blackout

The Japan telepeage system had a 38 -hour blackout. Japanese drivers chose to continue paying equally

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Japan is a Country of contrasts. On the one hand, it is a society in which the Machines of vending With used pantieslabor situations close to slavery wave extreme surveillance. On the other, they are obsessed with cleanliness and they have a strong value system in which the norms are not contemplated to skip. But what happens if you go with your car on a highway, the Toll system It doesn’t work and the barrier is raised? Would you pay? Well, the same thing happened recently and thousands of people opted for what seemed most correct: pay. Short. It was on April 8 when the company’s electronic toll collection system NIPPON EXPRESSWAY CENT. (Nexco Central) He stopped working. This implies that cars with telepeaje could not carry out the payment automatically in those positions in which there is no personnel -something that Do not abound at this time in Japan– And obviously the barrier did not get up. As you can imagine, it was an important problem because They generated great traffic jams. The problem began at night, but was expanding for 38 hours in which 106 tolls were unusable, causing chaos on 17 routes, including those that go to Economic heart of the country, Tokyo. Huh, pay. The company acted by sending personnel to the toll stalls in which charges could be made manually, but between others it was impossible for the infrastructure and that they could not send operators to all the points, they made the decision to raise the barriers in the affected points. It was the first time that the system failed at this scale from the privatization of Nexco Central in 2005. Vehicles could pass freely and was the best decision to Avoid bottling during the peak of the next day. What else did Nexco do? Tell the drivers that they will use a form on their website to pay deferred. Interestingly, the drivers who aimed how much they had to pay based on the sections traveled that day and sent the relevant applications are counted by thousands. The calculations. They were not all, much less. It is estimated that about 960,000 vehicles passed through those tolls during the 38 hours of fault and 3.8% of them They requested Deferred payment. It may seem like a ridiculous figure, but we are talking about some 36,000 drivers who, voluntarily and without any duty, decided to request the option to pay for the “service consumed” that day. Absolution. All this showed that the TV system It is vulnerable because, when a failure occurs on a scale like this occasion, it could not be react and the only solution was to lift the barriers to avoid major evils. The president of the company, in a very Japanese way, apologized Publicly and promised something: reimbursements and a total of 1,200 million yen, about seven million euros, which stopped entering during error time. All those who paid would receive the reimbursement of their money in a cordial gesture from the company to ensure equity with those who decided not to pay, but a thing was also remembered from Nexco: although the system fails, drivers They should pay. And there is the most questionable side in history. The error was due to a Failure in a software update of the teleping system that caused traffic jams and delays at first and, despite being the fault of the company, they wanted users to pay equally. Images | The Japan Faq In Xataka | Japan’s economy depends more and more on a very Japanese phenomenon: fans absolutely delivered to its idols

The more you know about the blackout in Spain, the less guilty the lack of inertia seems to be renewable

