National power blackout emergency in Spain/Portugal

[Eric J (Viking)]

A massive power cut has hit large parts of Spain and Portugal cyberattack… 🤷‍♂️

The president of the European Council and the Portuguese prime minister say there's "no indication" of a cyber attack
The Portuguese electricity operator earlier said the outage was caused by a "rare" atmospheric phenomenon, related to variations in temperatures
The mayor of Madrid warns people to stay off the roads and only call the emergency services if it's "truly urgent"
Spain's electricity operator says some power is being restored to several parts of the Iberian peninsula - but trains won't resume today
People report driving to find open petrol stations, teaching in the dark - and trying to find beer pumps in Benidorm


https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c9wpq8xrvd9t

[Eric J (Viking)]

More here

LONDON -- Millions of people in Spain, Portugal and parts of southern France lost power on Monday following a "severe disruption" in the European electrical system, the Spanish prime minister said.

The cause of the disruption is still unknown, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said in remarks Monday evening local time.

The Spanish government said it called an emergency crisis meeting to fix the situation as soon as possible.

Red Eléctrica, the corporation that operates the national electricity grid in Spain, said it is working on restoring power to mainland Spain and Portugal.

Nearly half of the substations have power again, Red Eléctrica said in an update Monday night local time.

"Supply is being progressively restored in all electrical areas of the territory, with 45% of the substation parks of the transmission network already energized," the company said in an update.

Red Eléctrica previously said Monday afternoon that electricity should be fully restored within six to 10 hours.

The company said it was also working to provide power from generators, which is part of the procedure for restoring power supply.

https://abcnews.go.com/International...y?id=121233588

Look at this, trains stopping mid journey

https://x.com/SolanaSensei/status/19...power-blackout

[Bill Ryan]

In 10 minutes time, the Redacted team of Clayton and Natali Morris will be covering this story. They lived in Portugal for quite a while before moving back to the US a few months ago. Natali herself is partly Portuguese, and speaks the language fluently.

EUROPE'S BLACKOUT CRISIS: "Nothing works!"

https://www.youtube.com/@RedactedNews/streams



Edit to add:

Not as informative or interesting as I'd expected. Other reports, including those not yet published, may be much more detailed in their analysis of exactly what happened and why.

[Eric J (Viking)]

Panic-buying sweeps blackout-hit Spain and Portugal

And there are fears that thugs will exploit the chaos and darkness to loot shops after nightfall.

One shopper Alfonso Romay wrote on X: “It’s incredible, the collective paranoia. The power goes out for five hours, and look at the supermarket.

“The water jugs in the image lasted less than one minute.”

More here

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/346857...box=1745866597

[Bill Ryan]

From Michael Shellenburger:

• https://www.public.news/p/over-relia...ewables-behind

Over-Reliance on Renewables behind Catastrophic Blackouts in Spain

Excess solar resulted in too little “inertia,” making the whole system vulnerable


People board commuter buses outside the Atocha train station in Madrid after its closure as a massive power outage hits Spain on April 28, 2025. Power went out across all of Spain and Portugal today, cutting cellphone and internet networks, halting trains and trapping people in elevators, officials said.

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. Although power was quickly restored in France, it could take a week to fully restore power in Spain and Portugal.

In an instant, the electric hum of modern life — trains, hospitals, airports, phones, traffic lights, cash registers — fell silent. Tens of millions of people instantly plunged into chaos, confusion, and darkness. People got stuck in elevators. Subways stopped between stations. Gas stations couldn’t pump fuel. Grocery stores couldn’t process payments. Air traffic controllers scrambled as systems failed and planes were diverted. In hospitals, backup generators sputtered on, but in many cases could not meet full demand. Cell towers collapsed under surges and outages.


People queue to try to withdraw cash money at an ATM as credit card payment is unavailable due to a massive power outage in Spain, in Madrid on April 28, 2025.

