2025 European power outage (history in progress)

[C C]

2025 European power outage
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Europ...wer_outage

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https://www.scivillage.com/thread-17871-...l#pid71440

[Yazata]

It appears to have been very widespread in Spain and Portugal. Madrid and Lisbon were blacked out. No lights, traffic signals, public transit, ATMs, cell phone signals... There are photos of electric trains stopped dead and passengers wandering around farm fields. Reports of big traffic jams and panic buying at the markets that are still open.

They say parts of their countries have had power restored and most should be restored by tomorrow.

They are still investigating the cause and say that they can't rule out a cyberattack.

But my guess is that the cause was more prosaic: electric grids are dynamic and finely balanced. If a transformer blew somewhere, it might have overloaded something else, circuit breakers blew, more of the grid got overloaded, more went down... and a wave of circuit breakers popping propagates like a chain of dominoes and the house of cards comes tumbling down. Even if nothing is really damaged, it still can take a while to bring the whole system back up bit by bit.

[Magical Realist]

leaked classified CCTV footage of the cause of the blackout...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eduOvwRRXbY

[Zinjanthropos]

electric trains stopped dead and passengers wandering around farm fields.

They probably needed to spend time outside anyways. If it’s dark then look up.

In the big Los Angeles blackout of ‘94 people apparently were calling police and emergency services because of the lights in the sky. Turned out to be the regular night stars without city lights interfering.

MR’s cause for blackout may be closer than you think

From Google:
Portugal's grid operator Ren claimed the outage was caused by a fault in the Spanish electricity grid, related to a "rare atmospheric phenomenon". Ren says that, due to extreme temperature variations in Spain, there were "anomalous oscillations" in very high-voltage lines.

[Magical Realist]

electric trains stopped dead and passengers wandering around farm fields.

“When you're used to having electricity and then all of a sudden it's taken away, you're basically just one step away from being a wild animal.”
― Jeff Kinney

[Secular Sanity]

ChatGPT ↓

Ah, got it — you're asking whether Spain’s cancellation of the arms deal with Israel might have triggered a retaliatory cyberattack, such as the recent power outage.
As of now, there is no confirmed evidence linking the arms deal cancellation to the blackout or to a cyberattack. Here's what we know:

• Timing coincidence: The blackout on April 28 and the arms deal cancellation earlier that week are close in time, which has fueled speculation. But authorities have not indicated any connection between the two events.
  
• Official stance: Spain’s national grid operator, REE, explicitly stated there's no indication of a cyberattack and attributes the blackout to a major disconnection in the grid — though the High Court has opened an investigation into possible sabotage or cyberterrorism.
  
• No public attribution: Neither Spain nor any intelligence or cybersecurity agency has blamed a specific actor, including Israel or any pro-Israel group, for the outage.
  

So while the theory isn't unreasonable given geopolitical tensions, it remains speculative at this point and lacks supporting evidence.

Just a thought...

[Yazata]

Critics are saying that the Spanish grid has been losing what electrical engineers call 'inertia' in its rush to replace fossil fuels with renewables like wind and solar. Inertia refers to how well the electrical grid continues to supply reasonably consistent voltage and AC frequency to power sockets during disturbances of the grid. If the grid features sufficient inertia, output will remain reasonably consistent for a few seconds after a generator goes down, transformers blow, or some event like that. Long enough for human or (more likely) computer controllers to readjust the grid.

Michael Shellenberger says:

"Renewable energy had nothing to do with Spain’s catastrophic blackouts, its Prime Minister says, insisting instead that the real culprit was a rare technical failure unrelated to the country’s green energy transition. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez went further and reiterated his government’s opposition to nuclear energy, which he called “far from being a solution.”

But, as I pointed out on Monday, the underlying cause of the blackout was the lack of “inertia,” the physical buffer provided by traditional power plants that use heavy spinning machinery to stabilize the grid during sudden fluctuations. Our electrical systems are based on power plants that rotate massive metal shafts at thousands of revolutions per minute, creating electricity while also providing momentum.