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The historic blackout that paralyzed the Iberian Peninsula on April 28 It continues to generate questions waiting for an official report. The narrative that pointed at a low inertia of the system due to the high penetration of renewable energies as guilty of collapse has begun to make waters. The data suggest a concatenation of more complex failures, where inertia, although it played a significant role in its final phase, does not seem to be the trigger for the energy zero. Context. Until now, experts They placed in the center of the debate The inertia of the electrical system, the capacity of the large rotary machines of the traditional plants to resist sudden frequency changes. The inertia in the European interconnected system is provided by large turbines and synchronous generators that rotate at a speed of 50 cycles per second to maintain the frequency of 50 Hz. High penetration of renewable energy sources, such as photovoltaic or wind solar, which are coupled to the network by power electronicsthey do not contribute this inertia inherently, which from the beginning was indicated as the root of the problem. Inertia was correct. However, Vice President Third Sara Aagesen said in the Senate that, in the moments before the blackout, the peninsular electrical system had a level of inertia “according to the recommendations”, according to the data that Red Electrico shared with the government. In statements collected by Europa PressAagesen specified that this level was 2.3 seconds, exceeding the target of two seconds established by the Entso-E European Operators network. Joan Groizard, Secretary of State for Energy, reinforced this idea pointing out that “many European systems frequently operate with inertia lower than those that had the peninsular electrical system in the moments prior to zero of 28th.” These official statements deflate, in part, the theory that a critical lack of inertia was the root cause of the incident. A sequence of anomalous events. The investigations point to a series of disturbances that preceded the blackout. Both Aagesen and Groizard talk about the detection of oscillations in the European electrical system hours before the failure. A first “anomalous” oscillation of 0.6 Hz was recorded at 12:03, whose origin, detected in Spain, France and even Germany“It is still known,” according to the minister. A second “usual” oscillation of 0.2 Hz was perceived at 12:19, even in areas as far as Latvia, Groizard said. Next, the three generation loss events occurred: in just over twenty seconds 2.2 gigawatts were disconnected in the provinces of Granada, Badajoz and Sevilla, between 12:32:57 and 12:33:17. These events coincided with a “situation of overwhelming in the peninsular electrical system, whose cause and consequence are still to be specified.” A problem of surge. Groizard speaks of voltage peaks as the root of the blackout, clarifying that “the main shooting factor is associated with over -overdraft.” But the government has not been the first to divert the focus of inertia. Luis Badesa, professor at the Polytechnic University of Madrid, pointed in a previous analysis That “two failures are almost very unlikely and point to a common event”, raising as suspicious the “surge in 400 kV lines of the southwest, perhaps linked to the previous oscillations.” The non -return point came, according to Badesa, at 12:33:20, when “Iberia loses connection with France and becomes an electric island; immediately, the centrals are massively disconnected.” Then, with the electrically isolated Iberian Peninsula, it is when synchronism is lost with the European continent. At that moment, with 59% of electricity from solar and 11% wind, inertia is insufficient. Then, the lack of inertia did not help. It is at this time, with the disconnected peninsula, when the inertia of the system becomes crucial. According to Badesa: “With little inertia, the frequency began to go down and to change very quickly.” This rapid frequency variation would have caused the shot of the protection relays of numerous centrals, “finishing off the blackout.” The lack of inertia “aggravated the final problem because he made the Rocof jump, but the origin was in several almost simultaneous generation cuts” previously, Badesa explained, stressing that “no operator designs his network to support three groups out of the service when he is isolated.” In other words, “the low renewable inertia did not cause the initial ruling, but it yesterday accelerated the collapse once Iberia remained alone.” Waiting for the official report. The available information suggests that the April 28 blackout was not a direct consequence of the low inertia due to renewable penetration, but the result of a complex chain of anomalous oscillations in the European network, followed by multiple almost simultaneous generation losses, possibly linked to overcoming. The preliminary conclusion is that the stability of a network with increasing weight of renewables does not depend only on inertia, but on the general robustness of the system in the face of multiple contingencies, such as interarene oscillations. For the definitive conclusions, we will have to wait for the official report, the Government hopes to have “in less than three months.” Image | Diego Delso (CC By-sa 4.0) In Xataka | After the blackout, the government defended the nuclear closure because “in Spain there is no uranium.” Reality is more complicated

In case they were happening few things, the sun has just caused a radius blackout with its most powerful eruption of 2025

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The sun has decided to remind us that we are in their hands. A new active region of sun spots, called AR4087, has released this morning a solar eruption of class X2.7, the most powerful so far this year. The sun was not asleep. Eruptions, glows or solar flares are classified as Five categories According to its intensity: A, B, C, M and X. Each letter represents events ten times more intense than the previous letter. An eruption X2.7 is located at the lower end of the most powerful category, but remains an important and unusual eruption. Observatories that constantly monitor the solar crown They detected it on May 14 at 08:25 UTC (10:25 in Spain). The X2.7 class flares has been the strongest of 2025, demonstrating that the sun is still awake After last year’s activitywhen it reached the solar maximum. Radio lock. Although it was not directed directly to the Earth, the eruption launched an intense X -ray pulse and extreme ultraviolet radiation that reached our planet at the speed of light. When impacting with the upper atmosphere of the Earth, this radiation has rapidly ionized, interfering with the high frequency radio signals (HF) on the visible face of our planet. As a result, a R3 level radius blackout was detected (cataloged as “strong”) in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. The show begins. The sun stain AR4087 remains very active and Soon he will look directly to the Earth As the sun revolves on its own axis. In the last hours he has produced class rashes M5.3, X2.7 and M7.74. The big question now is whether the most powerful eruption was accompanied by a coronal mass ejection, the famous solar plasma and magnetic field languages ​​that, when impacting with the Earth’s magnetic field, can cause geomagnetic storms and intense auroras to different latitudes, Like the historic Red Auroras of 2024. At the moment, the AR4087 region is at the visible edge of the sun, so the earth seems to be out of reach. Image | Spaceweather In Xataka | Webb and Hubble telescopes watched Jupiter’s auroras at the same time. The problem is that they did not see the same

