the job is to start addressing them. Flagging the problem isn't climate denialism. It's electricity realism.
 
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Dr.Morris79 said:
Is it still out?

DT1Xum1.gif
Click to expand...
Yeah, we are still without lights.

Shit sucks, I was going to go meet a chick today. Phone calls and whatsapp don't seem to work either so I'm stranded at home barely able to even fap because the internet goes slow as hell. Fuuuuuuck.

edit: just threw into the trash 3 delicious pizzas, a bag of spicy chicken wings, some fries and a few bags of other frozen food. :lollipop_pensive:
 
Last edited:
Reizo Ryuu said:
that's why you download
Think About It GIF by Identity
Click to expand...
I miss my VR collection like you wouldn't believe, shouldn't have gotten rid of it.

Shit wont happen again. From now on I'll make sure to always keep my Steam Deck charged and have enough canned food to last for a while. Plus downloading some porn ofc, my imagination is no longer what it used to.
 
Last edited:
kruis said:




Six days ago, the media celebrated a significant milestone: Spain's national grid operated entirely on renewable energy for the first time during a weekday. At 12:35 pm today local time, the lights went out across Spain and Portugal, and parts of France. Although power was quickly restored in France, it could take a week to fully restore power in Spain and Portugal.
Image

In an instant, the electric hum of modern life — trains, hospitals, airports, phones, traffic lights, cash registers — fell silent. Tens of millions of people instantly plunged into chaos, confusion, and darkness. People got stuck in elevators. Subways stopped between stations. Gas stations couldn't pump fuel. Grocery stores couldn't process payments. Air traffic controllers scrambled as systems failed and planes were diverted. In hospitals, backup generators sputtered on, but in many cases could not meet full demand.
Image

It was one of the largest peacetime blackouts Europe has ever seen. And it was not random. It was not an unforeseeable event. It was the exact failure that many of us have been, repeatedly, warning lawmakers about for years — warnings that Europe's political leaders systematically chose to ignore.While Portugal's grid operator REN initially blamed the mass blackout on "extreme temperature variations" and a "rare atmospheric phenomenon," and while some media repeated that framing, the reality is more serious. Weather may have triggered the event, but it was not the cause of the system's collapse.

Image
Spain's national grid operator, Red Eléctrica, revealed that the immediate cause of the blackout was a "very strong oscillation in the electrical network" that forced Spain's grid to disconnect from the broader European system, leading to the collapse of the Iberian Peninsula's power supply at 12:38 p.m

"No one has ever attempted a black start on a grid that relies so heavily on renewables as Iberia," noted
@JKempEnergy "The limited number of thermal generators will make it more challenging to re-establish momentum and frequency control."In a traditional power grid dominated by heavy spinning machines — coal plants, gas turbines, nuclear reactors — small disturbances, even from severe weather, are absorbed and smoothed out by the sheer physical inertia of the system. The heavy rotating mass of the generators acts like a shock absorber, resisting rapid changes in frequency and stabilizing the grid.

In a traditional power grid dominated by heavy spinning machines — coal plants, gas turbines, nuclear reactors — small disturbances, even from severe weather, are absorbed and smoothed out by the sheer physical inertia of the system. The heavy rotating mass of the generators acts like a shock absorber, resisting rapid changes in frequency and stabilizing the grid.

But in an electricity system dominated by solar panels, wind turbines, and inverters, there is almost no physical inertia. Solar panels produce no mechanical rotation. Most modern wind turbines are electronically decoupled from the grid and provide little stabilizing force. Inverter-based systems, which dominate modern renewable energy grids, are precise but delicate. They follow the frequency of the grid rather than resisting sudden changes....
Click to expand...

Crazy how this didn't happen in the UK over those summers where long stretches were powered fully by renewables for days at a time starting a few years back. But cool, let the conspiracy nuts go smash solar panels and stuff, more work for me and those jobs pay a pretty penny, just like during COVID the loons were attacking 5G towers and Fibre Optic lines.
 
TintoConCasera said:
Yeah, we are still without lights.

Shit sucks, I was going to go meet a chick today. Phone calls and whatsapp don't seem to work either so I'm stranded at home barely able to even fap because the internet goes slow as hell. Fuuuuuuck.

edit: just threw into the trash 3 delicious pizzas, a bag of spicy chicken wings, some fries and a few bags of other frozen food. :lollipop_pensive:
Click to expand...

I see the benefits of eating like an American are not lost on the Spanish lol
 
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