The painful task of restoring Europe again

At 12:30 pm local time on Monday, the authority came out. Through Spain and Portugal, trains, aircraft and traffic light suddenly stopped working.

Reports from People are stuck in elevatorsAnd Google Maps showed traffic data in big cities, including Madrid and Barcelona, ​​where they became suspicious. The main airports warned the delay due to blackout. Its case is still unknown. It is estimated that a blackout has affected the overall Portugal, Spain and the small regions of France.

“Traffic lights do not work. The streets are chaotic because there is an officer at every crossing,” says Gustavo, who lives in Madrid. “The water does not reach apartments at the top of the buildings because the pumps are electrical, and the very few open shops only take the money.”

This is the nightmare of every electric engineer, says Paul Kofi, Assistant Professor of the College of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the University of Dublin. “The reason there is no large -scale interruption all the time is that the regime operators are very conservative and very friendly about using large safety margins to ensure that this does not happen,” he says. Engineers are planning a failure in networks or storms in the demand for consumer, which can destabilize the energy supply. “These things are unusual, but for the energy engineer, the threat that is always underwent its occurrence.”

Red Eléctrica Electricity Player He said in a post on x A few hours after the initial blackout that I recovered in some areas of Catalonia and Arajon in the northeast; País Vasco, Galicia, La Rioja, Asturias, Navarra, and Castilla Y Léon in the north; Extreadura in the East; And Andalucía in the south.

Experts believe that getting the network reserve and operating in both countries can take between a few hours to several days, depending on the region. While the network is backup, a priority for emergency services is likely to be given things like stable internet connection, they say.

Kofi says there is a series of steps that happen now. They will do the so -called “black start” – a process that gradually connecting the power plants to form a network that works again. The supply and electrical order must be balanced to avoid more power outages, which means with the presence of power stations online, only parts of the network can come with them, with the country gradually operating, step by step. He explains that there is a team inside the network operator planning for this matter, which identified the generators that must be brought online first, as he explains.

“You must expect every failure that can happen and you should survive any of them,” says Kofi. From the control room, engineers should be able to know the parts of the network that works for sure, so they will not fly blind – but it will take time.

“Even with a completely healthy network, doing this black start may take 12 hours or 16 hours. You have to do it in succession, and it takes a long time. I’m sure there are engineers who wear clothes everywhere while we are talking in an attempt to achieve all this.