After the blackout, false images of Spain and Portugal circulated from space. Now we have the real photos

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55 million people ran out of electricity in Spain and Portugal on April 28, but Total darkness images They circulated the next day, like the one above, they were false. The Balearic Islands did not suffer the blackout, and a good part of the Peninsula already had light when the night fell. Now the European Space Agency has compiled the real images captured from space. The trigger for this collection work were, in fact, the false images. Alejandro Sánchez de Miguel, researcher at the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia linked to ESA light pollution projects, He saw the photos that were circulating And he decided that the real ones had to be published. Three NASA satellites equipped with Night observation technology (Suomi-NPP, NOAA-20 and NOAA-21) spent a couple of times on the peninsula that night. Their Six images They tell us a nuanced story, and very different from viral montages, how the Peninsula finished illuminating. The blackout at 03:12, 03:36, 04:30, 04:54 and 05:18 While areas like Madrid had regained light around 22:00 on the 28th, other regions, especially in the souththey followed in the dark until Well enter the morning On the 29th, the almost complete recovery, visible in the last passes of the satellites, arrived at 5:00. The night was clear in almost the entire territory. Dark spots in France or the Portuguese coast are not due to supply cuts, but that the satellite did not go through that concrete region in the waterfall. In green, the areas that still had no light. Blank, the ones In these contrasted images, areas without light can be visualized more easily in green, while areas with electricity supply appear blank. The provinces of Almería and Granada They were the ones that took the closest to illuminate. There are also green areas in Castilla-La Mancha and dispersed regions of Levante, the Sierra Morena and the Campo de Gibraltar. The blackout in Andalusia seen by NASA Earth Observatory While satellites help quickly evaluate the scope and progression of light cuts, the blackouts itself offer space agencies the possibility of Study light pollution and its impact on the observation of heaven or In circadian rhythms of people. In areas such as Almería, the light pollution It was reduced between 70 and 80% during the blackout of April 28. But the light was restored, the stars turned off again and Pilas radio He went back to the drawer. Images | NASA, that In Xataka | ESA has launched the world’s first satellite equipped with Band Radar P. The goal: see through forests

Europe detected the oscillations of the blackout in Spain but did not know how to anticipate collapse

