this post was submitted on 28 Apr 2025
197 points (99.0% liked)

World News

46188 readers
3078 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News !news@lemmy.world

Politics !politics@lemmy.world

World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] tal@lemmy.today 19 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

CNN, five minutes ago as of this writing:

https://www.cnn.com/world/live-news/power-outages-blackout-spain-portugal-04-28-25/index.html

Some outlets are reporting a fire in the southwest of France is to blame, but French electricity providers have denied the claim. Portugal’s National Cybersecurity Center also said there was no evidence of a cyberattack being behind the power outages, state news agency LUSA reported.

While the exact cause remains unclear, governments have convened emergency meetings and electricity providers are working to restore power as soon as possible.

I do see other news articles on other sites speculating as to cause, including some about hacking, but that doesn't seem to be beyond guesswork. I'd think that if there were any firm information out, that CNN would have it.

[–] tal@lemmy.today 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

I'd also note that Spain and Portugal have very limited interconnection to the rest of Europe


this is known as the "Iberian energy island"


and addressing this has been the topic of some past European news coverage that I've read.

There are only three, limited-capacity electricity transmission links between them and France. In the past, they have been completely cut off from the rest of Europe's electricity grid when all three links were down for unrelated reasons at the same time.

I'd guess that this is probably a relatively weak point in terms of reliability in Europe's electricity grid.

Back in 1965, in the US, we had the Northeast go dark for a while after a failure on one transmission line into the region shut down, caused electricity to be shunted onto others, triggering them to also shut down; a series of cascading protection systems triggered to bring the system to a "safe" state and avoid damage and ultimately brought power transmission into the region and then other systems down.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_1965

[–] Buelldozer@lemmy.today 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] tal@lemmy.today 3 points 1 day ago

The 1965 failure resulted from the transmission capacity into the region being near exhausted, and then a failure on one transmission line triggering a series of other problems that blacked out the region. I'm just trying to give an example of where a failure of the sort that one might expect to potentially happen in Iberia -- having little spare transmission capacity, and then hitting some sort of problem that increases stress -- might result in internal blackouts in the region.

Squirrels man. I'm better it's because of squirrels.

They're coordinating. One looked me in the eye from a tree yesterday, turned around and started racing down the tree and right ar me. spooked the shit out of me.