re are scenes of chaos across Europe (THOMAS COEX / Contributor / Getty)
Pictures show massive crowds gathering at airports and train stations, as transport grinds to a halt. There are similar scenes of people queuing at cash machines in Lisbon due to a lack of ability to pay by card. Elsewhere, footage of passengers having to walk down railway tracks in Bilbao has gone viral.
Ukrainian Energy Minister German Galuschenko has vowed to help, explaining: “We are ready to share the knowledge and experience, including those gained during the systematic Russian attacks on the energy infrastructure.”
Still, EU Council President Antonio Costa has reiterated there’s no evidence of it being a cyber attack. Costa has said he’s been in contact with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and Portuguese PM Luís Montenegro.
Considering REN warned it could take a week to achieve normalisation of the system, we’re bracing for more wild stories and scenes of bedlam.
One woman told The Independent how her son was trapped on a roller coaster for half an hour in ‘fierce’ heat at Spain’s PortAventura World, and was then forced to walk back to their hotel due to a lack of buses.
With things descending into chaos, the Mayor of Madrid has asked residents to stay off the roads and only phone emergency services if it’s “truly urgent.”
This is thought to be Europe’s largest ever power cut, leaving millions without vital services.
Speaking to The Telegraph, energy analyst Kathryn Porter said that a reliance on solar energy might’ve left the Iberian power grid vulnerable to faults and cyber attacks: “If you have a grid fault, it can cause a frequency imbalance and in a low-inertia environment the frequency can change much faster.
“If you have had a significant grid fault in one area, or a cyber attack, or whatever it may be, the grid operators therefore have less time to react. That can lead to cascading failures if you cannot get it under control quickly enough.
“The growing reliance on solar has pushed inertia on the grid to the point where it does become more difficult to respond to disruptions such as significant transmission faults.”
Although some power has been restored to substations in the north, south, and west of the Iberian Peninsula, the fact that energy companies are warning it’s a case of doing it slowly but surely doesn’t fill us with the most confidence.
