Why Spain's net zero push may be behind the mass blackouts that sparked a state of emergency and led to transport chaos, panic-buying
About half of Spain has seen power restored, while full restoration is expected to occur sometime Tuesday.
While the cause of the outages is not yet known, experts told the UK's The Daily Telegraph that both countries' increasing reliance on wind and solar had left them vulnerable to blackouts.
Turbines running on gas, coal and hydropower create inertia through the spinning parts in their generators.
Solar generators do not have spinning parts.
"In a low-inertia environment the frequency can change much faster," Energy analyst Kathryn Porter said.
"If you have had a significant grid fault in one area, or a cyber attack, or whatever it may be, the grid operators therefore have less time to react."
Former British grid operator Duncan Burt said a "high solar day" risks making the grid less stable "unless you've taken actions to mitigate that".
Spain's grid relies heavily on solar, which was providing roughly 53 per cent of the country's electricity as of noon on Monday.
A graph on Spain's electricity network website that shows power demand across the country indicated a steep drop at around 12:15 p.m. local time, from 27,500 megawatts to near 15,000, according to the Associated Press.
"Due to extreme temperature variations in the interior of Spain, there were anomalous oscillations in the very high-voltage lines, a phenomenon known as induced atmospheric vibration," REN, Portugal's grid operator, was quoted as saying.
"These oscillations caused synchronization failures between the electrical systems, leading to successive disturbances across the interconnected European network."
REN reportedly described the incident as a "rare atmospheric phenomenon." The Portuguese National Cybersecurity Center issued a statement saying there was no sign the outage was due to a cyberattack.
Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez later said a problem in the European grid that he described as a "strong oscillation" was behind the outage, but that the cause was still being determined. Spanish power distributor Red Eléctrica said that restoring power fully to the country and neighboring Portugal could take 6-10 hours.
"Red Eléctrica is working to determine the cause of this power outage and resolve the problem as soon as possible," the Prime Minister said in a post on X. "Spain has mechanisms to deal with these types of situations. Once again, I appeal to the public to cooperate with all authorities and act responsibly and civilly, as we have always done."
By 10:30 p.m. local time, Red Eléctrica had reported that over 48% of the demand had been recovered and 66% of the substation parks in the network were energized.
Video that aired on Spanish television showed people evacuating metro stations in Madrid, and empty stations with trains stopped in Barcelona. Spain's parliament also was left in the dark, public broadcaster RTVE reported.
The ATP Tour said play at the Madrid Open tennis tournament was suspended for the day due to the power outage.
In Portugal, several Lisbon subway cars were evacuated, courts stopped work and ATMs and electronic payment systems were affected.
Traffic lights in Lisbon also stopped working.
Portugal's Prime Minister Luis Montenegro said on X that authorities were working together to respond to the electrical outage affecting the country.
"We are in constant contact with security forces, civil protection, the armed forces, hospitals, fuel supply companies, to ensure responsiveness in essential infrastructures and support for those who need it," he said in a translated post.
"We are also in contact with European institutions and partners. No time to waste! Our thanks to all who are focused on these priority tasks."
Spanish airports were operating on backup electrical systems and some flights were delayed, according to Aena, the company that runs 56 airports in Spain, including Madrid and Barcelona.
Lisbon Airport said on its website that "A general power cut may cause operation constraints" and urged travelers to "Contact your airline before heading to the airport."
Both the Portuguese and Spanish governments convened emergency cabinet meetings to address the situation, according to Reuters. Residents in both countries told Sky News that they have observed people panic buying water and other supplies inside supermarkets.
Eduardo Prieto, head of operations at Red Eléctrica, told journalists it was unprecedented, calling the event "exceptional and extraordinary."
"Voltage has now been restored at substations in several areas of the north, south, and west of the Iberian Peninsula," Red Eléctrica wrote on X. "This process involves the gradual energization of the transmission grid as the generating units are connected."
"Power is now available in parts of Catalonia, Aragon, the Basque Country, Galicia, La Rioja, Asturias, Navarre, Castile and León, Extremadura, and Andalusia," it continued.
"In addition to the areas where power has already begun to be restored, others have been added in Madrid, the Valencian Community, Murcia, and Castilla-La Mancha."
