Archive for power outages

The Spanish Power Outage

Posted in Barcelona, Biographical, Euclid with tags , , on April 28, 2025 by telescoper

The first I knew about today’s massive failure of electricy grids across the Iberian peninsula was at 4 o’clock this afternoon, when I tuned in to a regular Euclid telecon and found that the expected speaker wasn’t able to give their presentation because there was no power in Spain. I was subsequently shocked to discover the scale of the outage, the cause of which remains unknown (at least to me). I’ve often thought that Ireland’s power grid was a bit unstable but I’ve never known the whole country to be shut down!

It all reminded me of the 2003 power blackout in the North-Eastern USA and Canada.

There has been speculation about an “unusual atmospheric phenomenon” being the cause, but that seems somewhat implausible. Indeed, nothing I’ve read so far about the cause of this event makes much sense.

This time last year I was in Barcelona, and today’s events got me thinking what it would have been like to be there without any power. The apartment I was living in was all-electric so there would have been little I could do – no light, no cooking, no air conditioning, no internet, no TV, no radio. I was on the top floor and the lift was powered by electricity so I would have had to use the stairs to get in or out. It would have been an interesting experience to see the city in total darkness from my balcony.

Had I been in the Department of Physics when the power went off I probably would have had to walk home, as the Metro would not have been running and with all the traffic lights off the roads would be even more chaotic than usual. That would have meant a walk of an hour or so, which would have been annoying, but feasible. Come to think of it, people actually on the Metro when the failure happened would have been stuck in a tunnel which must have been very unpleasant.

Anyway I hope all my friends and colleagues in Spain are not too badly inconvenienced and that this very weird event doesn’t lead to any serious issues. I understand the power supply to hospitals is secure, which is a relief. I must admit though I am very curious to learn the cause of this catastrophic failure. Was it human error? Deliberate sabotage? Or was it really an “unusual atmospheric phenomenon”? No doubt there will be a full investigation and we’ll find out in due course.

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Storm Éowyn Passes

Posted in Biographical, Maynooth with tags , , on January 24, 2025 by telescoper

So it’s just after 11am on Friday 24th January 2025 and the Red Alert in my area related to Storm Éowyn has just been downgraded to Orange. It was very windy overnight and this morning, though there was no discernible damage to my house and no interruption to the electricity supply. That has not been the case for many others, though. There are a staggering 715,000 power outages across Ireland this morning. That’s so many that it will probably take many days to fix them all.

Here’s a map showing some of the power outages in my general vicinity:

I’m told that power is off in a few places in Maynooth and various traffic lights are not working; fallen trees are also blocking some roads. It’s still very windy – though the force seems to be abating quite quickly – so I think I’ll leave it a while before going out to see if there is any obvious damage in an around town. Shops and businesses would have been closed during the Red Alert, most planning to open around noon. Obviously that will depend on whether or not they have electricity.

Anyway the storm is now heading North East and its presence will soon be felt in Scotland

Update: 12.08, the weather warning was downgraded to yellow at noon. It’s still very windy though.

Update: 14.11, went for a walk into Maynooth. Traffic lights on Straffan Road out from the Glenroyal up to Main Street. All shops on Main Street closed and apparently without electricity. Traffic lights at the Roost are working as are those on Mill Street. Dunnes stores in Manor Mills is open but the rest of the shops are closed. South Campus was closed but I walked around North Campus; there are lots of branches of various sizes that have sheared off, but no serious damage that I saw. No sign of buses or trains having resumed.

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