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While It is still done Analysis Committee meetings to find out what happened in the blackout of April 28. A new preliminary report of the European Network of Electricity Transportation Networks (ENTSO-E) has thrown An important focus on something that Europe could not see. Short. So far, what was known were the data of the “Black box”where second to second it has been investigated that it began to fail. But a new preliminary report of the Entso-E has confirmed That it is not only about the oscillations that were recorded in Spain: collapse was a “complex sequence of events.” In depth. The point is that the report explained that during the half an hour before the incident, two power and frequency oscillations were observed in the European electricity grid, between 12:03 and 12:07 and between 12:19 and 12:21. And of course, both Red Eléctrica in Spain and RTE in France took measures to mitigate these oscillations. However, at 12:33, the electrical system of the Iberian Peninsula He collapsed completely. The matter has more crumb. At that time, no oscillations and system variables were detected within the normal range of operation. But that did not mean that everything was under control. Europe had detected those oscillations, but when Spain and France intervened, they did not interpret it as a critical risk. This was how in southern Spain, a series of failures in electricity generation caused a loss of 2200 MW. This loss was sufficient to trigger a drop in the frequency of the system, which fell to 48 Hz. In other words, the electrical frequency must be maintained around 50 Hz. If it drops from 48 Hz, the system can enter a critical state. And that was exactly what happened. From that moment on … The blackout was inevitable. The electricity exchanges between Spain and its neighboring countries were at high levels: 1000 MW towards France, 2000mw to Portugal and 800MW to Morocco. But when the system collapsed, these connections were also lost. The transmission lines between France and Spain stopped working at 12:33:21 and automatic protection systems disconnected the entire Iberian network three seconds later. There was a figure that circulates in networks. The president of the Government in his appearance before the media said: “15GW disappeared in 5 seconds”I immediately ran this statement in the networks, but the Entso-E has specified that the loss was 2.2GW. So where did that figure come from? The 15 GW that circulated after the blackout comes from an initial REE estimate based on automatic defense systems. According to the Secretary of Energy of MitecoJoan Groizard, 10 GW were counted in automatic cuts (demand breakdown) and 5 GW in contribution of interconnections that stopped supplying energy. However, the report of the ETSO-E specifies that the loss recorded in southern Spain was 2200 MW (2.2 GW), a significantly lower figure, evidencing that the initial calculation did not reflect the loss of generation itself, but the global impact of the event on the electrical system. And now what? Entso-e has created A panel of experts to continue investigating what happened. These experts, from countries not affected by the blackout, will collect all the available data to rebuild minute by minute what happened on April 28 to prepare a technical report that will be presented to the European Commission throughout the second half of the year. In turn, the Spanish committee will continue working in parallel, analyzing not only technical failures, but also possible cyber attacks or errors in digital systems, according to has detailed The vice president, Sara Aagesen, in an interview for eldiario.es. Forecasts In the same interview, Sara Aagesen He has insisted in that the causes of the blackout are “enormously complex” and that no hypothesis is ruled out. But many unknowns are left: what centrals were disconnected exactly? What triggered the drop of 2200 MW? And why not the alert signals were detected in time? The first “green” blackout He has put Testing the Iberian Electricity and has evidenced the vulnerabilities of a system in full transition to renewables. While the full analysis of the blackout could take months, both system operators and governments They move in a field full of uncertainty. The key now is to rethink the Microredes, Energy storage and Gridorming technologies capable of stabilizing an increasingly volatile network. The road is being configured now and is in the present where you have to continue working. Image | Unspash and Eric Fischer Xataka | The other uncomfortable truth of the blackout: Spain does not yet have enough batteries for its renewable boom

After the blackout, the government defended the nuclear closure because “in Spain there is no uranium.” Reality is more complicated