"The causes are being analyzed, and all resources are being dedicated to addressing the issue," Red Eléctrica also said.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
Originally published as Why Spain, Portugal's net zero push may be behind the mass blackouts that sparked a state of emergency, transport chaos and panic-buying
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Sydney Morning Herald
2 days ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
A megaflood devastated early Sydney. An even worse catastrophe is hidden in the city's ‘bathtub'
A thousand horses drowned. Gunshots blasted throughout the night to alert rescue boats to the locations of the stranded while floodwaters nearly 20 metres high swallowed even the homes on top of hills. The deluge that almost engulfed the entire western Sydney suburb of Windsor summoned torrents that ripped away buildings, bedsteads, tables, chairs, the bodies of pigs and a child seated upon a sack of flour. The Hawkesbury-Nepean flood of 1867 killed 20 people – including 12 from the same family – and left hundreds of survivors half-naked, starving and 'paralysed' with trauma, according to newspaper reports. It's the biggest flood ever recorded in Sydney and has acted for decades as the benchmark for emergency planners for just how catastrophic a flood can be. But there are tales of an even greater deluge. First Nations oral histories spoke of a flood so great in 1780 that even the few islands of high land in Windsor spared by the 1867 flood, which 2000 people used as refuge, went underwater. 'There was a big flood before European settlement, in which the Aboriginal peoples climbed the tallest trees, but were still swept away,' said Dr Stephen Yeo, a flood risk specialist at the NSW Reconstruction Authority. Based on these anecdotes, Yeo believes the 1780 flood could have been two to three metres higher than the 1867 disaster, reaching 22.3 metres at Windsor. If verified, adding the deluge to the flood record would have profound effects on what we know about disaster risk. Based on current knowledge, for example, the 1867 flood has a one-in-500 chance of happening each year. Add in the 1780 flood and that chance jumps to one-in-200. 'Perhaps that 1867 flood actually can happen more frequently. And if the same happened again today, it would be much more catastrophic because there's so much more development in western Sydney on that vast floodplain,' Yeo said. Today a disaster on that scale would force the evacuation of 114,000 people, damage or destroy 19,000 homes, and inflict $7.5 billion in damage, according to the Reconstruction Authority. At least 2200 homes and other buildings were damaged in the 2022 Hawkesbury-Nepean flood. Verifying the 1780 flood would also raise '1-in-100-year flood' levels expected in the Hawkesbury-Nepean, which are events that have a 1 per cent chance of happening each year. These are the flood levels used to decide the height of floors for properties built in flood-prone areas. At Windsor, if the 1780 flood was indeed two metres higher than that of 1867, it would increase the expected 1-in-100-year flood level by 1.3 metres, to 18.6 metres. These estimates are crucial for emergency planning. The Hawkesbury-Nepean Valley is one of the highest-risk flood zones because it's built like a 'bathtub', with five major tributaries gushing in and narrow sandstone gorge choke points that cause floodwater to back up and rise rapidly. That's why archaeologists and river experts have hitched a ride on State Emergency Service boats to a sandy riverbank on the Nepean, about 45 minutes up into the Blue Mountains National Park from Penrith. Here the Reconstruction Authority is leading a 'paleoflood' research project, which refers to the study of past or ancient floods, to see if it can confirm stories of the 1780 flood by analysing sediment. Geomorphologist Tim Cohen, with an akubra hat and a passion for dirt, is in a square-hewn hole dug into a hill about 30 metres above the river. There are layers of dark chocolate soil and light caramel sands, with the paler layers a mark of powerful past floods that carried heavy sand high up onto land. 'Here you see a really perfect layer cake stratigraphy. So you see muds, sands, muds, sands. And the sands represent the big floods,' Cohen, an associate professor at the University of Wollongong, said. 'This could represent a flood that's 30 metres deep,' he said, gesturing to a thick sandy stripe. 'That's an extraordinary rain event. But I guess the question is, 'How extraordinary is it? How often does it happen?' ' To answer that question, Cohen and colleague Dr Daryl Lam from Water Technology are capitalising on an extraordinary quirk of physics: grains of sand keep a record of when they last saw sunlight. 'Every grain of sand is like a rechargeable battery,' Cohen said. 'When it's buried, it receives the radioactive decay of surrounding minerals, and that's the charge. And what releases the charge is sunlight.' Cohen hammers stainless-steel tubes into the sediment to collect cylinders of sand without exposing them to sunlight. Each end of the tubes is quickly covered in foil. From here, the samples go to a red-light lab, where scientists scour the sand with corrosive baths of hydrochloric acid, hydrogen peroxide and hydrofluoric acid to remove skerricks of dirt, bugs, charcoal and tree roots. What's left is pure quartz. A laser is fired at each grain, which simulates the sun and triggers the release of the radioactive 'charge' as a tiny flash of electrons measured by a photomultiplier. Back at the dig site, Cohen measures the amount of radioactive uranium, thorium and potassium in the dirt, and the level of cosmic radiation hitting the ground from space, to establish how much 'charge' the grains were receiving during their time underground. Knowing the amount of natural radiation the grains of quartz were exposed to, and how much 'charge' they released in the lab, allows the researchers to calculate how long ago the sand was buried. 'That's what we're after; when we date the time of deposition, that tells us about the time of the flood,' Cohen said. Radiocarbon dating can go back 50,000 years; this method can go back a million. Loading A flood so big it brought sediment this high would be 'nuts' but is theoretically possible, said Cohen. As flooding turns deadlier under climate change, looking back at past disasters can help us understand when and why deadly floods may strike. 'The longer your record, the better your capacity to predict the likelihood of rare extreme events,' Cohen said.