It was one of the largest peacetime blackouts Europe has ever seen. And it was not random. It was not an unforeseeable event. It was the exact failure that many of us have been, repeatedly, warning lawmakers about for years — warnings that Europe’s political leaders systematically chose to ignore.

~~~

The rest of the article is for subscribers. But here are some further extracts, courtesy of Zero Hedge:

...none of this should have been a surprise. The underlying physics had been understood for years, and the specific vulnerabilities had been spelled out repeatedly in technical warnings that policymakers ignored.
...
As countries replaced heavy, spinning plants with lightweight, inverter-based generation, the grid became faster, lighter, and far more sensitive to disruptions. That basic physical reality was spelled out in public warnings as far back as 2017.
...
Although political leaders promised that renewable energy would provide stable, affordable power, in practice, Spain grew more reliant on the remaining nuclear and natural gas plants to sustain inertia — even as the government pushes them to close.
...
Despite all these warnings, political and regulatory energy in Europe remained focused on accelerating renewable deployment, not upgrading the grid’s basic stability. In Spain, solar generation continued to climb rapidly through 2023 and early 2024.
Coal plants closed. Nuclear units retired.
On many spring days by 2025, Spain’s midday solar generation exceeded its total afternoon demand, leading to frequent negative electricity prices.
The system was being pushed to the limit.
And today, at 12:35 pm, it broke.
...
Spain’s blackout wasn’t just a technical failure. It was a political and strategic failure.
...
Unless Spain rapidly invests in synthetic inertia, maintains and expands its nuclear fleet, or adds some other new form of heavy rotating generation, the risk of future blackouts will only grow worse.

[Tintin]

Posted by Bill Ryan (here)
From Michael Shellenburger:

• https://www.public.news/p/over-relia...ewables-behind

Over-Reliance on Renewables behind Catastrophic Blackouts in Spain

Excess solar resulted in too little “inertia,” making the whole system vulnerable

[/INDENT]

Just what the P.T.A (Powers That Are) would orchestrate - and have. I'm really beginning to wonder whether a mass kinetic effort from populations may begin to happen. Prayer matters, and it does need to be practised, but, may this be a catalyst for some meaningful pushback. It just may, we'll see.

I do hope that muthaWEFers (after Clif High) be wary; very wary. Have we reached a tipping point?

[Ben]

Quote from The Guardian

"Spanish government sources said the power cut originated at 12.33pm, when, for five seconds, 15 gigawatts of the energy that was being produced - equivalent to 60% of all the energy that was being used - suddenly disappeared"

Oh right, that makes total sense.

[Ravenlocke]

https://x.com/ukcityweather/status/1916854488289235295

[Ravenlocke]

Text:
Translated by
Grok
"What the hell is going on in Spain?"

Around half past eleven today, there was an almost nationwide blackout in Spain and Portugal.
Small parts of southern France were apparently also briefly affected but had power back relatively quickly.

The Portuguese grid operator has so far cited weather-related oscillations in power lines as the likely cause, which led to the collapse of the power grid.

At the time of the load shedding, Spain’s power supply was in a very fragile state: 70% of the electricity came from generators that do not have grid-synchronous rotating masses.

Grid-synchronous rotating masses refer to turbines in nuclear, coal, gas, or hydroelectric power plants that drive the generators of these plants.
The rotational speed of these turbines is synchronized with the frequency of the power grid.

The grid frequency is thus coupled to the rotational energy of the turbines.
If the frequency drops, it means that the load on the grid exceeds the output of the connected power plants.
In this case, the rotational energy of the turbines is converted into electricity, which supports the grid.
The valves on the turbines of the power plants respond by opening further to stabilize the grid.
The opposite case also exists: Here, excess power on the grid is converted into rotational energy, causing the valves on the turbines to close to adjust to the new load.
The rotational energy of the turbines is not large compared to the grid’s electricity consumption but is sufficient to support excessive load or absorb surplus power until the valves have time to react.

This principle of grid-synchronous rotating masses has been the foundation of our power grids for over 100 years and ensures that, every second, as much electricity is produced as is consumed.

