Black Start

John Timmer, Senior Editor of Ars Technica explains why they can’t just switch the power back on. Reviews and on-the-ground reporting from the blackout in Spain and Portugal. Off to Shangri-La. A world expert on Deep Time Professor Robert Spicer joins us. Is there a warning there too?

Years ago, scientists predicted times too hot for human survival outside. They are here. In April, heat was in the 40’s, way over 100 degrees Fahrenheit for a billion people. North India is Hellish a month before the hot season. The red hot band of heat stretches from the Middle East, punishing across Iran for weeks, deadly in Afghanistan and Pakistan, sweeping into China and drenching Thailand and Southeast Asia in sweat. North America gets alternative storms of summer-like heat and cool, while Britain just recorded the hottest May 1st since record-keeping began hundreds of years ago. Australia is too hot, the Pacific Islands are suffering. This is half a world in extreme heat outside summer and it doesn’t make the news.

Listen to or download this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality (57 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB)

It was a pleasant 70 degrees F, 21 C in Madrid when the power died. Grid failure knocked out all Spain, Portugal, and pockets in Southern France. Imagine that in the heat waves dominating Iberia in recent years. Experts agree there will be more power failures during and because of climate change.

Blackouts happen all over the world. Around the same time, the UK grid operator reported strange shifts in electric frequency. It did not reach a blackout. A few days after the Spanish grid failure, the Indonesian Island of Bali went out. Power failures in recent years killed hundreds of people in Texas and many hundreds in North India. All of us need to know how this works.

Here are a few news clips about sudden blackout, first from DW Deutche Welle German news, and then France24 TV. Then John Timmer, Senior Editor at Ars Technica, explains why it takes so long to restore power after a major power failure. They call it a “Black Start”.

Correspondent Sarah Morris reports from Madrid during the blackout to DW News, the German public broadcast service April 28, 2025.

“So people were scurrying around, to try to find radios, old fashioned radios with batteries, trying to find out exactly what was going on, and they didn’t know what was the cause of that power outage and how long it would last. We saw people walking, miles, Francois, to pick up their children, to get home from work. The trains and metros weren’t operating, and tens of thousands of people across the country had to be rescued from those trains. And some people actually had to stay the night in stations, like a torture in Madrid, but many others open specifically to let people who couldn’t get home, sleep out in them.

And, that was really quite unsettling, for many people. The worst affected were the vulnerable, and, we understand, that as many as five people, may have died, as a result of some of the consequences of power outages, including a family that, were using a faulty generator and somebody else whose whose oxygen machine, needed, that vital electricity. And given the scale of the of of the outage, Francois, it probably is a miracle that no more lives, were lost. The hospitals continued to use generators and to triage and to handle, emergency, cases, only. And, many of people talking today at just how much common sense ordinary Spaniards, showed as they went about their business.”

We also hear from Professor Benjamin Sovacool from the University of Sussex on France 24, same day, with great tips about electricity grids we all depend on. Here is a transcript:

“But I can tell you, some data that we have kind of talks about how about 87% of power outages are caused by weather or natural disasters. But there is a prime of surprising 12% are caused by system inadequacy. So it’s basically grids that just need upgraded bridges that are using old technology or perhaps not really strong digital controls that just fail. And then the remaining percentage of blackouts, about 2%, are actually caused by intentional or malicious attacks or interference by by third party stakeholders. The European grid is more integrated than The United States grid. You even have states like Texas, which has its own grid called ERCOT, which makes it very vulnerable to disruptions like the winter storm that caused a massive blackout, and even deaths in Texas a few years ago.“

RESILIENT GRID – THREE THINGS WE CAN DO

Professor Benjamin Sovacool:

“But there are at least fortuitously three different things that we can do to improve grid resilience, and they’re at three different scales. So the first thing we can do is really invest in energy efficiency. Energy efficiency tends to have not only co benefits for avoided emissions and jobs and resilience, but it also makes the grid more stable and more secure because you’re using energy a lot more strategically than you would have been otherwise. And we’ve actually saved more energy through energy efficiency efforts in Europe than any single source of energy supply since the nineteen seventies.