The Age
2 days ago
- The Age
A megaflood devastated early Sydney. An even worse catastrophe is hidden in the city's ‘bathtub'
A thousand horses drowned. Gunshots blasted throughout the night to alert rescue boats to the locations of the stranded while floodwaters nearly 20 metres high swallowed even the homes on top of hills. The deluge that almost engulfed the entire western Sydney suburb of Windsor summoned torrents that ripped away buildings, bedsteads, tables, chairs, the bodies of pigs and a child seated upon a sack of flour. The Hawkesbury-Nepean flood of 1867 killed 20 people – including 12 from the same family – and left hundreds of survivors half-naked, starving and 'paralysed' with trauma, according to newspaper reports. It's the biggest flood ever recorded in Sydney and has acted for decades as the benchmark for emergency planners for just how catastrophic a flood can be. But there are tales of an even greater deluge. First Nations oral histories spoke of a flood so great in 1780 that even the few islands of high land in Windsor spared by the 1867 flood, which 2000 people used as refuge, went underwater. 'There was a big flood before European settlement, in which the Aboriginal peoples climbed the tallest trees, but were still swept away,' said Dr Stephen Yeo, a flood risk specialist at the NSW Reconstruction Authority. Based on these anecdotes, Yeo believes the 1780 flood could have been two to three metres higher than the 1867 disaster, reaching 22.3 metres at Windsor. If verified, adding the deluge to the flood record would have profound effects on what we know about disaster risk. Based on current knowledge, for example, the 1867 flood has a one-in-500 chance of happening each year. Add in the 1780 flood and that chance jumps to one-in-200. 'Perhaps that 1867 flood actually can happen more frequently. And if the same happened again today, it would be much more catastrophic because there's so much more development in western Sydney on that vast floodplain,' Yeo said. Today a disaster on that scale would force the evacuation of 114,000 people, damage or destroy 19,000 homes, and inflict $7.5 billion in damage, according to the Reconstruction Authority. At least 2200 homes and other buildings were damaged in the 2022 Hawkesbury-Nepean flood. Verifying the 1780 flood would also raise '1-in-100-year flood' levels expected in the Hawkesbury-Nepean, which are events that have a 1 per cent chance of happening each year. These are the flood levels used to decide the height of floors for properties built in flood-prone areas. At Windsor, if the 1780 flood was indeed two metres higher than that of 1867, it would increase the expected 1-in-100-year flood level by 1.3 metres, to 18.6 metres. These estimates are crucial for emergency planning. The Hawkesbury-Nepean Valley is one of the highest-risk flood zones because it's built like a 'bathtub', with five major tributaries gushing in and narrow sandstone gorge choke points that cause floodwater to back up and rise rapidly. That's why archaeologists and river experts have hitched a ride on State Emergency Service boats to a sandy riverbank on the Nepean, about 45 minutes up into the Blue Mountains National Park from Penrith. Here the Reconstruction Authority is leading a 'paleoflood' research project, which refers to the study of past or ancient floods, to see if it can confirm stories of the 1780 flood by analysing sediment. Geomorphologist Tim Cohen, with an akubra hat and a passion for dirt, is in a square-hewn hole dug into a hill about 30 metres above the river. There are layers of dark chocolate soil and light caramel sands, with the paler layers a mark of powerful past floods that carried heavy sand high up onto land. 'Here you see a really perfect layer cake stratigraphy. So you see muds, sands, muds, sands. And the sands represent the big floods,' Cohen, an associate professor at the University of Wollongong, said. 'This could represent a flood that's 30 metres deep,' he said, gesturing to a thick sandy stripe. 'That's an extraordinary rain event. But I guess the question is, 'How extraordinary is it? How often does it happen?' ' To answer that question, Cohen and colleague Dr Daryl Lam from Water Technology are capitalising on an extraordinary quirk of physics: grains of sand keep a record of when they last saw sunlight. 