European Union, member states and Agencies

[SolarisKenzo]

Yesterday the entire iberian area of the EU power grid was hit by a massive power outage that caused a blackout that affected more than 55 million people and lasted more than half-a-day.
What is particularly sinister is the fact that there is no official explanation yet of what were the causes of the worst blackout in the recent history of Europe.

Apparently the grid just simultaneously collapsed and left the entire iberian peninsula out of power, even tho there was no lack of energy production and operative reserve margin was wide.
At 12:38 yesterday, after major outage started, emergency systems automatically disconnected Spain from the European grid. The iberian peninsula was cut off from continental power production to avoid a broader outage.

Russian-linked cyber groups made claims but there was no official comment from EU commission or the spanish government.

Iberian peninsula hit by massive blackout and left in the dark - Euractiv

No signs of a cyber attack have been identified so far, according to the Portuguese National Cybersecurity Centre.

www.euractiv.com

 

[kato]

Russian-linked cyber groups made claims but there was no official comment from EU commission or the spanish government.

Spain has by now stated that they see no indication of a cyberattack either.

I've seen two other theories floated so far. One, coming from Portugal's power grid operator, is that the outage was caused by "induced atmospheric vibration", of course in the Spanish section of the network, not theirs. Scientists are fairly cautious about that theory so far. The other one - also coming from the Portuguese operator - is that a fire on a high-voltage line between Narbonne and Perpignan in France running north of the Pyrenees may have caused the cascading emergency shutdowns, which has been denied by French operators.

 

[John Fedup]

The other possible cause is one or more people really stuffed up.

 

[kato]

Greenland had a telephone and internet outage at the same time btw, which is actually connected.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/greenland-satellite-services-disrupted-after-spanish-power-blackout-2025-04-29/

Reason being that their satellite telephony operator uses ground stations in the Canary Islands - actually quite a lot of sat downlink for Europe goes through those, although in government applications there are usually redundant other options. Unlike what the operator states the Canary Islands themselves were of course not directly affected by the blackout as they are not on the same energy grid. Instead it was the subsea communication from the Canary Islands over to Spain that was affected as the network attachment points on the other end were without power.

Which probably tells us more than we want to know about infrastructure redundancy and emergency power backups in that regard in Spain.

 

[swerve]

Greenland had a telephone and internet outage at the same time btw, which is actually connected.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/greenland-satellite-services-disrupted-after-spanish-power-blackout-2025-04-29/

Reason being that their satellite telephony operator uses ground stations in the Canary Islands - actually quite a lot of sat downlink for Europe goes through those, although in government applications there are usually redundant other options. Unlike what the operator states the Canary Islands themselves were of course not directly affected by the blackout as they are not on the same energy grid. Instead it was the subsea communication from the Canary Islands over to Spain that was affected as the network attachment points on the other end were without power.

Which probably tells us more than we want to know about infrastructure redundancy and emergency power backups in that regard in Spain.

Indeed. Scarily fragile!

 

[Feanor]

Greenland had a telephone and internet outage at the same time btw, which is actually connected.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/greenland-satellite-services-disrupted-after-spanish-power-blackout-2025-04-29/

Reason being that their satellite telephony operator uses ground stations in the Canary Islands - actually quite a lot of sat downlink for Europe goes through those, although in government applications there are usually redundant other options. Unlike what the operator states the Canary Islands themselves were of course not directly affected by the blackout as they are not on the same energy grid. Instead it was the subsea communication from the Canary Islands over to Spain that was affected as the network attachment points on the other end were without power.

Which probably tells us more than we want to know about infrastructure redundancy and emergency power backups in that regard in Spain.

Infrastructure redundancy or lack thereof. I'd be curious to know how many homes in Spain or Portugal have a generator for such occasions, and how many could cook a meal without power.

 

[swerve]

Generators - bugger-all.
Could cook without power - barbecues are common in both countries, especially in rural areas. People living in flats in cities, though . . . .

And there's always gas, but from the figures I've found that's pretty rare in Portugal, & maybe a third of households in Spain, & I presume most are mains gas, so would depend on electric pumps.

 

[Feanor]

Generators - bugger-all.
Could cook without power - barbecues are common in both countries, especially in rural areas. People living in flats in cities, though . . . .

And there's always gas, but from the figures I've found that's pretty rare in Portugal, & maybe a third of households in Spain, & I presume most are mains gas, so would depend on electric pumps.

Yeah, it's the urban areas my mind immediately went to. Europe doesn't have the suburban sprawl of North America and while infrastructure is cheaper and more effective in denser areas, it's typically fairly more centralized.

 

[John Fedup]

Big ice storm in Ontario several weeks ago. Power was out for 3-14 days in many rural areas. My brother got a dual fuel portable generator which allowed hookup to the NG supply normally used for his barbeque. There were so many trees down on the roads and it was impossible to drive to the gas station.

 

[SolarisKenzo]

Big ice storm in Ontario several weeks ago. Power was out for 3-14 days in many rural areas. My brother got a dual fuel portable generator which allowed hookup to the NG supply normally used for his barbeque. There were so many trees down on the roads and it was impossible to drive to the gas station.

Unfortunately it would be impossibile to have generators or supplies if you live in a 10 million people city.
Even the most rural areas in western Europe are densely populated...

If you exclude Scandinavia and some mountain areas in Spain, urbanization is just too heavy to think of an american-style "home emergency supplies" policy...



A 12 hours blackout, fairly common event in most of the world, is a disaster here...