Spain is experiencing a country-wide power outage that has affected airports, trains, metro trains, trams, traffic lights, banks/ ATMs. Parts of Portugal and the French Basque country are also affected. Many cell phone services are not working. The Spanish electrical system provider is saying it will take from 8-10 hours to fix.

WhY?

According to the El País the cause is under investigation.

People had to be rescued from metro, elevators ..etc.
The hospitals are performing only basic services.


I hope our Spanish friends/ posters are ok..and will soon be able to tell us more.

(Interesting..the university in Almeria is not affected , its buildings are powered by the solar energy )

Act. 28 abr 2025 - 17:39 CEST

An unusual atmospheric event is what the Portuguese are saying, centred on Spain.
Power is slowly being restored in some areas.

The Spanish say a strong technical fluctuation in the European electricity system, but not sure what or how, as they are concentrating on getting power back up.

Unlikely to be a cyber attack apparently.

Currently, power has been restored in 85% of the Basque Country (those areas limiting with France and Morocco have been kind of less affected) and it seems the issue is being solved in most of Spain. A big blow on the efficiency of the Spanish electrical system, although the cause of this huge clackout has not been yet determined. Wifi and cell signal is being quickly restored. As in the pandemic, toilet paper (and now, also batteries) has been the major buy at those supermarkets that could open. Payments by credit card have been complicated, too.

What a nightmare! Thinking of Spain and Portugal as they struggle with all the ramifications of this outage.

Good reason to have some cash in your Go Bag.

Although a cyber attack is being denied, a real good cyber attack leaves no traces of its existence.

My daughter who lives in Portugal said they JUST got their power back on

Or a manual credit card imprinter, if you are a merchant.
https://www.ebay.ca/itm/167479771264...0aAgM3EALw_wcB

The WSJ had an article prior to the outage highlighting how vulnerable Europe's grid was, that the continent was now about 40% green electricity, but that the existing grid was built to serve "black" electricity: meaning, the high tension wires weren't in the best places to serve the green producers also, that there had been some small outages due to less wind than other winters, and that spring had been cloudier than normal, thus lessening the "green" output.
But that's not necessarily what caused today's outage.

The Portuguese are blaming extreme temperature changes, the Spanish are blaming
disconnection of the European interconnection system by France..

The problem is many bigger shops can't even take cash without power. How do you know what to charge? Most supermarkets don't put price stickers on things anymore. I wonder how many store clerks could even add up a bill anymore.

No power also means no anti shoplifting alarm. That means shops won't want to be open.

Big sudden drop in frequency, just as solar PV got to parity with the generation output of Spain's one nuclear power plant.

I work for a Dutch grid operator, so the chat was wild.

At work we were speculating on a frequency spike that made solar panel inverters shut down in one region where the interconnection points are with France and with Portugal. That was enough to cause the frequency drop.

It certainly will be an interesting debate going forward and comes hard on the heels of Heathrow dropping out for a day after one of its three transformers blew out.

More AC (due to climate change), more data centres (due to AI and crypto), more interconnectivity and more fluctuating energy demand/supply due to Putin/N Korea bad actors (plus another person who must not be named) makes for a whole new world of instability.

99% of the power supply in Spain has been restored. Airports are operational, the Madrid Metro is open from 8 AM (80% of rush-hour trains are running), city buses are running normally and are free today. The rail network is still not fully operational.

Thanks for the update. I’ll be in Madrid next week.

Spain video. High-speed train stopped due to the power outage.

We were in Seville yesterday, strolling around town midday when I got a text from my niece who’s in Madrid asking if our power was out. We hadn’t noticed a thing but soon realized restaurants and shops were closing. Our cell service totally disappeared, too. We couldn’t text, google, anything…it was like the olden days!

Back at our hotel, we enjoyed the rooftop deck for a couple hours before heading back out for a walk. Our doorman told us there were reports of nearby neighborhoods with power and it didn’t take long to find one - yay! We had a nice dinner, texted my niece and family back home, thinking all was well. Unfortunately, when we got to our hotel about 10:30, it was pitch black. Once inside, we saw that they had lit pathways with votive candles, it was very pretty! I cheered when the lights turned on at 1:05am!

We were pleasantly surprised this morning when we checked out of our hotel, IMG Posada del Lucero, and were told that they were removing the room night from the bill of all guests! Wow, we couldn’t believe it, very nice. We are now in Cordoba, arriving without reservations and chose to stay at the IMG property here - happy to give them the business.

We will have lots of fun stories to tell about the time the lights went out in Spain!