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The question of uranium has returned to the forefront after the president of the Government affirm that “in Spain there is no uranium and therefore we will have to import it.” Although Spain has large uranium deposits, reality is always more complicated than the usual black or white policy. The second European country with more uranium. Spain has between 25,000 and 30,000 tons of uranium, “the second most important reserves of the European Union,” According to the geologist Jesús Martínez Frías. Both the ‘Red Book’ of the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) as the National Geographic Institute (IGN) indicate the existence of resources with the possibility of exploitation in Spanish territory, mainly in the province of Salamanca. Why they stopped exploding. Spain had uranium mining, but The last mine closed in 2000 for the “exhaustion of economically exploitable mining resources”, according to the Ministry for Ecological Transition. The Spanish Nuclear Society (SNE) said that production costs had exceeded 30% market prices, which made its continuity unfeasible. Two decades later, the Law 7/2021 of climate change and energy transition Truncó any new attempt To exploit the deposits: “Due to their prejudices, their cost will not be granted new exploration, research or concessions of exploitation of radioactive minerals, nor will new authorization requests be admitted.” Environmental problems. The risk of radioactive water contamination is another elephant in the room. A study Posted by Environmental Pollution In 2018 he documented “much higher” uranium concentrations than background geochemical levels near old mines abandoned in Salamanca. The levels in the soil ranged between 207.2 and 542.4 mg kg⁻¹, when the natural background levels are 29.8 mg kg⁻¹ for granite and 71.2 mg kg⁻¹ for slate. The study proposed environmental restoration measures, such as reforestation, in areas close to old farms. They are not entirely unfeasible. The political landscape has changed with the European Union in search of energy sovereignty and resources. The economic landscape too. With The price of upward uraniumthe Berkeley Minera company has a revived interest in its Retortillo project. The request for exploitation of this deposit was delivered before Law 7/2021 applied, but the Nuclear Safety Council also issued An unfavorable environmental report for “the low reliability and the high uncertainties of security analysis in geotechnical and hydrogeological aspects.” Uranium you have to enrich it. Although there was a political change that leads to the reactivation of Retry, the uranium that is extracted from the earth (natural uranium) barely contains 0.7% of Uranium-235, the necessary physiognable isotope for most nuclear reactors. It would be necessary to enrich uranium, a process that consists in increasing the concentration of uranium-235 to 3-5% levels for light water reactors, which are the most common. Spain does not have its own high -scale enriched uranium, or facilities in which to enrich uranium at the industrial level for use as fuel in nuclear centrals. Can Spain enrich uranium? Spain had the capacity to produce uranium concentrates (in the form of yellow cakes or Yellowcakes), But obtaining enriched uranium is a subsequent, technologically more complex and expensive process, dominated by a few countries. Today, 60% He leaves Russia and China. ENUSA (the national uranium company) already had difficulty replacing Russian enriched uranium after Commercial vetoes for the Ukraine War. Enriching it would be a major challenge. A change of direction. In the new geopolitical context, the European Union is promoting the reactivation of mining to ensure a sovereign supply of key materials for energy transition and defense. Spain is rich in Uranium, but also in resources such as copper, which is the second EU producer. Besides, It has lithiumcobalt, Coltán and possible lower land deposits. Seven of the 47 new Strategic Mining Projects promoted by the EU They will be developed in Spainalthough most face the rejection of environmental organizations for its environmental impact, such as the lithium mine in Cáceres. The epicenter of the debate. Discussions on Spanish uranium are a broader reflex of tensions: the strategic autonomy of resources, the imperatives of the energy transition, environmental protection and social acceptance of mining activity. In the end, the epicenter of the debate is the high cost of building and maintaining traditional nuclear plants in the face of renewable energy sources, of which Spain is world power. Only last year, Spain produced 148,999 GWh of renewable energy, 56.8% of Mix. If the blackout was A notice that the electricity is not prepared To stabilize large renewable energy fluctuations, what touches is wondering what are the investments in storage, investors, interconnections and energy sources alternative to pollutants combined cycles of gas to avoid another blackout. Everything is said regarding the closure of nuclear plants or the extraction of uranium in Spain, but the solar industry will not go anywhere. Image | Tecnatom In Xataka | In Salamanca there is a high -tech nuclear fuel bars factory that exports to all of Europe: we have visited it

Spanish nuclear have been criticized for their role in the blackout. This was what they did before, during and after collapse

