Yesterday, a Spanish official said that was something strange, a lot energy (power) disappeared from grid.... Today, everyone blame the solar panel, for too much energy on grid... Anyway, let's see the turn of events, please post news if you find something interesting! 💜
Discussion
yeah, in a few hours i'm sure that Ben is going to talk extensively about the space weather that was involved in the incident and why it affected the area that it affected
it was not hot weather
it was not hackers
it was not shitty windmills and solar panels
it was a burst of electrons that came down from a blast of solar wind that pushed the van allen belt electrons into the lower atmosphere and was conducted into the grid wires
the sheer scale of it should make it obvious, it crossed through three countries and and was indiscriminate, just like you'd expect if suddenly your power grid got charged up by a massive jolt of energy
Interesting, im trying to keep up with the news, seems the Aemet says there wasnt any strange atmospheric phenomenor or high temperature yesterday. Let's see how this develops, everything is so uncertain right now https://www.eleconomista.es/actualidad/noticias/13338922/04/25/comunicado-oficial-de-la-aemet-el-dia-del-apagon-no-hubo-fenomenos-atmosfericos-inusuales-o-cambios-bruscos-de-temperatura.html
they are lying, the US atmospheric electricity sensor array GloTEC https://www.spaceweather.gov/products/glotec detected a very strong burst of atmospheric electricity right at the time it happened, i don't think the current display shows it because it was over 24 hours ago but
as i said, on the Space Weather News channel's pod today he will most likely show the animation from glotec that shows you, it was indeed a very strong burst of energy and if you watch it you will see... i will be posting the link to it when the show is posted in a few hours
it is an atmospheric phenomenon, but not a heat driven one, it comes from energy breaching the magnetic field (and that region is on the margins of the inner rings of the earth's magnetic flux lines, for which reason underneath it, when there is a strong solar flare or just the field is weak, which it is, the pressure of the plasma pushes the van allen belt downwards and the electrons in it then flow via the paths of the flux downwards to earth, and typically they also flow out from underneath it and stimulate weather systems in the equatorial region)
the data showing on that link above excludes yesterday and starts at midday, but even still you can see if you watch the middle map, press teh play button, that there is weaker pulses across the very region where this stuff happened, around portugal, spain, southern france and a ways into the mediterranean... what happened yesterday was like the couple of pulses that happened in the last 24 hours over that region but very strong
he didn't show the animation unfortunately, but i suspect you can find history on that glotec page to see yesterday's recording
https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/stp/IONO/ustec/products/2025/04/
the archive hasn't got 28 april in it yet, but it will at some point i expect, if you have a tool to visualise the data