Power cut in Spain and Portugal

[David Hess]

Raised an eyebrow when I read about the reason being given for the massive grid failure in Spain and Portugal - induced atmospheric vibration, hmmmm.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/apr/28/spain-and-portugal-power-outage-cause-cyber-attack-electricity

I can hear Dave in my head sniffing out loud and saying "smells like bulls..t"!

Anyone wanna take this up?

I will say what I said in the other discussion thread:

I took it to mean wind induced oscillation causing flashover between conductors, or breaking a line.  This would explain the comment about a weather effect, but it has nothing to do with climate change.  The frequency (or vibration) part could refer to the galloping occurring at the resonate frequency of the swinging line:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conductor_gallop

Spoilers, fins, or dampeners may be added to power lines in windy areas to prevent galloping.

[Drachenfels]

Raised an eyebrow when I read about the reason being given for the massive grid failure in Spain and Portugal - induced atmospheric vibration, hmmmm.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/apr/28/spain-and-portugal-power-outage-cause-cyber-attack-electricity

I can hear Dave in my head sniffing out loud and saying "smells like bulls..t"!

Anyone wanna take this up?

I will say what I said in the other discussion thread:

I took it to mean wind induced oscillation causing flashover between conductors, or breaking a line.  This would explain the comment about a weather effect, but it has nothing to do with climate change.  The frequency (or vibration) part could refer to the galloping occurring at the resonate frequency of the swinging line:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conductor_gallop

Spoilers, fins, or dampeners may be added to power lines in windy areas to prevent galloping.

From what little knowledge I have about causes behind grid blackouts, it's a mismatch between generation and demand.
Apparently Spain recently ran the whole country on renewables on the 16th, maybe related? - https://www.threads.com/@earthlyeducation/post/DI0JNWSRrop/wow-spains-grid-ran-entirely-on-renewable-energy-for-the-first-time-on-april-16-

If the grid frequency started oscillating up and down too much, then it was because they couldn't match the generation and load closely enough. If they've had an arcing of 400Kv cables maybe they didn't have enough spare generation online to keep the grid working as it should?

[tggzzz]

The what and why of a similar event https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/855767/e3c-gb-power-disruption-9-august-2019-final-report.pdf

More discussion in the earlier thread on this subject https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/power-cut-in-spain-and-portugal/msg5897022/#msg5897022

[Drachenfels]

The only problems with the weather I have come across is line clashing in the wind and sagging due to ice or expansion in extreme heat. Never heard of frequrncy shifting due to heat or cold, well not at low frequency of 50HZ.

Maybe they weren't using TXCO's?

Or on a more serious note, maybe someone was spoofing GPS?
Would that be detectable?

[johansen]

Some speculation that enough solar tripped offline to cause the frequency to drop fast enough to trigger additional generation to trip offline because they have a rate of change of frequency tripwire...

[brucehoult]

I didn't know DC used like that for very long distances but they don't say how many volts like they do the AC ones.

Here in New Zealand there is a high voltage DC line from Benmore hydroelectric power station in the South Island to the Haywards substation just north of Wellington in the North Island. The total length of the HVDC link is 610 kilometers with 40 km of that being submarine cables across Cook Strait. The line is ±350 kV and has 1200 MW capacity. When built in 1965 (just 600 MW then) it was reportedly the world’s largest and longest, with the world’s largest submarine cable.

[tatel]

I just travelled about 400 kms from Catalonia to Basque Country. Departure at about 13:30, almost an hour after outage began. Arrival at 18:30

Temperature variations? Bollocks. Very nice spring weather, About 20-25ºC everywhere. There are much more variations in summer. I did go from the mediterranean basin to the atlantic coast. Usually this allows you see wide weather variations, usually atlantic coast is rainy and mediterranean basin is sunny. Today it was exactly the same weather in both departure and destination. I would bet temperature variations would have been much greater in say, last August, when we were near 45ºC for almost two weeks, over 20 ºC at night, and any roof or metallic structure under the sun would have easily been over 70-80ºC

Wind? Bollocks. Air speed indicators where hanging vertically all along the highway. Windmills couldn't work and, trust me, north half of Spain is were windmills can work. Southern half is for PV. There are a lot of windmills along the route I did, all of them were stopped.

