Being in the dark – literally and figuratively
So, there I was, halfway through my Monday session at the gym when the power cut off. “No issue,” I thought. I’m just doing the weights and any energy used is from my muscles. That is the purpose of exercise, right? After a while, the front desk receptionist came up to announce that the power had, indeed, gone out. Not only that, but the Internet and phone service was affected as well. And it impacted Spain and France.
What happened? At the time I didn’t know. More importantly, I couldn’t easily find out. After a quick message to my wife in the U.S. explaining what happened, my phone ceased to work as a telecommunications device. No Internet, no cell service. At that point, I realized that this was serious. My cell phone was turned off to conserve power. Weeks earlier the Spanish government suggested to have three-days’ worth of supplies on hand just in case of an emergency. This seemed to be that event.
I rapidly took stock of what I had in the house. No bread and one banana. I did have canned goods, which I had purchased weeks earlier because of the governmental advice. So far, so good. I use bottled water for the coffee maker, so there’s that in reserve. I made a quick count of the cat food. There are enough cans and dry food to get us through three days. Water for bathing might be an issue. The water pressure dropped precipitously because we use pumps to get the water up to the top floors in Valencia. I took a quick shower with the remaining hot water.
After reapproaching myself for not doing the shopping on Saturday as I originally planned, I started inventorying what else I had. Fortunately, I recently bought a case of milk “bricks.” Those are the cartons with UHT-treated milk. Until you open them, they’re fine at room temperature. What about the fridge? It was bare save for some turkey slices. Those would be first to be consumed. Waste not, want not. The stuff in the freezer could be thawed and eaten without heating should the outage last a lengthy time.
Spending time in the apartment, I watched the pedestrians below come and go. No panic and cars were still navigating the streets. Obviously, all the traffic lights ceased to function, but there was no queuing. I figured if there was a mass exodus, I’d have to deal with getting myself and the cats out. I don’t have a car, so there’s that concern.
Eventually, I walked down the seven flights of stairs to survey the city. All seemed normal, except for the lack of lighting. I went to a nearby pastry shop, whose sign advised there was no bread available. No matter, I wanted the sweet stuff anyway. It was a cash-only transaction and I got it to go. I did the cakewalk with my two little bags back to the apartment. Crossing streets without stoplights did take some courage. However, drivers did note the pedestrians’ presence waiting at the intersections. When there was enough mass, we surged into the street. And the drivers yielded.
I ran into a neighbor as I came back from that quick jaunt who told me that the issue was expected to take up to three days to fix. Still no idea of what caused it, however. I guessed it was a hack of some sort. Maybe even the loss of a satellite or two. Years before, when living in Houston, a solar storm of some sort had taken out satellite communication, which made my pager dysfunctional. It’s incredible how interconnected all our technology is.
The outage had started around 12:30 p.m. local time. I accustomed myself to the idea that this would be my life for days. Fortunately, at around 8:30 in the evening the power returned. I knew that because I heard cheers from outside the windows. First thing, I went through the house and performed the post-outage ritual of resetting the clocks. It took a bit for the phone service and, consequently, network connections to be restored.
This episode brought back memories of being in Texas when the grid went down in the middle of a severe bout of winter weather. It was caused by a surge in demand and frozen generators. Texas, like the Iberian peninsula, is an “energy island.” Unlike Texas, it’s not political – it’s geographical. The Pyrenees mountain range acts as a barrier to international power grids. That’s why Portugal, Spain, and only a part of France, near Barcelona, were affected.
At this early stage of the investigation, it’s not “Green Power” that’s the culprit as a MAGA acquaintence alleged to me. Unlike Texas’ wintertime experience, it wasn’t the lack of electricity, it was possibly too much. Spain is really good about diversifying its resources. It doesn’t have a lot of oil available, as does the U.S. Actually, it gets a lot of its imported petroleum products from the U.S., Mexico, and Brazil among others. Also, it has invested heavily in renewable forms of energy such as wind, solar and hydroelectric. So much so that recently, Spain had a day when the cost per kilowatt hour was negative – essentially meaning free electricity for consumers.
If there was a problem with going green, it might be found to be an embarrassment of riches, which overloaded the transmission network. Normally, the lines are load balanced but for some reason, one part of the system became inundated with electricity. The cascade effect took down the rest of the network.
In the aftermath, when the outage becomes outrage, I expect there will be a lot of finger pointing and recriminations. Some fixes will be called for, such as greater interconnectivity with the rest of Europe as a backup. As for myself, I’m going old school. That mean I’m getting a battery-operated, shortwave radio. The scariest part of this whole experience was not knowing and being figuratively left in the dark.
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