Nationwide power outages knock Spain, Portugal offline
Good news,
the cause was identified by the Portugal Grid Operator and it wasn't sabotage (see Update in the article)
Due to extreme temperature variations in the interior of Spain, there were anomalous oscillations in the very high voltage lines (400 kV), a phenomenon known as induced atmospheric vibration. These oscillations caused synchronisation failures between the electrical systems, leading to successive disturbances across the interconnected European network.
https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/28/nationwide_power_outages_knock_spain/Open linkView original on piefed.social
7 replies
Isn't the sun doing CMEs and other funky stuff for the last several weeks, now? I wonder if that's contributory.
Doesn't seem like it. I think only "X-Class" solar flairs have a chance of getting through the magnetic field and causing power outages and there hasn't been anything above C for the last week.
https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/
https://www.spaceweatherlive.com/en/help/what-are-solar-flares.html
*More likely system fault, human error (rip) or cyberattack.
Apologies for double posting, this is an aside, but extremely interesting, from my limited understanding: https://phys.org/news/2025-04-sun-explosions-echo-earth-skies.html I thought you may find it interesting, as well.
ETA: this says M-class flares, too. https://www.space.com/solar-flares-effects-classification-formation
oooo thanks very much!
Very welcome. I saw an article this morning that said there was another X-class flare either yesterday or day before. It was scant on details and I've not looked for a decent article yet, but I'll post it if I find it.
Thank you. I'll check out "X-class solar flares" for my own edification.
it was a fun day.