Spain and Portugal have suffered major electrical blackouts affecting capital cities such as Madrid and Lisbon, plus many other regional cities such as Barcelona, Valencia, and Porto. Parts of southern France have also been affected

https://news.sky.com/story/spain-portugal-power-outage-latest-large-parts-of-countries-affected-with-traffic-lights-not-working-and-phone-lines-down-13357538

REN the prinicipal  electrical grid operator in Spain has blamed rare atmospheric conditions that have affected significant parts of the European power grid system for causing  “induced atmospheric variations” which have impacted the operational stability of power transmission lines across the entire Iberian peninsula. They say that it may take up to a week to resolve the problems affecting their 400 and 220 KV transmission lines.

What they are referring to appears to be a phenomenon known to power line engineers as GIC (geomagnetically induced currents) which are related to space weather - i.e. charged particles from the sun.The solar cycle is currently on an 11 year maximum for sunspot activity.

https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/solar-cycle-progression

A recent 2023 AGU article on  ‘Expected Geomagnetically Induced  Currents in the Spanish Islands Power Transmission Grids’  explains some of the problems:

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2023SW003426

"When the Sun is active, it sends out more charged particles that can affect the regions around the Earth where those particles interact with the planet's magnetic field. This leads to a significant increase of electric currents in these media giving rise to geomagnetic storms. This generated electrical fields act like a voltage source and cause electrical currents to flow through the power networks, that can damage the transformers where the circuit is grounded.

The currents thus induced in those technological systems are accordingly known as geomagnetically induced currents (GICs). The GIC component of the current flowing in a power transformer disturbs the normal power-frequency operation of the magnetic circuit, causing core saturation, increasing the leakage flux, and generating transformer heating (e.g., Gaunt, 2014). GICs also generate harmonic distortion and voltage unbalance that may lead to the misoperation of protective devices, causing the tripping of over-current relays. If the infrastructure damage and tripping of transmission lines spreads it may result in cascading outages and extended power disruptions."

If a relatively minor geomagnetic storm causes this, just imagine what another Carrington Event would do.

https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/space-science/carrington-event-today

Great! There's another shortage of toilet paper now.

But power is back.

1 hour ago, TheVat said:

If a relatively minor geomagnetic storm causes this, just imagine what another Carrington Event would do.

https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/space-science/carrington-event-today

Funny that you mention this. I've been thinking about it for the whole 8 hours that this has lasted.

16 hours ago, TheVat said:

If a relatively minor geomagnetic storm causes this, just imagine what another Carrington Event would do.

https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/space-science/carrington-event-today

Small correction - REN (Redes Energéticas Nacionals) operate the national grid of Portugal, and REE (Red Eléctrica de España ) operate the Spanish electrical grid system.

The Carrington Event which took place in September 1859 happened at a time when high power electrical transmission systems and transformers in the 220/400 KV class simply did not exist.

https://www.space.com/the-carrington-event

Oddly enough, one of my relatives - a maternal great-uncle Sir Arthur Fleming (1881-1960) was a pioneering electrical engineer who was sent over to Pittsburgh USA in 1899  to train with Westinghouse Electrical Corporation, and he subsequently became an insulation specialist and head of transformer design with British Westinghouse.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Fleming_(electrical_engineer)

He was knighted for his war-time work in designing the high-power thermionic valves used in British RADAR systems during WW2.

Edited April 29Apr 29 by toucana
corrected 440 to 400 KV p.2