For the past two decades, we in Europe have been massively expanding electricity generators that do not have grid-synchronous turbines but instead produce direct current, which is converted into alternating current using inverters:
Wind and solar power.

These inverters can produce very convincing alternating current but cannot replace the function of grid-synchronous rotating masses.

The more wind and solar energy is on the grid, the fewer grid-synchronous turbines from conventional power plants are available.
The fewer grid-synchronous turbines there are, the less rotating mass is available as a buffer to absorb instantaneous load fluctuations.

If the buffers are insufficient, even small fluctuations can quickly cause the grid frequency to deviate too far from the ideal value of 50 Hz.

In response, consumers and producers alike disconnect from the grid for self-protection, which can trigger a cascading collapse.

What exactly caused the "ship to capsize" in Spain is not yet clear.
However, we do know that the grid in Spain was in a highly volatile state at the time of the collapse.


https://x.com/NoahRettberg/status/1916881745930056128

[Ravenlocke]

https://x.com/justinbroadcast/status...63455393038367

https://x.com/justinbroadcast/status...50471891091742

https://x.com/justinbroadcast/status...55197718355968

[Strat]

I have a friend in Madrid, I've asked her what's going on and when she gets back to me I'll report in here. If yall have any questions for her (within reason) let me know.

[Ravenlocke]

https://x.com/6180339X/status/1916859747434643870

[Ravenlocke]

Text:
⚡️I'M BACK FROM THE BLACKOUT!

Spain, Portugal, and part of France have been under a complete power blackout for 10 hours. No electricity, no mobile data, no calls, nothing.

Let me tell you how I lived through it from the inside, if it ever happens in your country, you'll remember this post 👇🏻

I was in Murcia, Spain, in the middle of a Zoom work call when plash, the power went out. Well, that’s not so rare. The first thing I did was tell the others, who were in Málaga (400 km away), that I had lost power (mobile data was still). Their reply: "Hostia, it's out here too!" Me: WTF? But it can’t have gone out everywhere in the country, right? Right???

THE BLACKOUT

Damn, I wasn’t expecting this bonus episode of Black Mirror. But yep, it was a massive blackout for unknown reasons, hitting all of Spain/Portugal/France. A few minutes later, mobile networks and data collapsed too! I had never lived through anything like this.

I was literally hearing the news through a portable radio I barely remembered owning. There was no other way. Anyone who didn’t have a battery radio was absolutely cut off from the world. Mobile data started to work only sporadically, and calls began to collapse until they completely stopped working. In fact, as the hours passed, it went from "mobile data works a bit" to "nothing at all."

All the traffic lights in every city went out, so people had to give way as best as they could. And the most amazing part is that there were no major accidents across the entire country. I biked back home from the office without any trouble. Sirens could be heard nonstop, but everyone was driving with incredible caution, something I didn’t expect! Respect.

Hospitals were a huge concern, and the radio couldn't stop talking about them. A friend's mother was scheduled for surgery today, and I haven’t had news yet, but I’m trusting that everything went well: basically, they kept operating thanks to generators. No surgeries were left half-finished (although lit were postponed), and all ICU ventilation systems kept running for the patients who depended on them to stay alive. Diesel distributors were working at full capacity, delivering fuel wherever it was needed. Still, the chaos around ambulances, communications, and logistics was enormous. Don't envy the women who gave birth today.

Many people got trapped in elevators and since emergency lines were overwhelmed, it took quite a while to rescue them all across the country. My wife got stuck with the car inside the garage and had to walk back home. Then, since the intercom wasn’t working and she had forgotten her keys inside the car, she had to shout until I came down to open the door for her.

Of course, a whole army of doomsday preppers rushed to the supermarkets to buy toilet paper, water jugs, and dog food. Pandemic 2.0.

And well, it might sound silly compared to all of this, but the countdown for all the freezers in the country had started ticking... Imagine the stench that was about to hit with half the country’s meat and fish rotting!

And what did the people of Murcia do after 5 hours when it was clear this thing was going to last a while? Well, what any sane man or woman would do: go out for drinks since it was still daylight! The streets and promenades were packed with people walking, chatting about the situation, complaining about not having internet, walking their dogs, sunbathing, and drinking beers at the bars nonstop... On the radio, a bar owner said their biggest worry was that the beer was warming up and needed to be drunk quickly... Oh, my dear little Spain!