At half the distance I stopped to take a short rest. There I encountered three workers of ENDESA, one of the main electicity providers. They were waiting to be ordered to put that part of the grid up again. They told me the cause of the outage was a fire in southern France. The place was unpowered -no coffee, sorry. This was about 15:30 or 16:00 in a pretty rural zone south of the Central Pyrenean range, near one of the main conection between Iberian and French grids.

Short after that I was able to get into contact with the fellows at my destination via telegram app. I have been told at my destination near Donostia (San Sebastian) outage lasted less than an hour.

Internet obviously works but at about 22 -22:30 I was still unable to get in contact with my mother at departure point via cell phone.

Now what really happened is unknown to me but what the ENDESA workers told me seems to have been confirmed afterwards by quite a few different sources. But it could have been disinformation. I didn't see that fire. So please feel free to speculate.

The only thing I know for sure is The Guardian is full of shit, and portuguese energy officials seem to be dumb as dirt, probably because they are not technicians but politicians. The same in every country, but portuguese seem to be the only ones that got an overdose of LSD.

[coppercone2]

I think its scary that there is a something that we have as little control and knowledge of as HV electricity, and how little money we put into electricity (cost savings) and that people are jumping the gun.

Most engineers never got to play/work/design with a power source that is more then maybe 3000 WATTS (at any voltage, usually at the kV's it won't be more then like 100 watts) and then suddenly there is experts coming out of the woods on high voltage transmission lines... that probobly never put up anything taller then a mailbox or buried something more then a foot deep!

Atmospheric conditions are like a punch lines in joke, but look at Texas... a few degrees took the state off line.

I bet nature did some thing some design oversight guy said "that will never happen in the risk matrix, don't plan for that\"


Luckily I had a few nights reading about telegraph wire and I realized basically every long wire run is damn complicated and that this whole conspiracy is related to idiots running amok when some complicated stuff broke because its basically impossible to build at reasonable cost for what it does at the electrical rates they want to pay. I believe it has something to do with dielectric drift and phase imbalance (when they talk about balance I think its relate d to phase match). They basically seem to have RLC with some mechanical controls for everything, which goes haywire with parts drift.. its not like there is a fast op amp in there to compensate

long wire = transmission line type stuff , which means idiots think its no different then a 6 foot extension cord and think every technical explanation sounds insane.... very typical to assume that there is zero complex problems involved with scaling something. ! boom

same kind of amusement like a cabinet maker deciding to make a giant terrace and patio outside of his house because he has it all figured out lol

[David Hess]

From what little knowledge I have about causes behind grid blackouts, it's a mismatch between generation and demand.
Apparently Spain recently ran the whole country on renewables on the 16th, maybe related? - https://www.threads.com/@earthlyeducation/post/DI0JNWSRrop/wow-spains-grid-ran-entirely-on-renewable-energy-for-the-first-time-on-april-16-

If the grid frequency started oscillating up and down too much, then it was because they couldn't match the generation and load closely enough. If they've had an arcing of 400Kv cables maybe they didn't have enough spare generation online to keep the grid working as it should?

That could have been also.  Maybe saying it was weather related was because too much wind generation failed at the same time with calm winds, and without the power the grid frequency went out of tolerance with other generation sources disconnecting.  We will just have to wait for better news.

[coppercone2]

I can't see how coronal discharge could, itself, create an "imbalance in frequency".  Frequency is a function of all of the generators on the network.

Well, you are assuming nothing sags. What happens if it starts sagging from the load (its not ideal voltage source)


Look on a scope what happens to a DC line when you pulse load it. Suddenly your modulating the sauce. if you have a 12V battery you near short load to make it droop to say 11V then let it rise up and then short it out again. The DC will start to look like its modulated (really roughly)

If you see it drop and rise on the scope, that means its happening. Anything on that line will see a AC with a DC offset... so if you sag a AC... not much difference then sagging DC, just that is super imposed on your wave form





I am not saying I know whats happening on the power lines, but I think this is related to your question. Corona arcing certainly sounds like its a beefy load. And if its happening out there on a long run, I don't know how that complicates it, but apparantly it might. Series inductance comes to mind.