That rotational mass acts like a shock absorber, automatically resisting sharp swings in supply and demand. When a fault or sudden drop hits the system, that inertia buys precious seconds for control systems to respond and for operators to isolate the problem. In contrast, solar panels and most modern wind turbines rely on inverters, which lack physical mass and can’t cushion these shocks.

It’s true that the electrical grid managers have not identified a specific cause that triggered the blackout, and both Spain’s Red Eléctrica and Portugal’s REN have cautioned that a full root-cause analysis may take weeks. Preliminary reports describe a “very strong oscillation” in the network and suggest the event began with an unexpected disturbance, possibly linked to a sudden drop in generation or an equipment fault.

But that doesn’t change the fact that the Spanish grid lacks inertia, and that if it had had more inertia in the system the blackout could have been avoided or at least contained. Inertia is not a theoretical nicety, it’s a physical property provided by heavy, spinning generators like those in gas, coal, and nuclear plants, which naturally resist sudden changes in frequency.

On the day of the blackout, nearly 80 percent of Spain’s electricity came from inverter-based solar and wind sources, which provide no such stabilizing force. With so few conventional plants online, the grid had virtually no buffer to absorb even a minor shock. When the disturbance hit, the frequency plunged and the system unraveled within seconds. Unlike older grids built around rotating mass, Spain’s modern, ultra-light grid simply had no way to withstand the sudden imbalance."

https://x.com/shellenberger/status/1917645316037435578

See also:

https://jkempenergy.com/2025/04/28/iberi...ack-start/

https://greennuke.substack.com/p/why-is-...-important

https://arena.gov.au/blog/what-is-electr...d-inertia/

[C C]

[...] Michael Shellenberger says:

[...] But, as I pointed out on Monday, the underlying cause of the blackout was the lack of “inertia,” the physical buffer provided by traditional power plants that use heavy spinning machinery to stabilize the grid during sudden fluctuations.

[...] That rotational mass acts like a shock absorber, automatically resisting sharp swings in supply and demand. ... In contrast, solar panels and most modern wind turbines rely on inverters, which lack physical mass and can’t cushion these shocks.

[...] On the day of the blackout, nearly 80 percent of Spain’s electricity came from inverter-based solar and wind sources, which provide no such stabilizing force. With so few conventional plants online, the grid had virtually no buffer to absorb even a minor shock....

Sans the major blackouts, this sounds akin to Germany's power problems during the winter and other low wind and solar periods, where the state even allows the industrial sector to suffer cutbacks in electricity.

But everyone knows that sainthood requires sacrifice and the loss of and curtailment of many earthly pleasures -- as the monks and nuns of monastery life have long demonstrated. What citizens in climate pious nations like Germany may lose in terms of a history of economic robustness, they amply compensate for with the gain of their halos of moral nobility.

(January 30, 2025) Germany’s wind power shortfall stirs Europe’s power market
https://www.power-technology.com/news/ge...shortfall/

EXCERPTS: Germany, Europe’s largest wind power producer, is experiencing its most prolonged period of below-average wind power generation since early 2021, as reported by Reuters. The shortfall is attributed to a sustained period of low wind speeds since October 2024.

Wind power is Germany’s main electricity source, with output typically peaking in the winter months when wind speeds at the turbine level are highest. The shortfall has forced German power companies to rely more on fossil fuels and increase power imports.

[...] Continuing into 2025, the first 28 days of January showed a 16% decrease in wind power generation compared to the same period in the previous year, based on LSEG data.