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On April 29, just a few hours after Total collapse of the electricity grid Spanish, Pedro Sánchez, the president of the Government of Spain, He made these statements: “Citizens should know that during this crisis nuclear power plants, far from being a solution, have been a problem Because they were turned off. And it has been necessary to divert large amounts of energy to maintain their stable nuclei. At this time there are two nuclear centrals activated, and they are not because they are needed, but because their activation was already planned. “ His words require several nuances if we want to know in some detail what was the role of Spanish nuclear facilities in this incident and what they did before, during and after the total blackout. The first thing is worth repairing is that only three of the seven nuclear reactors of the Spanish park were turned off: the Trillo because the technicians were recharging fuel barsand those of Almaraz I and chests due to the needs that the electric market had at that time. The other four nuclear reactors, those of Almaraz II, Ascó I and II and Vandellós II, were operating normally before the blackout occurred. If we have this present the statement of Pedro Sánchez in which he argues that “(…) nuclear power plants, far from being a solution, have been a problem because they were turned off (…)” is not right. As we have just seen, Four reactors were delivering electricity to the network with total normality. In any case, the most interesting is what happened just when the collapse occurred. Security systems went into action to guarantee a safe stop Nuclear reactors are prepared to stop fission reactions whenever. The procedure that is used, very broadly, consists of introducing the control bars in the active section of the vessel, which are made of metal alloys of boron, cadmium or hafnio because these chemical elements have the ability to absorb a large number of neutrons. Fission reactions stop very quickly thanks to the effect of control bars, but, and this is very important, nuclear reactors have a great thermal inertia. This simply means that once the flow of neutron has stopped completely the reactor continues to generate residual heat due to the disintegration of products derived from nuclear fission. The main consequence of this behavior is evident: It is essential to sustain core cooling of the reactor even although this machine has stopped by introducing the control bars and modifying the composition of the refrigerant By adding boric acid to the primary circuitwhich also has a very high index of neutron absorption. Active and liabilities refrigeration systems must ensure that residual heat does not compromise the integrity of the reactor Active and passive cooling systems have to ensure that residual heat does not compromise the integrity of the reactor, and, curiously, thermal inertia can last even for several days. When on April 28 there was the collapse of the Electric Red the four reactors that were in operation were automatically stopped and the security systems that have been designed to hold a safe stop were activated. The first thing that happened was that autonomous diesel generators started automatically and generated the electricity that was necessary at that time to keep the entire installation on a safe stop. Everything was executed as planned according to the Nuclear Safety Council. A few hours later, when the supply of electricity from abroad resumed, the autonomous diesel groups were disconnected and the emergency plan was deactivated. From that moment on, nuclear centrals have been resuming the production of electricity, although before doing so the technicians have carried out the security checks that are necessary. An important note once we have reached this point: the recovery of the activity of nuclear power plants and their synchronization with the electricity grid are carried out as the system operator, which is Red Eléctrica de España, and the electricity market requires it. A week after the total blackout we have no solid reason to conclude that Spanish nuclear power plants have put us in danger. Image | Nuclear forum More information | Nuclear forum In Xataka | China and Russia have an extremely ambitious plan: in 2028 they will build a nuclear power plant on the moon

We have second to second the data on the great blackout in Spain. They complicate everything even more