If its an ideal voltage source, obviously you can't effect anything but the current wave form without adjusting the source.  If its an ideal current source you can't do anything but disturb the voltage wave form without adjusting the source . (be it any wave function)


 Another unrelated to hard to believe thing related to 'modulation' in a different sense is the story I heard about some batteries oscillating   because of the cold. Like at fairly high frequency. Not sure if its mechanical, electrochemical, or what. I mean just chemical batteries powering a resistor light, as basic of a circuit as can be. Like literally making the bulb dim and brighten periodically, like a relaxation oscillator. IIRC some primary cell type and real cold like antarctica, alaska, siberia, etc. I don't know if this one is true, I think I saw it in some old documentry video or something.

[brucehoult]

In any case it doesn't matter, the real question is: Are you prepared to live without access to your credit cards, to not having any 240V to charge phones, tables, radios.., not be able to buy fuel for your car... and for how long?

Two weeks ago I had a 41 hour power outage as a result of ex-Cyclone Tam. In February 2 years ago I had a four day outage due to Cyclone Gabrielle.

I can easily use a generator and/or large battery to keep my fridge and computers and internet going -- I don't currently, but I've been seriously studying the market in the last week! Things have been changing very rapidly the last few years. The newish Ecoflow Delta 3 Pro (4 kWh battery, 4000W inverter, up to 2600W solar input, NZ$5600) looks quite attractive, but the Pecron E3600LFP is only slightly less capacity (3 kWh, 3600W output, 2400W solar input, NZ$2900) and seems to have all the same features at just over half the price. It can also be expanded to 15 kWh of battery even cheaper again ... NZ$1600 per 3 kWh ($533/kWh) vs NZ$4600 per Ecoflow 4 kWh extra battery ($1150/kWh).

Either of those would run anything in my house, though not all at the same time! Last year I averaged 13.7 kWh/day (570W), surprisingly maybe 1 kWh/day more in summer than winter (summer aircon, winter dehumidifier + wood fire)

Either of the above units would get me through a 6 or 8 hour blackout, or actually 18-24 hours running just the fridge, computers/internet, and lighting in one room (4.5 kWh/day, 190W).

They would also get me through the 7 AM to 9 AM and 5 PM to 9 PM periods every day when electricity is 60.58c/kWh vs 30.29c from 11 PM to 7 AM (and 36.34c 9 AM to 5 PM and 9 PM to 11 PM). That, all by itself, would save $250 of electricity charges a year which while not enough to fully justify the $2900 investment does offset it quite a lot if you want the resiliency anyway.

A generator would be cheaper if needed just for power outages, but one of these battery units would allow either running a much smaller generator (1 kW or less, <$1000), or a larger one for only a few hours a day and at the load for optimum efficiency rather than inefficiently and noisily idling most of the time.

I'm starting to see solar panels for as low as NZ$1/W or $200/m^2 ...

https://www.marine-deals.co.nz/solar-panels-chargers/voltify-mono-perc-solar-panel-200w-1480x670x30mm

... though most are closer to $1.50/W.  Internet says my location can generate 0.5 kWh/day/m^2 in mid winter and 1+ Nov-Feb in a fixed position (facing north, 35.5º (latitude) tilt) so maybe that $200 panel can generate 240 kWh/year worth $80 at off-peak daytime prices. That, again, is not enough to justify an entire $3000 setup, but it's a very nice incremental addition to a fundamentally time-shift and emergency system, with just a 2 year incremental payback period.

I'm not sure if batteries and control electronics are going to get much cheaper, but solar panels probably will.

I'm aware that doesn't fully address the question about if *everywhere* is without electricity. My normal situation is the rural areas like me lose power but cities keep it (except perhaps very briefly).

I normally buy food once a week anyway, and could if necessary live off rice and pasta and noodles for a week or two more -- I always have plenty of those. Onions and potatoes too. I normally fill my car (700 km range) once every six weeks and my 250cc motorcycle (300 km range) once every two months. The chances of both being empty if something prevents petrol stations working are low. The 5l fuel I normally have on hand for the lawn mower will half fill up the motorcycle (both use 91) -- and easily fits in my rucksack (that's how I take it to fill it ...) considerably increasing the range of the motorcycle.

