General blackout in the Iberian peninsula

Today's episode of "Malfunction or Moscow?"
- Auto-translated:
  15:31 : Ribera says that nothing points to the blackout in Spain and Portugal being intentional
  The vice president of the European Commission (EC) for the Clean Transition, Teresa Ribera, says that the blackout recorded in Spain and Portugal is one of the "most important" in recent years and points out that nothing allows us to think that it has been intentional. "There is nothing that allows us to make us think that there is anything intentional," Ribera also said in statements to the press. (EFE)
  Speculation is fun, but ... :)
  
  Thanks! Yeah it's important to stick to the evidence. Otherwise it'll seem like cyber attacks are much more prevalent than they actually are which helps Putin. But it's hard not to have that initial reaction when hearing about fires and blackouts in Europe lately.
- And introducing guest star ".... Washington!?"
  
  I wouldn't rule out Beijing either. They always got a folding chair somewhere.
- Both Spanish and Portugese officals have been talking about the possibility of a cyber attack. The fact that hours later we do not know what happened makes that unforunatly a possibility.
  
  I've also seen resports from credible sources discounting that possibility. So it's probably wise not to jump to conclusions.

The entire peninsula has no power at all? How on earth does that happen?
I hope everyone's safe.
- Electricity network requires that production and consumption are always equal. If there is too little production, the frequency (Hz) goes down and if too little consumption, the frequency goes up. If frequency goes too far every electric device pretty much breaks.
  This is why there is automation in the network that tries to balance the network (reserve production and consumption). BUT if shit hits the fan, and frequency goes too bad, it automatically takes load off or production off the network. This often causes domino effect, you take load off, which causes over production, and again you take production off and loop is ready. In minutes the whole network falls like domino blocks, one by one.
  There was lots of luck (and probably skill and preparation) that they were able to stop it. Main land Europe from Portugal to Turkey is one big network.
  Cold starting whole Europe would have taken week. You need to start small islands, and connect them together slowly. Balancing load and production.
  Source: I work in electricity production and distribution.
  
  Main land Europe from Portugal to Turkey is one big network.
  The connection between the Iberian peninsula and the rest of Europe isn't all that high-capacity. That's been a known weakness in the grid for a long time.
- We are. But thank you for the concern.
- Europe has a highly interconnected grid. Usually that works in everyone's favor by providing much better stability than smaller grids. It appears there are ways to take down the entire grid too though.
  
  Extreme weather phenomenon. Something about a wave reveberation.

Whatever the cause, this doesn’t look good. About 60 million people without power.
At least in Valencia there’s cell service, as I was able to WhatsApp some family there to check on them.
- Some cell towers have battery backups.

I am in southern Spain right now. Power came back about 30 minutes ago.
It is interesting how quiet a city can be.
- Without cars cities are pretty quiet
  
  Right, and quite pretty!
  @drivingcrooner @Saleh

Some data carriers with difficultues and broadcasting stations worked but on the street level trains, metros and traffic lights are still off in many places after 10 hours.
The Spanish and Portuguese presidents are saying that they don’t dismiss any hypothesis, but the only info beoadcasted through the news were that there was an overload in some point of the grid that created a domino effect and left all the system without voltage
- I don't think Spain has a president. It is a kingdom
  Edit: I stand corrected. They call the leaders of goverments presidents.
  
  You are right, of course. But the Spanish PM is called ‘President of the government’, and informally, ‘President’.
  
  Spain is a parliamentary monarchy, the King is the head of the Estate and a symbolic figure but doesn’t have power over the Parliament. In Spain we don’t use the title “prime minister” we have a President of the government and a president for each of the 16 autonomic regions (similar to federated estates).

Damn squirrels
- After the apocalypse, one of the few surviving humans will find a stepdown station with a fried squirrel in it.
- I laughed...

Power cut chaos in Spain and Portugal caused by 'rare' atmospheric phenomenon, says operator

A cyberattack? We will know, in time. For now, this is an ongoing issue and a Carrington event is equally possible. Or, just a human error. Look for past outages, it could happen: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_major_power_outages
- I think it would be more widespread if it was a true Carrington event. Might still be a mini one. Actually kind of rooting for this to be the case because then the only bad actors are the politicians and power company administrators that have ignored the warnings. Might lead to reforms worldwide.
  
  It would depend on where it was solar noon at the time the CME hit. But there haven't been any massive CMEs (Carrington size) anyway, so whatever the cause was, it had nothing to do with solar activity.
- That's not the way a grid would fail during a Carrington event: you'd see big induced voltages along an east-west line. What happened in this case were fluctuations without any notable geographical alignment.
  Anyway you can always check space weather at https://weather.metoffice.gov.uk/specialist-forecasts/space-weather
  I give this UK Met Office link because the US center, NOAA SWPC, may be subject to attack by MAGA fanatics. The US and the UK are the only western countries with 24/7 space weather operations centers. There's another one in China but (not surprisingly) their area of interest for geographic impacts is China.
  There's only medium space weather activity at the moment, which is about as quiet as things get at this active phase of the solar cycle.
  I'd say that we're still in the nobody knows stage on what the cause of the grid outage is, though the two main theories are a cyber-attack or anomalous thermal fluctuations causing instability in long transmission lines. It's probably best to withhold judgement until people who know what they're doing have looked into it more.
  
  Thanks!!!!!
- Canada would be more susceptible to that than Spain. Also, there were no large CMEs in the last few days.
- There has been no space weather event remotely close to a Carrington one

I'm just visiting the Algarve.
Luckily I found some store that had a free open wifi network (they had a server room so still had power). There were people lining up to use payphones (interestingly they still have them here).
Otherwise, no wifi, no data, no phone network, so no information on the whole situation. Can't pay by card. Had a bag of chips for dinner because I can't cook. Couldn't book accommodation or a bus. Shops used pen, paper and calculator but took only cash. People barely have cash at hand and ATMs were out too.
I don't know what I could've done without money if this would have lasted even longer.