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The great blackout of April 28 left us all with more questions than answers. Now, with the “black box” of the electrical system in the hands of the researchers, the preliminary data, far from offering a simple explanation, have added a level of complexity to an unprecedented energy crisis. To begin with, what seemed like an abrupt power fall was rather a sequence of three impacts. We knew of two disconnectionsbut as confirmed by Vice President Third Sara Aagesen, there was a third incident exactly 19 seconds Before the blackout, at 12:33. This first shake, located south of the Peninsula, adds to the two already known in the southwest, which triggered the cascade of the network. Although the system was able to absorb this first alteration, its existence adds a new layer of intrigues to an intricate technical autopsy. Researchers face the forensic analysis of about 70,000 critical points that show data every 20 milliseconds. Unraveling the exact sequence in those five fateful seconds between 12:33:16 and 12:33:21, and now also in the previous 19 seconds, is what light will shed on the questions that Red Electrica still does not answer. What was the first domino card to fall? How did the rest of the system react? Were the backs failed? The volume and granularity of information They predict months of workas happened after the Texas blackout in 2021 or that of Italy in 2003, where the final responses took months to arrive. Fortunately, there is a deadline, imposed by the European Commission: Spain has three months to deliver its conclusions about the blackout and A resilience plan that, predictably, will have implications at the paneuropeo level. Collapse anatomy 12:32:57 on Monday, April 28. First blow. The frequency of the peninsular network experienced a slight fall, a few hundredths below 50 Hz. The system absorbed the oscillation in milliseconds, as in normal circumstances. But it was a first warning: a first loss of generation in the south of the registered peninsula 19 seconds before energy zero. The Investigation Committee has already baptized it as the “third event”, although chronologically it was the first. Has been discovered after scrutinizing in detail the log of Eléctrica Red, which monitors those 70,000 critical points by turning data every 20 milliseconds. 12:33:16. Second blow. A new and powerful oscillation in the southwest dynamite the available operational reserve. The frequency sinks this time below critics 49.85 Hz. Given this fall, converters of an important part of the photovoltaic generation begin to disconnect automatically to protect the equipment. 12: 33: 17-12: 33: 21. KO Technical. In just four seconds, the frequency fall is accelerated unrecoverable. The interconnection with France jumps, and then that of Morocco. The network loses 15 GW of power, the equivalent of 60% of the peninsular generation at that time. Then go black. Spain and Portugal sign their first energy zero. 03:30 on Tuesday, April 29. To restore service from black, network operators carry out a Black-Start unprecedented, first starting the pumping hydraulics, followed by combined gas cycles. Red Eléctrica announced that 99.95% of the supply It had been restored 15 hours after the blackout. No one in Europe had risen from scratch a network of this size with such a high proportion of renewable energy. Renewables in the epicenter of debate While technical research progresses with stealth, the public debate is a Theories Polvorín Waiting for answers. The hypothesis of a cyber attack He has flown the crisis from the first moment, despite the fact that Eduardo Prieto, director of Operations of Electric, will discard it sharply. Beyond that, the growing weight of renewables in the energy mix (More than 50% of production in 2024) has placed solar and wind energies in the eye of the hurricane. Its intermittent nature and its lack of synchronous inertia (the ability of conventional plants to stabilize the network thanks to its great rotating masses) They make the most vulnerable system to frequency imbalances. The electricity grid must maintain a constant balance between generation and consumption, operating at a frequency of 50 Hz. An important mismatch can compromise the entire infrastructure. Renewable sources, depending on the sun or wind, and connecting through power electronics (famous investors), do not have that mechanical inertia. Since there are solutions such as energy storage (batteries or pumping centrals) and “Grid Formers” (investors designed to stabilize the network), the question is whether the system is sufficiently adapted to renewables. A May 2024 Report Published by the Electric Red itself, not suspect. Entitled ‘General Criteria for the Protection of the Spanish Electrical System’, warned of the need for Adapt protection criteria before “the change in the generation mix of the current electrical system due to the massive entry of renewable energy sources.” The text recognized that, in areas with high generation penetration based on power electronics, “situations could occur in which the behavior of some of the current protection functions was not expected”, being able to lead to the “disconnection of large amounts of renewable generation”, causing possible serious imbalances. American analyst Russ Schussler It has been warning for years that replacing synchronous generators with investor -based resources (wind, solar) increases the risk of blackouts, and that the lack of inertia is a key factor. Jordi Sevillaformer president of Electrica, believes that the National Integrated Plan for Energy and Climate Peque of “Too Renewable Messianism” without sufficiently attending to these technical problems and the lack of investment. Images | Endesa, Fernando Rodríguez (RTE data) In Xataka | The total blackout of Spain has a suspicious number 1: a stabilization of the poor electricity grid

If the question is when the next blackout will occur, the answer is simple: it is impossible to know

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He Bru what last April 28 It has generated many questions, and among them a couple stand out that seem inevitable: the first, if there are possibilities that it will produce again Another massive blackout. The second, if any, when will it happen? It is impossible to answer these questions with total certainty, although there are ways to reduce those possibilities to the minimum possible. Impossible to respond to that. To Niehls Bohr, the father of quantum physics, the phrase “making predictions is very difficult, especially when it comes to the future” is attributed. That also happens when trying to predict A nearby potentialsomething practically impossible and what also contribute several arguments. We still do not know the origin of the blackout. One of the problems of trying to answer that question is that we have no definitive or officers about what caused the blackout. From the Spanish Electric Electricity (REE) it was stated that the blackout It was due to a generation disconnectionbut they still do not give details about the specific causes that caused such disconnection. The experts They point to renewables As a possible cause, but at the moment nothing is confirmed. And without knowing the origin of the problem, we cannot know how to avoid it in the future. An unfortunate prediction. Pedro Sánchez, a jacket but without a tie, appears at a press conference. At a given time he says that “there will be no electricity blackouts.” The videowhich has now gone viral, it is not these days, but of September 6, 2022. At that time those words were pronounced in the context of a possible Russian gas cut throughout Europe. But there has been, and the question is whether there will be. The president of the Government was wrong in his prediction. Two and a half years later Spain has suffered The biggest blackout in its historyand one of the great questions that citizens have been asked is when the next blackout will occur, If it occurs. Never say ever. The research of the causes will lead to means for something like that not to happen again. The President of the Government spoke In your appearance of April 29 that there would be reforms so that “never” a generalized electric blackout is repeated like that of April 28, but even with all these reforms and measures zero probability does not exist. There are impodeables. Even in the case of detecting and correcting the problem caused by the blackout, it is still impossible to ensure that another will occur in the future. There are of course possibilities that a technical, human error or a natural catastrophe poses blackouts at some point. Spain has improvement margin. As we have commented In Xatakathe Spanish energy mix needs a stabilization system of the robust network, but also the Iberian Peninsula is an “Energy Island With very little international connection. Thus, we need an integration stronger With the rest of Europe to balance demand, strengthen system safety and share surpluses. There are other possible measures that can be taken, and as explained by the analyst Javier Blas In Bloomberg“The design of the network, policies and risk analysis are not yet up to the management of excess renewables.” All this is important when minimizing the risks of another future blackout. Image | Gabriel Castles In Xataka | The blackout left all Spain without capacity to communicate. The problem is that it also isolated the government

