A nationwide power outage hit Spain and Portugal on Monday, leaving millions without electricity. Reports indicate issues with the European electric grid. This is what we know. #EuropeNews
I’d also note that Spain and Portugal have very limited interconnection to the rest of Europe — this is known as the “Iberian energy island” — and addressing this has been the topic of some past European news coverage that I’ve read.
There are only three, limited-capacity electricity transmission links between them and France. In the past, they have been completely cut off from the rest of Europe’s electricity grid when all three links were down for unrelated reasons at the same time.
I’d guess that this is probably a relatively weak point in terms of reliability in Europe’s electricity grid.
Back in 1965, in the US, we had the Northeast go dark for a while after a failure on one transmission line into the region shut down, caused electricity to be shunted onto others, triggering them to also shut down; a series of cascading protection systems triggered to bring the system to a “safe” state and avoid damage and ultimately brought power transmission into the region and then other systems down.
The 1965 failure resulted from the transmission capacity into the region being near exhausted, and then a failure on one transmission line triggering a series of other problems that blacked out the region. I’m just trying to give an example of where a failure of the sort that one might expect to potentially happen in Iberia – having little spare transmission capacity, and then hitting some sort of problem that increases stress – might result in internal blackouts in the region.
Squirrels man. I’m better it’s because of squirrels.
They’re coordinating. One looked me in the eye from a tree yesterday, turned around and started racing down the tree and right ar me. spooked the shit out of me.
I’d also note that Spain and Portugal have very limited interconnection to the rest of Europe — this is known as the “Iberian energy island” — and addressing this has been the topic of some past European news coverage that I’ve read.
There are only three, limited-capacity electricity transmission links between them and France. In the past, they have been completely cut off from the rest of Europe’s electricity grid when all three links were down for unrelated reasons at the same time.
I’d guess that this is probably a relatively weak point in terms of reliability in Europe’s electricity grid.
Back in 1965, in the US, we had the Northeast go dark for a while after a failure on one transmission line into the region shut down, caused electricity to be shunted onto others, triggering them to also shut down; a series of cascading protection systems triggered to bring the system to a “safe” state and avoid damage and ultimately brought power transmission into the region and then other systems down.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_1965
1965 was good but why not the Blackout of 2003?
The 1965 failure resulted from the transmission capacity into the region being near exhausted, and then a failure on one transmission line triggering a series of other problems that blacked out the region. I’m just trying to give an example of where a failure of the sort that one might expect to potentially happen in Iberia – having little spare transmission capacity, and then hitting some sort of problem that increases stress – might result in internal blackouts in the region.
Squirrels man. I’m better it’s because of squirrels.
They’re coordinating. One looked me in the eye from a tree yesterday, turned around and started racing down the tree and right ar me. spooked the shit out of me.