The second intervention is to invest in grids. They don’t sound very attractive. You want to invest in energy supply or maybe energy storage or other things like solar and wind, and the grid is perpetually uninvested in or under invested in. And it isn’t just the transmission grid, also local distribution grids. And even though it’s 2025, you still have situations where people go to charge their Tesla and they cause a grid outage because those distribution grids just aren’t up to par.

And lastly, and I’m a huge fan of proponent of this, is invest in energy supply that is more distributed. We call this distributed generation where you put solar panels, wind, generation, hydro, biogas, and other interventions close to your home or your factory or your hospital or your building. Are we looking at more of this happening more often? Absolutely. So the two metrics people often use to measure power outages are frequency and duration.

Frequency is how often they happen. Duration is how intensive they are. Do they last for an hour or a minute or days or weeks? And unfortunately, we’re seeing increases in both the frequency and duration of blackouts, and climate change is actually aggravating both of them as well. The hotter it gets and the more severe storms there are, the more severe wind events there are, the harder it is for electricity networks to deliver kilowatt hours or electrons to your home.

And those are set to get almost twice as worse in the next fifteen years and potentially three times as worse by the end of the century. So I think we have this perfect storm brewing. We need electrification to solve climate change, but climate change is only making electricity systems far more vulnerable to disruption.”

=======================

SUPPORT INDEPENDENT JOURNALISM

Radio Ecoshock is solely dependent on listener donations to keep going. These are tought times for many, and for independent journalists. Please contribute your support to the Radio Program if you can.

=======================

WHY CAN’T THEY SWITCH IT BACK ON?

JOHN TIMMER

The quiet dread behind the new miracle world: what if the power suddenly goes out? Nothing works. You are stuck, cut off from the outside world. Millions of people in Spain and Portugal just went through that. Just after Noon everything stopped. The grid crashed on Monday April 28 and did not return for days. Why not? Why couldn’t authorities just throw a switch and fill the wires with juice?

The best answers come from John Timmer over at Ars Technica. John is Senior Editor at that famous tech journal. He has a Doctorate in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of California, Berkeley. Timmer is a published researcher and science communicator. His article is “Spain is about to face the challenge of a “black start”. This is for all of us.

Listen to or download this 15 minute interview with John Timmer in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

As electricity users, we don’t understand the weird balance act going on behind the scenes. Electricity is not like us. It has different rules.

This interview is based on an excellent in-depth article at Ars Technica by John Timmer: “Spain is about to face the challenge of a ’black start’’.

Follow John Timmer at Bluesky.

A “black start” refers to the process of restarting an electrical grid from complete shutdown, without relying on external power sources. This is a complex and delicate operation because most major power plants require electricity to begin operating, but with the grid down, there’s no immediate source of power. Spain’s grid, while interconnected with Portugal, France, and Morocco, has only limited external links, so the country must rely heavily on its own resources to recover.

Hydroelectric plants are particularly valuable in a black start because they can be restarted with minimal external power. Solar and wind, while crucial in Spain’s energy mix, are less ideal for black starts: solar is unavailable at night, and wind depends on weather conditions. Combined-cycle gas plants also played a role in the restoration, while nuclear plants, which require stable grid conditions to operate, took much longer to bring back online.

The restoration was phased and prioritized critical infrastructure like hospitals. International support from France and Morocco helped supply emergency electricity, but the process was slow and required careful management to avoid overloading the recovering grid. The blackout has sparked debate about grid stability, the integration of renewables, and the need for investment in infrastructure and backup systems. The exact cause of the outage remains under investigation, but early indications point to a sudden loss of generation and low grid “inertia,” rather than a cyberattack or a single technical failure.

————

WHAT CAUSED THE GREAT BLACKOUT?

On France 24 TV, Professor Benjamin Sovacool from the University of Sussex says we should expect more blackouts in Spain, more often, because climate change means a lot more heat there, and other extreme weather conditions. He thinks blackouts could double in Spain in the next 15 years.