Let us run out of mobile during the blackout was terrible. That will happen to the government is much more worrying

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The mass blackout suffered by Spain and Portugal on April 28 left us without light, but also without being able to communicate with our mobile phones. One would think that government members would have some type of auxiliary system, but the truth is that there seems to be no for these types of situations. “Blind”. Government sources pointed out In the world that during The blackout of April 28 They were “blind” and that “mobile phones did not work, we could not communicate (…) not even among us in the complex and in the ministries.” Not only citizens. During those hours millions of citizens suffered A very irregular service in their mobile communications, and except for some exceptionsthe operators had huge problems to continue serving. That is already worrying, but even more than our rulers suffered those same problems and there is no emergency plan for this type of event. It didn’t work either The alert system, Es-Alert. Mesh b. The Government does not have an auxiliary communications system, and for years the effort was in another direction: to protect the communications of government members in the face of possible spying acts. To do this exists The call Mesh bthe Safe Strategic Communications Support System of the National Crisis Management System and the Government Presidency. The system is used not only in government fields, but also in high state institutions. The government protects from espionage. As they point out In the countrythe government decided in early 2025 to renew its encryption systems to shield communications after espionage scandal made with pegasus. The first phase will be a modernization of technical infrastructure, of which will order The Spanish company Epicom. Together with this renewal, an update of the communications encryption system will also be updated, which until now was carried out with Comsec (Indra) but that will now compete with Secret T (Telefónica). Both are National Development Technologies, a primary condition for these services. Sirdee is not (for the moment) for that. Spain has The Sirdee program (Integral System of Digital Emergency Radiocommunications of the State), which was launched in 2000 and that served more than 150,000 users in Spain. Among them are the National Police, the Civil Guard and even the presidency of the Government. There are specific contingency plans and operational continuity in ministries and strategic bodies, but government members suffered the same problems as citizens. As they point out In networks & Telecomthe Sirdee system, which was based on tetra technology of UHF radio, It is now complementing With broadband systems through EMBM technology, based on LTE/5G connectivity. Sirdee base nodes are usually equipped with backup batteries and diesel generators that allow these equipment and communications to be kept while these active auxiliary solutions can be maintained. High frequency networks. In 1988 the United States created its high frequency communications Shares program (HF, 3 to 30 MHz) with the aim of having a support for the first fixed lines, and later for mobile lines. This system, now under the Department of National Security (DHS), is composed of thousands of HF stations distributed throughout the country and belonging to different federal and state agencies. The system It was used during the 11-S attacks, but also during natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf of Mexico in 2005. Satellite communication is another option. During the blackout Starlink turned out to be an exceptional alternative During the blackout, and that shows that satellite communications systems can be very useful in this type of events. Europe has been trying to launch its satellite Internet system Through the Iris2 systemwhich is expected to begin to be operational in 2030. Images |Baatcheet Films | Pool Moncloa/Fernando Calvo In Xataka | The Catalan Sateliot company lifts 70 million euros with a clear objective: to display the “Spanish Starlink of the IoT”

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