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Nationwide power outages knock Spain, Portugal offline

c/europe · u/albert180@piefed.social · 126 points

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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.

Comments

u/Maeve@kbin.earth · 3 points

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.

u/Maeve@kbin.earth · 7 points

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

u/Maeve@kbin.earth · 5 points

Thank you. I'll check out "X-class solar flares" for my own edification.

u/jabathekek@sopuli.xyz · 10 points

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.

u/Maeve@kbin.earth · 8 points

Isn't the sun doing CMEs and other funky stuff for the last several weeks, now? I wonder if that's contributory.