Anyway, unbelievable. A mix between science fiction and Kafkaesque surrealism. A day to never forget. Well, actually, it’s not even over yet: as I write these lines, I'm watching the last lights of sunset, facing a dark city skyline straight out of a dystopian movie. Hopefully, you’ll be able to read these lines soon.

So, what do you think would happen in your country if there was a 10-hour blackout?

https://x.com/javilopen/status/1916958573000790198

https://x.com/MahalaxmiRaman/status/1916942484577415672

[Ravenlocke]

https://x.com/justinbroadcast/status...44925469642762

[SilentFeathers]

Posted by Tintin (here)

Posted by Bill Ryan (here)
From Michael Shellenburger:

• https://www.public.news/p/over-relia...ewables-behind

Over-Reliance on Renewables behind Catastrophic Blackouts in Spain

Excess solar resulted in too little “inertia,” making the whole system vulnerable

[/INDENT]

Just what the P.T.A (Powers That Are) would orchestrate - and have. I'm really beginning to wonder whether a mass kinetic effort from populations may begin to happen. Prayer matters, and it does need to be practised, but, may this be a catalyst for some meaningful pushback. It just may, we'll see.

I do hope that muthaWEFers (after Clif High) be wary; very wary. Have we reached a tipping point?

It appears (to me) like some kind of test.

Any type of power outage in any western like country for more than 3 days would cause serious panic and chaos, especially in the inner cities and surrounding densely populated areas. Many just live day to day and would be completely without food in a couple to few days later. All the grocery stores would be emptied in 48 hrs. or less and if the power remained out for any length of time most food places wouldn't be restocked and people would become hungry, angry, desperate, AND DANGEROUS.

Many don't realize how fragile civilization is right now.

We are actually living in an extinction level event right now in my opinion. Humanity is just being propped up through technology and propaganda right now. (and stupidity and/or ignorance).

Shutting off the power to several countries for an extended period of time would be more catastrophic than nuking a few of their cities.....

[Strat]

Posted by Strat (here)
I have a friend in Madrid, I've asked her what's going on and when she gets back to me I'll report in here. If yall have any questions for her (within reason) let me know.

Power's back on at 12:30AM

EDIT:

Any type of power outage in any western like country for more than 3 days would cause serious panic and chaos, especially in the inner cities and surrounding densely populated areas. Many just live day to day and would be completely without food in a couple to few days later. All the grocery stores would be emptied in 48 hrs. or less and if the power remained out for any length of time most food places wouldn't be restocked and people would become hungry, angry, desperate, AND DANGEROUS.

I don't have an opinion on whether or not it was planned but I definitely agree it's a serious issue. You're almost guaranteed to have people lose their lives. This happens in FL after hurricanes hit and power is lost. Sometimes backup generators aren't enough or fail in places like retirement homes and the older folks just can't tolerate the heat.

[RatRodRob...RRR]

Posted by Strat (here)
I have a friend in Madrid, I've asked her what's going on and when she gets back to me I'll report in here. If yall have any questions for her (within reason) let me know.

Yeah ive got a question, ive always got a question, got nothin to do with what we're talking about, but can you put chicken salt on chicken.....?

Seriously though, that Simpsons prediction of a Blackout on 30th April 2025 is just nuts, so in parts of Europe did these blackouts come a day earlier than the Simpsons predicted, or will it get much worse on the 30th, thats tomorrow........ Got me popcorn.


RRR

[RatRodRob...RRR]

Posted by Ravenlocke (here)
https://x.com/6180339X/status/1916859747434643870

Its funny how the "experts" tell us to stock up on emergency supplies to get you through something like these blackouts, and the MMM call it "panic buying", yeah i know that there are fools out there that do panic, but most of us go stock up in an orderly manner to simply make sure we have the necessary goods to get by in such situations.

RRR

[RatRodRob...RRR]

Posted by Ravenlocke (here)
https://x.com/justinbroadcast/status...44925469642762

Cash is King

[AngelArmy]

If you think power outages today was a bad, wait til the next massive solar storm hits. Europe must invest in space now to secure our future
@AschbacherJosef