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Interestingly, the recent deadly floods were also blamed on a rare atmospheric event. Sadly, it seems official information during such events is just as rare.

Interestingly, the recent deadly floods were also blamed on a rare atmospheric event. Sadly, it seems official information during such events is just as rare. No power is unusual, but happens, but no mobile phones, no internet, no emergency broadcasts, SMS or otherwise, just complete silence for hours... and then you hear it might be multi-country wide. Pretty scary. You assume the worst, right? What was also scary to see was how little cash people have. The cash machines went down, queues formed, banks closed, POS terminals failed, and suddenly the smart-world we are building was looking very dumb. Imagine not being able to buy basic essentials like medicines, food and water. Hopefully more people will reject cards / digital money as a result of this crisis. But I also wonder what contribution the massive new solar farms and wind farms had on this crisis. That supply must be quite variable, and subject to rare atmospheric events such as clouds... Sorry to rant, it was a pretty upsetting experience.

TheOtherHobbes 1y ago
I did indeed fear the worst, and did a WWIII top-up shop to add some extra essentials to my usual disaster prep. Luckily not needed, but an interesting experience. We were pretty lucky here. The local big box was running on emergency power from its solar roof, and ATMs and card payments were still working - much to my surprise. Smaller stores were taking cash and the larger smaller stores were limiting access and sending customers around individually with staff with torches. A lot of people were obviously prep-shopping, but it was controlled and pretty relaxed. I even had 5G of a sort - intermittent and slow, but I could just about keep up with news updates. In the end it was a 12 hour blackout, which was more of a major inconvenience than the catastrophe that would have happened if it had taken days.
- whitehexagon 1y ago
  I was also doing my top-up shop, and was surprised how orderly the shelves were being stripped of water and essentials. No panic, maybe some nervous tension, but otherwise could have been a long weekend big shop for most people. I realised my regular disaster prep was lacking in a few areas. I especially want a decent portable radio, and a set of walkie-talkies, but everything looks pretty gimmicky from a quick search. Any reccomendations? I got access to a radio after 3 hours, not that there was anything official at that point, but it was enough to switch down a gear.
felipeerias 1y ago
What I've been reading from multiple sources is that the electrical grid was in a brittle state because of the large percentage of solar and wind energy, as these sources are intermittent and unable to maintain the required AC frequency on their own. Apparently, it would be possible to make a renewable-heavy grid more resilient to these kinds of events, but Spain had not invested enough on the necessary infrastructure. At the moment of the blackout, ~70% of the energy was being produced by solar and wind when sudden events caused a large loss of power and that brittle grid was knocked down as a whole. There is a huge political row at the moment because the government has encouraged investment in solar and wind for a long time, so they are unlikely to admit that they might have contributed to the problem. Furthermore, they have closed down and demolished the remaining coal plants, and they plan to close down all the nuclear power stations.
- skykooler 1y ago
  My understanding is that coal/nuclear/gas plants provide a certain amount of stability thanks to the rotational inertia in the turbines. It seems like a relatively inexpensive way to retain that capacity would be to keep the old turbines to function essentially as flywheels, to stabilize the grid, after the plants powering them are shut down.
- whitehexagon 1y ago
  Wow, 70% is pretty impressive. Although everywhere I go I see huge areas of farmland being converted into privately owned giant solar farms. At least the turbines are mostly non-productive land. Of course it would be much more stable if the generation was close to consumption. But the energy companies have fought before to limit homeowner solar installations to maintain profits. The EU broke that corruption, but the local town hall is still saying I need a permission. The electric companies want me to conect to the grid, and pay for that privalage, but wont pay me for excess generation. Do these smart-meters even allow 'islanding' in such a crisis? Anyway, it seems like this incident just exposed a very big single-point-of-failure, technically, and an even bigger general failure of modern politics.

TheOtherHobbes 1y ago

I did indeed fear the worst, and did a WWIII top-up shop to add some extra essentials to my usual disaster prep. Luckily not needed, but an interesting experience. We were pretty lucky here. The local big box was running on emergency power from its solar roof, and ATMs and card payments were still working - much to my surprise. Smaller stores were taking cash and the larger smaller stores were limiting access and sending customers around individually with staff with torches. A lot of people were obviously prep-shopping, but it was controlled and pretty relaxed. I even had 5G of a sort - intermittent and slow, but I could just about keep up with news updates. In the end it was a 12 hour blackout, which was more of a major inconvenience than the catastrophe that would have happened if it had taken days.

whitehexagon 1y ago
I was also doing my top-up shop, and was surprised how orderly the shelves were being stripped of water and essentials. No panic, maybe some nervous tension, but otherwise could have been a long weekend big shop for most people. I realised my regular disaster prep was lacking in a few areas. I especially want a decent portable radio, and a set of walkie-talkies, but everything looks pretty gimmicky from a quick search. Any reccomendations? I got access to a radio after 3 hours, not that there was anything official at that point, but it was enough to switch down a gear.

felipeerias 1y ago

What I've been reading from multiple sources is that the electrical grid was in a brittle state because of the large percentage of solar and wind energy, as these sources are intermittent and unable to maintain the required AC frequency on their own. Apparently, it would be possible to make a renewable-heavy grid more resilient to these kinds of events, but Spain had not invested enough on the necessary infrastructure. At the moment of the blackout, ~70% of the energy was being produced by solar and wind when sudden events caused a large loss of power and that brittle grid was knocked down as a whole. There is a huge political row at the moment because the government has encouraged investment in solar and wind for a long time, so they are unlikely to admit that they might have contributed to the problem. Furthermore, they have closed down and demolished the remaining coal plants, and they plan to close down all the nuclear power stations.

skykooler 1y ago
My understanding is that coal/nuclear/gas plants provide a certain amount of stability thanks to the rotational inertia in the turbines. It seems like a relatively inexpensive way to retain that capacity would be to keep the old turbines to function essentially as flywheels, to stabilize the grid, after the plants powering them are shut down.
whitehexagon 1y ago
Wow, 70% is pretty impressive. Although everywhere I go I see huge areas of farmland being converted into privately owned giant solar farms. At least the turbines are mostly non-productive land. Of course it would be much more stable if the generation was close to consumption. But the energy companies have fought before to limit homeowner solar installations to maintain profits. The EU broke that corruption, but the local town hall is still saying I need a permission. The electric companies want me to conect to the grid, and pay for that privalage, but wont pay me for excess generation. Do these smart-meters even allow 'islanding' in such a crisis? Anyway, it seems like this incident just exposed a very big single-point-of-failure, technically, and an even bigger general failure of modern politics.