Good morning. Well who would have thunk it. It all went tits up in Spain and Portugal last night didn't it. Cities and towns paralysed, no-one going anywhere. No electricity, mobile phones not working. Lights going out. Can't go shopping. Cash machines not working. Trains stopped. Flights grounded. Roads gridlocked. Generators being used to support emergency services. Panic buying in shops where people have cash. And they are not saying how it might have happened. What caused it? Cyber attack maybe? Temperatures too hot, cables can't cope?
I am not surprised. They will lie their way out of it I suppose. Wasn't me guv. It will happen again and again. It's all part of the grand plan of course. Maybe this is a wake up call. Maybe people will think about changing their habits. Maybe they will chuck out their smartphones, and maybe people will take to walking to work, or maybe pigs will fly.
Where are my trolls by the way? Those people who insult me, criticise me, and even swear at me. The nitpickers who just lurv to cause disruption. It's gone quiet on here, not that I am complaining. I just wonder if they are picking on someone else, or have they retreated and regrouped into their own safe spaces.
Anyway, sunny morning. Make the most of it before they start tinkering to bring the clouds back.
Thanks for popping in. Catch ya later. Toodle pip. ilona
From what I have read, the consensus seems to be that too much solar made the grid so unstable that slight glitches that, with gas would have been trivial, tripped out a cascading sequence of sections of the grid faster than any corrective action could be taken. End result - most of the country without power, and no doubt by next week Milibrain will be denying it ever happened.
ReplyDeleteThanks Will. Check out this man.
ReplyDeleteMichael Shellenberger
@shellenberger
Renewables don't risk blackouts, said the media. But they did and they do. The physics are simple. And now, as blackouts in Spain strand people in elevators, jam traffic, and ground flights, it's clear that too little "inertia" due to excess solar resulted in system collapse.
This is truly bananas: all of Europe appears to have been seconds away a continent-wide blackout.
The grid frequency across continental Europe plunged to 49.85 hertz — just a hair above the red-line collapse threshold.
The normal operating frequency for Europe’s power grid is 50.00 Hz, kept with an extremely tight margin of ±0.1 Hz. Anything outside ±0.2 Hz triggers major emergency actions.
If the frequency had fallen just another 0.3 Hz — below 49.5 Hz — Europe could have suffered a system-wide cascading blackout.
At that threshold, automatic protective relays disconnect major power plants, and collapse accelerates.
Michael Shellenberger
@shellenberger
·
Apr 28
Six days ago, the media celebrated a significant milestone: Spain’s national grid operated entirely on renewable energy for the first time during a weekday.
At 12:35 pm today local time, the lights went out across Spain and Portugal, and parts of France.
What made me snicker the most were the posts on FB. I hang out on some of the Spanish beach pages. Who goes on holiday with no cash? Turns out a lot of people!
ReplyDeleteWho takes a baby on holiday to a foreign country, takes no cash, and in a power outage is upset that they can't find their favourite UK brand of baby food.
These people breed and walk amongst us.
I don't do much on facebuck so I am unaware of what the wider audience is saying. But yes, some people do get their knickers in a twist, and have no idea how to make things easier for themselves. They believe that handing over the responsibility of their personal finances to the big corporations will solve all their problems. In reality putting all your eggs in one basket is a daft idea.
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