Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

Power outage unlikely to be caused by a single fault - UK expert Georgina Rannard Climate and science reporter Image source, Reuters Image caption, A woman in Madrid displays the name of the town she needs to go to, hoping that any drivers going in that direction will take her Not a single expert I've spoken to has a clear theory about what might lie behind this. It's not an exaggeration to say everyone is stumped. But this is a reminder of how vulnerable national electricity systems are. "Over many decades, we can see that at least one major power outage, on the scale of this one, tends to happen somewhere in the world every year," says Prof Keith Bell at Glasgow's University of Strathclyde. "Every event is different, both in how it started and how the characteristics of that particular system affected how it developed," he suggests. He says this outage in Portugal and Spain is unlikely to be down to one single fault. Power operators are supposed to be what is called N-1 secu ... Read full article.