Posted at about 11:45 p.m. on 4/28/2025
Updates
Some interesting updates in the past 12 hours:
- France got its power back on relatively quickly.
- The outage in Spain and Portugal lasted far longer than the initial estimate of “six to ten hours.” Some places may not get power back for several days.
- Portugal’s grid operator blamed “extreme temperature variations” in Spain for the outage, calling it a “rare atmospheric phenomenon.”
- Other experts postulate the the increased reliance on solar and wind power resulted in grid instability. Rather than knock out the grid for all of Europe, which apparently was almost the case, the Iberian Peninsula was the sacrificial lamb, much as power in parts of Texas had to be shut down in February of 2021 when weather-related problems meant the utilities lacked sufficient power to supply the whole grid.
- Anecdotal reports are the lack of cash was the biggest problem faced by many, making it impossible to buy a bottle of water or a meal. It will be interesting to see if Europeans will start carrying a few extra bills or if the move to eliminate cash in the EU gets moved to the back burner.
I have seen a single dark cloud cut in half the power produced by our solar panels in just three seconds. I can only imagine how tough balancing a nation-wide grid could be if you rely on wind and sun, either one of which can drop off without any warning. You just can’t spin up a gas or other fossil fuel plant fast enough to compensate for a sudden change in the weather. Spain is proud of how much renewable power it can produce. Today they saw the downside of their “progress.”
Multi-Country Power Outage Causes Mayhem in Europe
Originally Posted at about 11:30 a.m. 4/28/2025
Most of Spain and Portugal, plus parts of France, experienced a total blackout midday Monday, leaving mass transit passengers stranded and people wandering their streets looking at phones that could no longer connect to the Internet. The blackout reportedly caused “mayhem” across major cities and “chaos” on the streets as traffic built up. The cause of the outage is unknown but may be the result of a cyber attack.
Airports have been shut down, transit tunnels are dark with passengers forced to walk back to the station to evacuate subways, businesses are closing, ATMs and electronic payment systems are non-functional, and the internet and telephones are down. The latter outage may be the worst because it means people who are used to getting instant updates cannot do so and are lost without an explanation or a projected up time. While Spain’s grid operator predicts power will be out six to ten hours, I won’t be surprised if it takes longer to repair this kind of cascading failure. Even when the electricity is back on, it will take some time for other services to reboot and reopen.
As society become smore dependent on the internet for communications, transactions, and information, outages of this type become more disruptive than they were 30 years ago when everyone counted on transistor radios and landline phones. Preppers should follow this event to learn from it, identifying system weaknesses and preps they can make to compensate or overcome them. It will also be interesting to see how residents react to a mass outage. Will they pull together or will panic take over? Will they work together or resort to crime and violence?
One telling image is people “queuing for candles” in a local shop. Can you imagine being so unprepared you don’t even have a candle?
Published 4/28/2025. View full article. And another article.