[...] Despite the potential for wind power generation to increase during the remaining winter months, forecasts through to mid-February 2025 predict continued below-normal output levels. This indicates that Germany’s clean power output may remain limited, potentially increasing fossil fuel use, raising power emissions, and further imports, which could tighten regional power markets and sustain high prices.
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(January 3, 2025) Southeast Germans told to limit electricity use
https://brusselssignal.eu/2025/01/southe...-shortage/

EXCERPTS: “To stabilise the grid, TransnetBW must draw on large amounts of electricity from conventional power plants and neighbouring countries,” the company wrote on its StromGedacht electricity app. “With your help, the high costs of these measures for the general public can be reduced and CO2 emissions saved. There is no risk of a power outage. However, TransnetBW must do more than usual to keep the network stable.”

Residents were in particular asked to refrain from charging their laptops and electric cars during the morning, as well as to refrain from using energy-intensive domestic appliances such as washing machines, dishwashers, ovens, electric heaters and vacuum cleaners.

[...] The Baden-Württemberg authorities bragged on December 21 about the state having a “super-green” energy grid. The region previously sported three nuclear power plants. All have been shut down under the outgoing government as part of Germany’s nationwide nuclear phase-out.
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(Feb 14, 2025) German Industry Risks New Setback From Power Pricing Overhaul
https://financialpost.com/pmn/business-p...g-overhaul

EXCERPTS: When the weather in Germany is overcast and calm, the windmills and solar plants don’t send any power to the grid. Instead, they send shockwaves through the markets. One such “Dunkelflaute” day in mid-December saw spot power prices climb to more than €900 ($939) per megawatt-hour – nine times above average. That’s even higher than the increases in 2022, when the nation lost access to Russian pipeline gas after the invasion of Ukraine.

[...] In order to continue receiving generous subsidies, about 400 manufacturers will have to adjust their operations to match real-time wind and solar supply. That means ramping down production during periods without wind or sunshine, and running at full throttle on breezy, bright days when spot prices can turn negative.

[...] The change will force some companies to completely rethink how they operate. “How will I shift my production?” asked Heinrich Eufinger, the managing director of cement producer HEUS Betonwerke GmbH, a family business in the municipality of Elz near Frankfurt. “It doesn’t make sense to have workers arrive in the morning and then send them on a three-hour break because there is no wind or sunshine.”

While Germany’s renewables buildup has been the fastest in Europe, the nation lacks reliable back-up power. It pulled the plug on nuclear energy two years ago, and a plan to build new gas-fired plants was scrapped by the government last year. If adopted, the experiment would be the biggest to address this problem, although similar efforts to make industrial production more flexible are being tested in smaller countries such as Denmark....

[C C]

Wikipedia has renamed its "2025 European power outage" entry to "2025 Iberian Peninsula blackout". And that's also reflected in the URL. So when the redirect stops working someday, the new address is:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Iberi...a_blackout

[confused2]

At the moment the wholesale price of electricity is controlled by (surprise) the cost of generating it. The consumer is (usually) isolated from reality by the tradition that electricity costs the same whenever you use it - itself a form of inertia.

In the UK about 60% of households have 'smartmeters' which could (in theory and sometimes in practice) reflect the wholesale spot price of electricity. Nerds can use the information from their smartmeter to (for example) charge their cars when electricity is free.

My rich friend is almost entirely nocturnal simply because electricity is cheap at night. You might wonder why he cares about money if he's rich - and the answer is (of course) - that's why he's rich.

Yah. As an American (or Spaniard) would you put your AC on for an hour if you knew it would cost you $500?

Unfortunately to make anything happen in the face of consumer resistance you need a fleet of licensed cowboys installers and they are going to get very rich doing the job.

I suspect Apple/Amazon/Buymeayacht already have 'apps' to do the job but that's only for rich nerds. I've used a free thing called 'Home Assistant' - oh dear, no, no, no.

Penultimately your nuke power stations .. they can't respond to demand so if they generate above base load they have to give their electicity away.At the same time you've got your windmills generating with nowhere for the electricity to go.

Finally. You need flexibility (based on price) at the consumer end of the wire. Not vast batteries that can supply the entire grid and only actually do anything (maybe) once every five years.