Spain France Portugal power outage

[Beachwaves127]

Looks bad! I haven’t seen much on hospitals / emergency services but I’ve more seen comments on travel - roads trains planes. Hope they can fix it and wonder what caused it.

I'm going for the Earth's core stopping moving due to some weird US experiments which would affect the geomagnetic protection we have over us.

Next thing - pigeons going mad in Leicester Square.

Sounds really widespread, not much info on why. Something about changing temps

No, it's not that far fetched- from my limited understanding it seems that, with a multiplicity of different fluctuating supplies it could be more of a challenge to maintain the constant supply needed to keep the electricity chugging round the pipes at the right pressure (I think you can spot the exact point at which I started zoning out in 3rd Year Physics can't you 😆)

Just that the spin the oil companies' good friends in the media put on it is going to be....sensationalist and unhelpful, I predict.

BBC news didn't mention France

So the quangy was fribelling with the venferbench then? That makes sense.

I was in the science museum in Barcelona today when the outage happened. No panic, generator kicked in and no one in the museum really noticed. We were asked to leave the building at 2.30 and easily got a taxi outside but paid in cash. Traffic slow but moving through Barcelona. WiFi patchy but working all afternoon (hence me being able to type this!) for all those worried - Spanish here seemed very calm and everything under control with no panic. Our local shop was open (though had to use torches) and could get milk, ham, though no fresh bread 🥖
I feel like they have it under control & if nothing else the sun is shining and it’s a glorious evening. Airplanes moving above me too so the airport is open again! Good luck everyone who is affected.

I live in Barcelona. The power is back on and has been for over an hour. It was unsettling for a while and myself and quite a few others collected our kids from school early but otherwise it was fine.

Does anyone know if Madeira is affected by the power cuts? My parents are flying there week.

Noone in Barcelona has the air conditioning on yet, it is not really that warm yet.

Very few complex systems are capable of being bought up without some intervention.

You mean switching off and on again won't work. Is that not every IT persons mantra, unplug and plug it back in ?

BBC News was interesting, they were saying the UK Government has become more aware that this can happen and are advising people to have a supply of water and an FM Radio that doesn’t rely on mains electricity e.g. battery or wind up.

I am no prepper ( is that right spelling?), conspiracy theorist nor do I panic but logically I can see the ever increasing reliance on electricity and wifi, digital communications might give rise to blackouts be they cyber attacks, system failures or other causes.

100%

The preppers have prepped you are correct.

Its funny because pretty much all countries for forever have told their citizens reminded yearly pretty much to be prepared we just bumble along like nothing bad could ever happen.

It only seems to apply to continental Portugal but even so it’s already coming back, I’ve just been on the phone with family.

I can here serendipityjane growling from here 😆

There's a lot of comment on the science of it all. Russian sabotage? Wouldn't put it past them.

A couple of years ago I worked on business continuity plans for a national power outage so am fascinated at seeing what is going on in Spain and Portugal. Some of my colleagues thought my scenarios were OTT so I am feeling vindicated today. I even made sure the needs of colleagues' guide dogs were considered in the plan.

Are they advising this? I might have missed it

It was in the papers. Most countries have recommended this for many years and send out reminders.

It was in the news a few weeks back, I don't remember the date but it should be easily Googleable

I am aware it’s been mentioned in passing but directly linking it today seems to be upping the nudge theory,

I’m in a hotel in Portugal and we had about 10 mins without power until the back up generators kicked in. Last we heard at reception was that they are going to be turning all power off between 11 tonight and 7 in the morning to preserve what they have. We’re down to two lifts in the hotel and the restaurants/snack bars in the hotel are only open until 9:30 instead of midnight. So far it’s been fine and of course overnight shouldn’t be an issue. Hopefully things will be back to normal ish by the morning. We come home on Weds so hopefully flights will be ok too.

Yes, but when myself and many others said this on a thread about what happened at Heathrow we were labelled "tin hat wearers" and scoffed at etc.

Seems bizarre to me that people won't accept this as the most likely situation.

Im in Cheshire and we also had two mini power cuts last night where everything went off momentarily then came straight back on. Everyone's house alarms were going off. But I'm sure it's all just a big coincidence 🤷‍♀️

That’s interesting. Are people still using the lifts??!

Yes, currently. My son and DIL were just about to get in one when it first went off! Luckily they didn’t and just walked down to the pool. It’s carnage though because the amount of people trying to use the 2 lifts is unreal! There are a lot of families with prams etc. I’m on the 9th floor and I have ME/CFS so I couldn’t get back up without it. As it happens, I’m not feeling great anyway so I’m tucked up in bed with DH bringing me some food in a while.