Power grid expert Herbert Saurugg warns at RiskNet that European authorities continue to ignore danger signals even after another grid disruption occurred in the afternoon of July 24th and left around two million people in France, Spain, and Portugal briefly without electricity.
It was the second major disruption in the last 7 months.
The root of the problem on July 24th appears to be a firefighting aircraft unloading its cargo directly above an extra-high voltage line, causing a short circuit, during a wildfire.
“This apparently triggered resonance effects, which one minute later led to an overload of the coupling points and to the disconnection of the grid between France and the Iberian Peninsula,” reports Saurugg here.
“The Iberian Peninsula was short of energy from around three large power plants, which could not be compensated for in the short term by other power plants. As a result, automated load shedding was triggered, leaving around 2 million people in France, Spain, and Portugal without power for up to an hour.”
Swift action in the nick of time kept the blackout from spreading even further. Numerous services like commerce and IT still got disrupted.
Blackouts and power disruptions can occur, but this is already the second time in less than a year an international “grid disconnection” occurred in Europe. This should be viewed as a clear wake-up call, the power grid expert warns.
Saurugg says “signs and warnings have been ignored for years” by Europe and that these weather disasters and catastrophes would make these disasters completely unmanageable in the event of a power grid failure.
Entire logistics and supply chains could “fail chaotically across Europe” and even take weeks to restore.
“It is precisely these effects that are massively underestimated,” says Saurugg. “At the same time, we know that around two-thirds of the population will be unable to supply themselves adequately after one week at the latest. But the broad-based restart of the supply of vital goods and services (food, medicines, health, etc.) will take much longer.”
Saurugg adds another warning: “A discussion, as is currently the case after the recent severe storms, about who is to blame or who did not warn sufficiently, will then be irrelevant. Therefore, we should not wait any longer, but finally, deal seriously with the topic of blackout prevention.”
Read rest at No Tricks Zone
People advocating action on climate change are driven exclusively by politics. Realities such as warning signs on power grid instability will be ignored. It is just part of ignoring that renewables will never have the capacity to run a modern industrial society if nuclear is excluded. They ignore the fact that the average family can not afford an electric car. When there is a spectacular failure such as what happened in Texas, then they blame failure to implement more of the climate change agenda as the cause.
I agree entirely David Lewis…. With regards to electric cars, no one has explained where all the additional electricity is to come from? We have barely enough electricity for normal use now. The opposite will be the case if more coal power stations close.
Can we imagine what it will be like around 6pm daily as people arrive home from work, want to plug their car in to recharge overnight? Every light in the suburb will go out and the cooking will have to wait till morning. If I can think if these things, what on earth are the so-called experts doing? That’s one part of the problem. When will the electrical grid be upgraded to cope with all of these cars hooked into it? Having remote charging stations at(say) the local shopping centre won’t work because too many people will be wanting to recharge their car at the same time….
The current mess in Australia isn’t going to be fixed any time soon, so we are installing a backup generator with an automatic switch system. That way we won’t suddenly find ourselves in the dark, which has already happened to us twice over the past month.
And we don’t want to be like the Euroweenie Union depending upon a overloaded Power Grid all over that fake thing of Global Warming/Climate Change