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At 12:30 pm with local time on Monday, power went out. Throughout Spain and Portugal trains, planes and traffic lights suddenly stopped working.
Reports appeared to People are stuck in the liftAnd Google Maps direct data showed traffic jams in large cities, including Madrid and Barcelona, as they became blocked. The main airports warned passengers for delays due to interruption. Its cause is still unknown. The interruption is estimated to have affected the entirety of Portugal and Spain and small regions in France.
“Traffic lights are not working. The roads are chaotic because there is an officer at every intersection,” says Gustavo, who lives in Madrid. “The water does not reach the housing at the top of the buildings because the pumps are electric, and very few shops that are open are just getting money.”
This is the nightmare of every electrical engineer, says Paul Cuffe, assistant professor of the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Dublin University College. “The reason we do not have widespread interruptions all the time is because system operators are very conservative and very proactive for using large safety margins to make sure it does not happen,” he says. Engineers plan for network failures or increased consumer demand that can destabilize the power supply. “These things are unusual, but for an energy engineer, the secret threat that happened is always there.”
Spain Red ELéCTRICA Electricity Operator said in a post on x Bandal power in Kataaluña and northeast areas; Vasco, Galice, La Rioja, Asturias, Navarra, Léon. Extreme at birth; and Andalusia in the south.
Experts believe that returning the network and running to both places can take between a few hours to several days, depending on the area. While the network is relying, emergency services are likely to be prioritized for things such as stable internet connection, they say.
There is a well -recurrent sequence of the steps now happening, says Cuffe. They will do what is called a “black start” process – a process that gradually reconnects power stations to form a functioning network again. Supply and electrical demand should be balanced to avoid further outages, which means as power stations come online, only network parts can come online with them, with the place to gradually be empowered, step by step. There must be a team within the network operator planning for this and has identified which generators to bring first online, he explains.
“You need to predict any failure that can happen and you have to survive any of them,” Cuffe says. From the control room, engineers should be able to show which parts of the network are eventually working, so they will not fly blind – but will still take time.
“Even with a completely healthy network, to make that black start can take 12 hours or 16 hours. You have to do it sequentially, and takes a long time. I’m sure there are engineers in vans that shake all over the country as we talk about doing all this happening.