[jh15]

should have had some mega battery packs online. No spin-up time.

[brucehoult]

should have had some mega battery packs online. No spin-up time.

Yes, the publicity for the first 150MW/193.5MWh Tesla battery at Hornsdale (SA) said it adds 2,000 MWs of artificial inertia to the system. This is about double the inertia a 150MW thermal power station would provide, or four times a 150MW hydro station.

[5U4GB]

Some speculation that enough solar tripped offline

I'm waiting for the speculation about a Chinese freighter missing one of its anchors...

[Coordonnée_chromatique]

“Due to the variation of the temperature, the parameters of the conductor change slightly,” said Taco Engelaar, managing director at Neara, a software provider to energy utilities. “It creates an imbalance in the frequency.”
If there is no insulation the main parameters are length and resistance.

[johansen]

“Due to the variation of the temperature, the parameters of the conductor change slightly,” said Taco Engelaar, managing director at Neara, a software provider to energy utilities. “It creates an imbalance in the frequency.”
If there is no insulation the main parameters are length and resistance.

More nonsense

[RoGeorge]

There is already another 3 pages topic about the Spain and Portugal power fail:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/power-cut-in-spain-and-portugal/

[Siwastaja]

I think there will be two separate directions to investigate: what was the original trigger to failure, and why it escalated into such widespread blackout.

[JohanH]

It's not just nonsense. Large temperature variations could through multiple factors make the grid unstable, depending on demand, load conditions and imbalance. But, the largest problem is that Spain relies on 70% wind and solar and only on a fraction with dispatchable spinning generation. Too little inertia to compensate, they need more stable generators (nuclear, thermal), synchronous condensors or other synthetic rotational mass (flywheels, or just motor/generators fed by the grid for stabilization). That's what stabilizes the grid. Solar and wind should have some battery storage also to compensate.

[jonovid]

 electric grid has become way too complex.  the Swiss cheese failure model has more holes

[Jeroen3]

Though it's okay to often be skeptical, I suspect there are very few actual HV transmission line experts on this forum. I'm not one of those.
I work on LV producers. (the rotating versions)

HV transmission line networks are really complicated. Think about your average EMC lab struggles, but then it costs millions.
Many components are simulated and factors are accounted for. But it's not as simple as throwing a cable over some poles and hook it up to some HV transformers. And adding a lot of synchronous inverters also complicates things in ways people are still discovering.

Though, "atmospheric induced oscillations" do sound like a fairy tale. You must remember that wind rain and ice also can cause problems to the lines. Also remember that April is often a month with high insolation and relatively cold temperatures.

If you do get oscillations in the power grid, be it due to atmospheric conditions or a step response due to a link disconnecting, if you do not have enough compensation, I can see it fail. Even in large installations on ships oscillations between transformers is something they worry about.
I also know there is growing demand for synchronous condensers for grid stability, since inverters do mess up the grid in some ways.

As always with situations like this there is a swiss cheese model. Multiple things need to go wrong for system to collapse.
I suspect these atmospheric conditions on their own are not much of a problem and have been observed and studies, I see there are also several youtube video's of wobbling lines.

I suspect entsoe wil publish a detailed report eventually. Maybe Grady will even make a video about it.

[Andy Chee]

Corona arcing certainly sounds like its a beefy load.

Like literally making the bulb dim and brighten periodically, like a relaxation oscillator.

My immediate thought was exactly this.  The corona discharge was acting like a relaxation oscillator, whose oscillation frequency was detected by a protection circuit somewhere. 

When that first protection circuit trips, it is more than capable of initiating a cascade of trips.

Of course, we're talking about AC power grid, rather than DC as used in a relaxation oscillator.  But I think the analogy still works.

[EEVblog]

There is already another 3 pages topic about the Spain and Portugal power fail:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/power-cut-in-spain-and-portugal/

Thanks, I'll lock this one then, please use the above thread.

[Siwastaja]

The Guardian article is a funny piece of word salad but I guess this caters to some group of "information"-hungry laymen, maybe the lowest 10% of the bell curve.

You don't really need to be a power system specialist to see they just put random words together and none of it makes any technical sense.

[EEVblog]

The two existing threads are now merged into this one thread.