Spain and Portugal maxi-blackout

c1vhosting · 11:37AM

Maxi Blackout of whole Spain and Portugal, do you have any update?

Nyr · 11:42AM

Government is not saying anything about the causes, but blackout has been going for like one hour and a half at this point.

Still have 5G, for now, probably not for long. Wish us luck.

Neoon · 11:58AM

Madrid and Portugal still up here, until now.
Is Mobile still working for you guys?

yoursunny · 12:08PM

Power company is hosting their control software in C1V scammer basement.
Due to I/O wait, the software cannot update electric substations fast enough, which triggers protection shutdown and causes outage.

mizzik · 12:09PM

https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2025/04/28/spain-portugal-and-parts-of-france-hit-by-massive-power-outage

Nyr · 12:12PM

@Neoon said:
Madrid and Portugal still up here, until now.
Is Mobile still working for you guys?

Very slow, but yes. Not for everyone, some friends are already offline.

Supposedly power is being restored in some parts of the north according to the operator. Zero info from the government.

Amadex · 12:23PM

@yoursunny said:
Power company is hosting their control software in C1V scammer basement.
Due to I/O wait, the software cannot update electric substations fast enough, which triggers protection shutdown and causes outage.

As of February 9th, 2025, C1V hosting has been acquired by Lumanex, a decision that reinforces our commitment to providing reliable, quality hosting

So they are not anymore in the basement, they moved to living room.

rubenmdh · 12:59PM

They just said full power restore will take from 6 to 10 hours. LTE/5G seems to work in some places.

Nyr · 1:11PM

@rubenmdh said:
They just said full power restore will take from 6 to 10 hours. LTE/5G seems to work in some places.

Yes, this is the official info from the national grid operator.

As for the cause, it has been a sudden surge on the demand VS generation, as per the operator, Red Eléctrica Española.

The Spanish power grid already had dire constraints during the last few years given the increase in dependency from renewables, and there have been many forced industry stops for a while, to avoid this... until now.

Nyr · 1:30PM

Power is being restored to parts of Spain. Still not here.

DrNutella · 1:39PM

Hope everyone is ok

Nyr · 3:16PM

Power was restored briefly in my area, but is now gone again. Fiber to the home also down.

4+ hours of outage is crazy, big supermarket chains are closed, rail public transit closed, traffic is a mess with no traffic lights, tunnels in the main Madrid roads are now closed, hospitals in emergency-only mode... interesting day.

ahnlak · 3:34PM

Power was out for about an hour in San Sebastian, mobile was spotty for a little while after but been fine since. Sounds like we got off lightly.

Nyr · 3:57PM

Both power and fiber are back for me, big parts of Spain are still off but being restored apparently.

Apparently this has been caused by a super rare meteorological occurrence? Still not much info.

Chievo · 4:21PM

Com Valenciana location. Just from now we have some electricity.

Chievo · 4:24PM

No phone coverage at all

Chievo · 4:34PM

@Nyr said:
Power was restored briefly in my area, but is now gone again. Fiber to the home also down.

4+ hours of outage is crazy, big supermarket chains are closed, rail public transit closed, traffic is a mess with no traffic lights, tunnels in the main Madrid roads are now closed, hospitals in emergency-only mode... interesting day.

We have survived this as well. Now time to cancel all appointments for tomorrow.

Nyr · 4:37PM

Madrid is still without electricity, as it is a region with a lot of demmand and virtually zero generation I guess it will be the last restored.

Anyone with servers online there is running on diesel at this point.

treesmokah · 5:04PM

@Nyr said: Anyone with servers online there is running on diesel at this point.

Digital Realty Madrid is having severe issues right now, its offline for some time now. So are big providers there, Datapacket, M247, etc
Apparently they are now having issues binging fiber up, I guess there is a switch in the path that wasn't accounted for power redundancy. No power of course, everything running on generators.

Not_Oles · 5:05PM

@Nyr said: Apparently this has been caused by a super rare meteorological occurrence? Still not much info.

A bit more detail via https://www.newsweek.com/europe-power-outage-cause-atmospheric-phenomenon-2065094 :

"REN told Sky News on Monday . . . that as a result of extreme temperature variations in Spain, there were "anomalous oscillations" in extremely high-voltage lines. REN said this is known as "induced atmospheric variation," which in turn can lead to oscillations. This caused synchronization failures between systems, leading to successive disturbances across the European network, which is interconnected."

treesmokah · 5:08PM

@Nyr said: Apparently this has been caused by a super rare meteorological occurrence? Still not much info.

This sounds like a such a bullshit. I would be skeptical what Government tells you too.
I doubt we are going to find out what really happened anytime soon.

Its a fuckup of a colossal scale, and puts EU Government in a very unfavorable position given their push to centralized and unstable "renewable resources".

I think it was either related to "green" power grid, or an attack.

@Not_Oles said: "REN told Sky News on Monday . . . that as a result of extreme temperature variations in Spain, there were "anomalous oscillations" in extremely high-voltage lines. REN said this is known as "induced atmospheric variation," which in turn can lead to oscillations. This caused synchronization failures between systems, leading to successive disturbances across the European network, which is interconnected."

Sounds like something you would read on paranormal activity board.

Me, reading it.

Nyr · 6:15PM

@treesmokah said: Digital Realty Madrid is having severe issues right now, its offline for some time now. So are big providers there, Datapacket, M247, etc
Apparently they are now having issues binging fiber up, I guess there is a switch in the path that wasn't accounted for power redundancy. No power of course, everything running on generators.

Routing in Spain has been majorly fucked up since the outage started. My ISP still does not have routes to the entire internet, I am posting this via VPN.

yoursunny · 6:18PM

How many tubs of ice cream have melted during this power outage?

Alyx · 6:34PM

It's always surprising how much effect a power outage has, considering everything important is supposed to be protected by UPSs and generators.
It feels like there's always some switch somewhere that gets forgotten

mikho · 7:05PM

"REN told Sky News on Monday . . . that as a result of extreme temperature variations in Spain, there were "anomalous oscillations" in extremely high-voltage lines. REN said this is known as "induced atmospheric variation," which in turn can lead to oscillations. This caused synchronization failures between systems, leading to successive disturbances across the European network, which is interconnected."

This sounds like something made up from a BOFH excuse generator.

https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~ballard/bofh/

havoc · 7:51PM

From what I've heard thus far seems it may be related to ~60% of generation being solar. I can see that being problematic if you don't have very good stabilisation

Nyr · 9:19PM

@havoc said:
From what I've heard thus far seems it may be related to ~60% of generation being solar. I can see that being problematic if you don't have very good stabilisation

Based on what someone with insider knowledge has personally told me, this is apparently a very viable explanation. Apparently there was a similar, big scale incident in Germany in 2006 involving a boat which affected large parts of Europe but was resolved within minutes.

Maybe tomorrow I will be able to provide more details from this insider, because sadly and unsurprisingly our politicians and national media are being useless at that.

havoc · 9:25PM

@Nyr said: Maybe tomorrow I will be able to provide more details from this insider, because sadly and unsurprisingly our politicians and national media are being useless at that.

Yeah - I saw part of the prez (?) speech which asked people to not speculate...which I guess is fair.

Silver lining is at least this will wake everyone up about grid stability & it didn't take down the entire EU grid. Restarting Spain's grid is easier with a big grid next door to jumpstart off. If everything went down this would take way longer to restore

Spain and Portugal maxi-blackout

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