Electrical grid "crash", affecting multiple European countries

[dangie]

The European grid is said to be much more resilient than the UK.....

Who said that...??

 

[poffle]

Who said that...??

The European grid van operate within much narrower frequency ranges than smaller grids such as the UK or Nordic grids. If one generation unit or a power line trips out it has much less impact on the overall grid.

But if there is a major issue in one part of the European grid such as happened here you're still going to have problems. There may be lots of spare generating capacity in central Europe but there is only so much of that that can make up for a shortfall in Iberia. Spain is very weakly interconnected to the European grid. I think there is 2800 MW of interconnection. There are large interconnectors being built.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

The European grid van operate within much narrower frequency ranges than smaller grids such as the UK or Nordic grids. If one generation unit or a power line trips out it has much less impact on the overall grid.
But if there is a major issue in one part of the European grid such as happened here you're still going to have problems. There may be lots of spare generating capacity in central Europe but there is only so much of that that can make up for a shortfall in Iberia. Spain is very weakly interconnected to the European grid. I think there is 2800 MW of interconnection. There are large interconnectors being built.

And there were problems with the interconnector between France and Spain which took it down for a while.
It's not known if that had any connection to the main outage in Iberia.
Noted at 2209 in this BBC blog: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c9wpq8xrvd9t

The trade body that represents the power industry in Europe tells BBC's The World Tonight a problem occurred with the energy connection between France and Spain earlier today.
Kristian Ruby, the general secretary of EURELECTRIC, also describes the outage as a "50 year, if not 100 year incident....something very very rare "
Ruby tells BBC's World Tonight they are aware of a "specific incident with an interconnector between France and Spain".
The general secretary says: "There was a specific technical issue that arose there and hence the Spanish grid was disconnected from the broader European grid earlier today.
"Now, judging from that situation alone, you wouldn't think that would cause a power cut across the entire Iberian peninsula, so my assessment is there is likely to have been other elements in this equation that have caused this situation," he adds.

 

[poffle]

And there were problems with the interconnector between France and Spain which took it down for a while.
It's not known if that had any connection to the main outage in Iberia.
Noted at 2209 in this BBC blog: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c9wpq8xrvd9t

I would have expected the French interconnectors to automatically trip out. As the Iberian grid collapsed it would tried to pull more power from the French interconnectors than they could handle and they would have tripped out.

I suspect that this is much more likely to be effect than cause.

( One of the benefits of HVDC is that you can set how much power is to transmitted and in which direction. With AC interconnectors it's laws of physics that decide the flows.)

 

[davews]

Less speculation on Carrington events please, the sun is very quiet at the moment and there were no solar flares whatsoever yesterday. https://www.solarham.com Yes it could happen in the future but it was definitely not the case here.

 

[John Webb]

The most intense recorded geomagnetic storm to date - 1859.

It caused outages of telegraphs among other things.

Have a read here, you find out more about the 1859 Carrington Event:

Carrington Event - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Thanks very much - I now recollect I'd heard about this but without the 'Carrington' name attached to it.

 

[Giugiaro]

I'm sure I read on here some time ago how long trains are self-sufficient on battery, can anyone remind me?

The 24V system in most modern trains only power emergency lights and core safety systems on a train. The AVAC system is one of the very first ones to shut down, as they are energy intensive and not critical.

 

[Howardh]

The 24V system in most modern trains only power emergency lights and core safety systems on a train. The AVAC system is one of the very first ones to shut down, as they are energy intensive and not critical.

Thanks, they might not be "critical" to the running of the train, but when it reaches 35c+ inside...!!

 

[Giugiaro]

... they might not be "critical" to the running of the train, but when it reaches 35c+ inside...!!

At that point the train is most certainly stranded, and the passengers being evacuated.

Exactly what we've seen in Spain.

 

[Bletchleyite]

At that point the train is most certainly stranded, and the passengers being evacuated.

Exactly what we've seen in Spain.

This can in the UK take hours, though - in Spain where health and safety is less prominent I'd imagine people could just pull the releases and get out without the risk of being arrested for doing so.

 

[bleeder4]

This can in the UK take hours, though - in Spain where health and safety is less prominent I'd imagine people could just pull the releases and get out without the risk of being arrested for doing so.

I think an element of common sense would be applied. If we had a nationwide power outage over here and millions of people were stuck in dangerously over-heating trains with no toilets or food and drink, the police aren't going to arrest all of them for forcing their way out in that situation.

 

[poffle]

ENTSO-E the association of European Grid Operators has established an investigation into this outage.theyve issued a preliminary press release:

I've pasted an extract of the sequence of events leading up to the failure.

It is still very early in the investigation but the incident seems to have started in southern Spain.

First information on the chronology of events leading to the blackout

The blackout is the result of a complex sequence of events for which ENTSO-E is providing a preliminary chronology with the information known so far. An in-depth analysis by the Expert Panel will be provided in a full technical report.

On 28 April 2025 at 12:33 CET, the power systems of Spain and Portugal suffered a total blackout. A small area in France, close to the border with Spain, was also affected by the incident, albeit for a very limited duration. The rest of the Continental European power system did not experience any disturbance.

