At 12:30 local time on Monday the power came out. After the trains of Spain and Portugal, planes and lights suddenly stopped working.
Reports have appeared People got stuck in the elevatorsAnd the live data of Google maps showed traffic jams in enormous cities, including Madrid and Barcelona, when they were directed. The main airports warned passengers from delays due to blackout. His cause is still unknown. It is estimated that the blackout influenced the whole of Portugal and Spain and tiny regions in France.
“Light lights do not work. The streets are chaotic because there is an officer at each pass,” says Gustavo, who lives in Madrid. “Water does not reach the apartments at the top of the buildings, because the pumps are electric, and very few open stores only accept cash.”
It is a nightmare script of an electric engineer, says Paul Cuffe, assistant to Professor School of Electrical & Electronic Engineering at the University College Dublin. “The reason why we do not have widespread failures is that system operators are very conservative and very proactive in using large safety margins to make sure that this will not happen,” he says. Engineers plan to fail in network or violent consumer demands that could destabilize the power supply. “These things are unusual, but for an energy engineer a latent threat that this happens always exists.”
Spanish electricity operator Red Eléctrica He said in the post on x Bandia power in Cataluña and in the north -eastern part; Vasco, Galice, La Rioja, Asturias, Navarra, The Léon. Extreme in the east; And Andalusia in the south.
Experts believe that restoring the net in both countries may take a few hours to several days, depending on the area. They say that although the net is spare, rescue services will probably be a priority over a stable internet connection.
Cuffe says that there is a well -practiced sequence of steps that are now happening. They will do the so -called “black start” – a process that gradually connects energy stations to create a working net again. Electrical delivery and demand must be balanced to avoid further darkens, which means that energy stations are available on the Internet, only parts of the grid can be delivered with them, and the country gradually powers, step by step. He explains that the network operator should exist a team that plans and identified which generators will bring online first.
“You should predict any failure that can happen and you should survive each of them,” says Cuffe. From the control room, engineers should be able to determine what parts of the net they work, so they will not fly blind – but it will still take some time.
“Even with a completely fit grid to do this black start, it can take 12 hours or 16 hours. You have to do it sequentially, and it takes a lot of time. I am sure that engineers in swarm cars throughout the place, trying it all happened.