'Every grain of sand is like a rechargeable battery,' Cohen said. 'When it's buried, it receives the radioactive decay of surrounding minerals, and that's the charge. And what releases the charge is sunlight.' Cohen hammers stainless-steel tubes into the sediment to collect cylinders of sand without exposing them to sunlight. Each end of the tubes is quickly covered in foil. From here, the samples go to a red-light lab, where scientists scour the sand with corrosive baths of hydrochloric acid, hydrogen peroxide and hydrofluoric acid to remove skerricks of dirt, bugs, charcoal and tree roots. What's left is pure quartz. A laser is fired at each grain, which simulates the sun and triggers the release of the radioactive 'charge' as a tiny flash of electrons measured by a photomultiplier. Back at the dig site, Cohen measures the amount of radioactive uranium, thorium and potassium in the dirt, and the level of cosmic radiation hitting the ground from space, to establish how much 'charge' the grains were receiving during their time underground. Knowing the amount of natural radiation the grains of quartz were exposed to, and how much 'charge' they released in the lab, allows the researchers to calculate how long ago the sand was buried. 'That's what we're after; when we date the time of deposition, that tells us about the time of the flood,' Cohen said. Radiocarbon dating can go back 50,000 years; this method can go back a million. Loading A flood so big it brought sediment this high would be 'nuts' but is theoretically possible, said Cohen. As flooding turns deadlier under climate change, looking back at past disasters can help us understand when and why deadly floods may strike. 'The longer your record, the better your capacity to predict the likelihood of rare extreme events,' Cohen said.
Perth Now
7 days ago
- Perth Now
Torrential rain leaves at least 18 dead in South Korea
At least 18 people have died in floods and landslides caused by days of torrential rain in South Korea, the government says. Nine people remained missing as of Sunday evening, the Ministry of the Interior and Safety said. At Gapyeong, some 62km northeast of the capital Seoul, some residents recalled narrow escapes from the floods after 173mm of rain deluged the area over just 17 hours on Sunday. Gapyeong was among a number of places that saw a record amount of rain in a single day and broke the previous high for national daily precipitation of 156.3mm that was set on September 30, 1998. "The ground just sank beneath me, and the water rose all the way up to my neck. Luckily, there was an iron pipe nearby. I held on to it with all my strength," said Ahn Gyeong-bun, the owner of a restaurant that was almost completely destroyed. Two people died and four were missing after a landslide engulfed homes around Gapyeong and floods swept away vehicles as of Sunday, the ministry said. For those remaining like Ahn, an uncertain future awaits. "I've run this restaurant for 10 years ... What am I supposed to do now?" said Ahn, as she stood next to the badly damaged structure of her building perched next to a still swollen river. At times breaking down in tears, the 65-year-old said several of the restaurant's refrigerators were washed away by the flood. Across South Korea, rain damage had been reported to 1999 public structures and 2238 private facilities, including farms, the interior ministry said. While the rain has eased, the national weather agency has issued a nationwide heatwave watch. South Korean President Lee Jae Myung has ordered a thorough response to the disaster, his office said. "As local heavy rains have become commonplace, customised measures based on regional characteristics are urgently needed," said Kang Yu-jung, the spokesperson for Lee's office. "If serious laxity or mistakes are found in civil servants' discipline, we will hold them accountable and thorough measures will be taken to prevent a recurrence." Lee, who took office in June, has promised to make South Korea safer and to prevent any repeat of the disasters in recent years that have often been blamed on the inadequate response by authorities.
