Europe hit by giant power outage

[bham]

"Some five million French people were deprived of electricity on Saturday evening 4/11/2006, a gigantic blackout which affected all of Western Europe following a major failure in Germany, causing the continent to pass through two fingers of a total blackout.
About 10% of the French population was therefore plunged into darkness for nearly an hour, according to the French electricity transmission network RTE, a subsidiary of EDF. They were "gradually replenished between 22:30 p.m. and 23:00 p.m.", he added.
The outage started around 22 p.m. in several districts of central and eastern Paris before spreading to the west of the capital. They appealed to the population asking not to call their switchboard.
Many households in the Rhône, Loire, Ain, Saône-et-Loire and Isère were without electricity on Saturday evening. According to the emergency services, 14 departments around Lyon were concerned but they could not specify the causes of the cut. According to several inhabitants, these cuts have also affected the north of France, Normandy, in particular the agglomeration of Caen as well as Brittany, including Rennes. Burgundy and Franche Comté have also been affected, but the current is being restored in these areas, according to the firefighters of the departments concerned.
"Similar cuts have taken place in all the countries of Western Europe", added RTE, because of a "house of cards" phenomenon, then declared a member of the RTE management board, Pierre Bornard. "On November 5 at 22:13 p.m. particularly important incidents affected the German electricity transmission network", declared RTE, referring to a "sudden deficit of electrical energy", while Germany is going through a period of intense cold.
One of the large private energy supply groups in Germany, RWE, confirmed this information. According to one of his spokespersons, it is the sudden drop in temperature - the thermometer has dropped to 0 degrees, or even less - which has caused "overheating" of the German network. According to Mr. Bornard, it would be two very high voltage lines (400.000 volts) that would have experienced problems. In Germany, several hundred thousand inhabitants of North Rhine-Westphalia, especially in the region of Cologne (west), have been affected. In Italy, large-scale blackouts have affected several regions of Italy, Italian agency Ansa said.
"We have not gone very far from a + European blackout", declared Mr. Bornard. The German failure caused a general production imbalance in Europe. To restore the balance and in order to avoid a complete blackout, "automatic security systems suddenly cut off" part of the consumption, "it is the only way to avoid a complete collapse," he said. Explain. "It all happened in seconds," he added. RTE specified that 5.200 Megawatts out of the 56.000 consumed at this time had been "immediately interrupted".
Electric safety in Europe has deteriorated for several years as consumption increases and investments in electricity production do not follow. Regularly, during periods of intense cold or extreme heat, the supply of electricity is threatened in different European countries, forcing suppliers to take exceptional measures.
Saturday evening, "there was sufficient production capacity in Europe", according to Mr. Bornard, and France was exporting electricity. But in the interconnected European system, "everyone is united, it is a single machine", he explained. In France, "a dozen TGVs were affected in the north and the center of France and took between 30 minutes and an hour late," said a spokesperson for the SNCF. According to Aéroports de Paris, air traffic has not been affected.
The telephone switchboards of the emergency services were taken by storm to the point that the Paris firefighters had to launch an appeal to the population asking them not to call them again. "

Have confidence, what said there !!! it's cold in the back !!! well, well, I don't regret heating myself with wood.

[iota]

It comes pitete from the fact that fuel oil and gas increases so we heat more and more electric ?!
not everyone has a fireplace.
So more consumption ...

Will have to take the energy qqpart

[Rulian]

Uh Bham (and everyone), when you copy / paste an article like that, could you quote the source to put a link please? It helps to know what we are talking about and improves the credibility of the discussions.

Goods.

[zac]

Hello

one hour cutoff and everyone calls their mother we're going to have a hard time recruiting for the revolution
with us it's every week, there is a candle point budjet.

@+

[iota]

And wham in the face!
there shouldn't be a war or global warming ...

zac +1

[gegyx]

Nothing seen in the past! I even thought it was a hoax!

Must say that in Orleans, I am relaxed, lying in my hammock, stretched between the towers of Dampierre-en-Burly and St laurent des eaux…
With the Loire that will one day lick my toes ...
Well suspended, I did not even feel the earthquake of degree 4, this night, on the side of Chinon.
Inevitably my hammock was not hanging on the towers of Chinon.

[Woodcutter]

Nothing seen either ...

[Other]

Hello,
In the Nordic countries we are used to this kind of thing, you have to be careful, we lacked electricity in the middle of winter for 8 days during the ice storm. the big slow-burning stove that I made is used for something, (The people of the north (Lac St-Jean) provided free tons of firewood and there was a great mutual help, the isolated people are solidarity in case of disaster than city dwellers)
When it is -20 outside it takes 18 hours for a house to cool and 30 hours for the plumbing to freeze, for the freezer no problem have taken the stock out.
Many people have generators for the control of oil furnaces. During the crisis, some of the poorest people were accommodated, among those who had heating or in large schools or gymnasiums. (the police made the rounds in the houses certain old person do not want to leave their house, the certain generators tied them outside with chains (they do not always stop for lack of fuel!)
When all the electrical network is in loop and that suddenly a branch of supply of the loop fails, all the other supplies try to compensate and it becomes a domino effect that falls one after the other, this problem has been partially solved more to the big breakdown that we had. The Americans know that they are also entitled to their total (Black out).
But even a generalized cut of 1 hour did not even talk about it, the problem is when everyone consumes the rework is more difficult.
All this shows that we are vulnerable and at the mercy of 3 electric wires.


Andre

[iota]

Like what happens to others, worse and that they ask themselves very well!
Instead of crying, we'd better take an example.

ppffffff on tv, they want to make us cry or what?

[bham]

Uh Bham (and everyone), when you copy / paste an article like that, could you quote the source to put a link please? It helps to know what we are talking about and improves the credibility of the discussions.

Goods.

Yes, sorry, that was on the Orange home page, in the news. and here is the continuation: "The big blackout relaunches the debate on the energy organization of the EU" which you can see there: Link

an hour off and everyone calls his mother, we will have a hard time recruiting for the revolution.

It is clear but what it reveals and this is what I meant by "it's cold in the back", is that we are at the mercy of centralized energy, at the mercy of a system that can go wild and that if it gets stuck for 1 hour, it can also get stuck for several hours, even several days in extreme weather conditions. Maybe it should happen more often to advance the schmilblick .....