During the half hour preceding the incident, two periods of oscillations (power and frequency swings) were observed in the Continental European synchronous area, between 12:03 and 12:07 CET and between 12:19 and 12:21 CET respectively. The TSOs of Spain (Red Electrica) and France (RTE) took actions to mitigate these oscillations. At the moment of the incident, there were no oscillations and the power system variables were within normal operation range.

Before the incident, the international exchange programs of Spain were 1,000 MW to France, 2,000 MW to Portugal and 800 MW to Morocco, all in the exporting direction.

Data so far, have yielded the following sequence of events during the incident:

1. Starting at 12:32:57 CET and within 20 seconds afterwards, presumably a series of different generation trips were registered in the south of Spain, accounting to an initially estimated total of 2200 MW. No generation trips were observed in Portugal and France. As a result of these events the frequency decreased and a voltage increase is observed in Spain and Portugal.
2. Between12:33:18 and 12:33:21 CET, the frequency of the Iberian Peninsula power system continued decreasing and reached 48,0 Hz. The automatic load shedding defence plans of Spain and Portugal were activated.
3. At 12:33:21 CET, the AC overhead lines between France and Spain were disconnected by protection devices against loss of synchronism.
4. At 12:33:24 CET, the Iberian electricity system collapsed completely and the HVDC lines between France and Spain stopped transmitting power.

As soon as the disruption of the electricity supply occurred, the affected TSOs worked together in a coordinated effort to restore the power in the affected region of France, as well as in Spain and Portugal.

ENTSO-E expert panel initiates the investigation into the causes of Iberian blackout

www.entsoe.eu

 

[Morayshire]

27 secs to shut down the grid. Not a lot of time to do anything really.

 

[HSTEd]

The European grid is said to be much more resilient than the UK. If this has happened in continental Europe, I dread think how the UK grid would cope with something like a Carrington Event. I will make some enquiries about adding a battery to my solar panels.

The Carrington event, unlike this situation, comes with significant warning (on the order of tens of minutes). I believe that deliberately collapsing the grid and setting the system with all circuit breakers and disconnecting switches open would largely avoid any permanent damage from induced voltages or currents. You would then conduct a blackstart once the event is over.

Disruptive but unlikely to result in massive long term problems.

Honestly I am more worried about the problems we are getting - which are often blamed on renewables but I think are more symptomatic with the attempt to treat transmission and distribution separately from generation.

 

[Giugiaro]

The Minister for Ecological Transition, Sara Aagesen, said that the losses of power that preceded the blackout, of 2,2 Gigawatts over the course of 22 seconds, began in substations in the provinces of Granada, Badajoz and Seville, in that order.

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/power-generation-loss-spains-blackout-started-granada-badajoz-seville-2025-05-14/

Sara Aagesen told lawmakers that the three initial incidents, whose cause has yet to be determined, led to a generation loss of 2.2 gigawatts of electricity, which triggered a series of grid disconnections.

So we now know the places, but not "what" happened.

 

[stuving]

ENTSO-E has now created a web page about this event and their investigation. Last item in the list of publications (from yesterday) says they will review two investigation reports just published: one from the Spanish government's committee of experts, the other from the TSO, REE. REE's report is quite short (18 pages) and appears to have been written in English, but by Spanish staff giving it a few quirks on vocabulary. The other one is long (182 pages) and was written in Spanish; an English version is provided but obviously made by a computer that has struggled with the nature of the text.

They don't agree on the cause of the blackout - the government's report said a planning error by REE gave the system too little voltage control capacity; REE say it was generators disconnecting without good reason. I guess ENTSO-E will end up refereeing this dispute.

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

ENTSO-E has now created a web page about this event and their investigation. Last item in the list of publications (from yesterday) says they will review two investigation reports just published: one from the Spanish government's committee of experts, the other from the TSO, REE. REE's report is quite short (18 pages) and appears to have been written in English, but by Spanish staff giving it a few quirks on vocabulary. The other one is long (182 pages) and was written in Spanish; an English version is provided but obviously made by a computer that has struggled with the nature of the text.

They don't agree on the cause of the blackout - the government's report said a planning error by REE gave the system too little voltage control capacity; REE say it was generators disconnecting without good reason. I guess ENTSO-E will end up refereeing this dispute.

I had plodded through the Spanish report using Google Translate and it was interesting to see that it was a voltage management issue that initiated the blackout and only became a frequency issue as the system collapsed. It doesn't admonish renewables but it certainly wasn't due to lack of inertia. They do say they can see solar farms switching themselves on and off as there control systems endeavoured to respond the wild swings (30kV) occurring on the supergrid so thay may have contributed to the incident. Hadn't seen the TEE report until you provided link and see they have a somewhat different view hardly a surprise from the system operator. System configuration may have made voltage control more challenging but sounds like the 1000's of autonomous inverter connected solar farms couldn't ride through the developing system oscillations and may have reinforced the problem.

In the UK post the 2019 event all renewable generators greater than 1MW were required to alter their protection settings to give more ride through capability under system disturbance conditions so we maybe more protected. We also have a massive amount of batteries providing dynamic response services the Spanish have almost nothing. These services add to costs of running the grid but they are one of the key tools now deployed to keep the grid secure since we reduced the amount of bigging spinning alternators.