Huge power outages have hit large parts of Spain and Portugal. Airports have lost power, traffic lights and phone lines are down, the Madrid underground has been evacuated and trains have been stopped. Follow the latest here.
We’ve got some large scale batteries in SA (funnily enough one of our first was built by Elon, with his ‘$100mil for 100MW in 100 days’ promise, which largely held- this was pre mask-off though) and it’s now a lot better than in was in 2016.
We’ve also got more power generating here, so less variable dependence on interstate links (which go back to Brown Coal powered Victoria, yuck)
I’m not implying there is a problem with their grid though, just stating a small problem can cascade very quickly in an AC grid, it doesn’t take a lot especially when a lot of us in the western world have been belt tightening for the last 10-15 years (less available backup capacity)
Good point. In the Netherlands there are tests being done with ultra fast batteries to take over the grid forming properties of ‘large spinny things’. See: https://www.rwe.com/en/press/rwe-generation/2024-09-09-rwe-builds-ultra-fast-innovative-battery-storage-system-in-the-netherlands/
But saying that this power outage is caused by it is speculation at this point.
We’ve got some large scale batteries in SA (funnily enough one of our first was built by Elon, with his ‘$100mil for 100MW in 100 days’ promise, which largely held- this was pre mask-off though) and it’s now a lot better than in was in 2016.
We’ve also got more power generating here, so less variable dependence on interstate links (which go back to Brown Coal powered Victoria, yuck)
I’m not implying there is a problem with their grid though, just stating a small problem can cascade very quickly in an AC grid, it doesn’t take a lot especially when a lot of us in the western world have been belt tightening for the last 10-15 years (less available backup capacity)