What caused the great blackout in Spain and Portugal? Even the suspicions are illuminating.

The first reaction on social media, and then denied by the Spanish Government: the grid was sabotaged by a cyber attack. British Tabloids said the Russian did it. Authorities deny it, but obviously millions of people and those in power consider a hidden war by grid sabotage is possible. There is a deep-rabbit hole of news, reports and speculation about that. My shallow assessment: some nation states may have grid-attack capabilities, but so far small groups and individuals cannot bring it down. Artificial Intelligence tools may change that. Hopefully no angry teen in a basement holds us hostage.

INDUCED ATMOSPHERIC VIBRATION

Another suspect: Portugal’s national grid operator, REN, said a “rare atmospheric event” could have caused the blackout. They later withdrew this explanation, but the possibility is important, and more so with climate change. You need an Electrical Engineer to explain the phenomenon of “induced atmospheric vibration”. Professor Mehdi Seyedmahmoudian from the Swinburne University of Technology explains it in The Conversation:

“In simple terms, it seems to refer to wavelike movements or oscillations in the atmosphere, caused by sudden changes in temperature or pressure. These can be triggered by extreme heating, large-scale energy releases (such as explosions or bushfires), or intense weather events.

When a part of Earth’s surface heats up very quickly – due to a heatwave, for example – the air above it warms, expands and becomes lighter. That rising warm air creates a pressure imbalance with the surrounding cooler, denser air. The atmosphere responds to this imbalance by generating waves, not unlike ripples spreading across a pond.

These pressure waves can travel through the atmosphere. In some cases, they can interact with power infrastructure — particularly long-distance, high-voltage transmission lines.

These types of atmospheric waves are usually called gravity waves, thermal oscillations or acoustic-gravity waves. While the phrase “induced atmospheric vibration” is not formally established in meteorology, it seems to describe this same family of phenomena.”

We can expect more of this. A team of Chinese authors led by Sijia of Wu Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, just published this paper: “Rapid flips between warm and cold extremes in a warming world”. Find that in Nature Communications April 22nd. As Christina Kelso reports in the New York Times: “Sweating to Shivering: Study Finds Rapid Swings in Temperature Have Increased”. Does that sound familiar where you live? Rapid temperature changes damage crops and trees – but they can also affect the electric grid. This is another unreported way climate change will make lives harder.

But the favorite whipping boy for Rupert Murdock’s press boys is dumping on renewable energy. From known rags to the Financial Times, lobbyists leap in to say “This is why we need more nuclear energy” or “more coal plants”. Solar was portrayed as the boogeyman.

Solar power is taking over in Spain without a doubt. At the time of the blackout, is seems about half the national power came from solar installations, many of them in Southern Spain. A Spanish official has suggested the problem may have come from over-production by solar farms. A grid goes down when there is too much electricity (leading to a higher than normal frequency) or too little (low frequency). In many countries, any surge of power from solar or wind is balanced by reducing power at conventional plants like oil and gas, or at electric power dams. Fossil powered plants and hydro dams are easier to quickly turn up and down.

The problem is well known and so is the solution: countries running with renewables need to install very large battery storage facilities. These can balance the load. Australia is the leading example. Battery storage works there, and removes any claimed needs to keep burning fossil fuels, or build dangerous and expensive nuclear power plants. California is installing battery backup and balance plants at a fast rate. Experts agree that is what Spain needs. Don’t believe the scare-hype saying renewables kill the grid. If we want a planet cool enough to walk around and eat, fossil fuels and nuclear are over. Both of them are more expensive than wind and solar with battery balancing.

YOU MAY FIND THIS YOUTUBE VIDEO HELPFUL

“What Is a Black Start to the Power Grid?” over 2 million views

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOSnQM1Zu4w&t=112s

For Canadian listeners, check out “What caused the deadly power outages in Texas and how Canada’s grid compares”.

==================

THE TIME MIRROR

ROBERT SPICER

Earth has been much hotter in the distant past. Before the asteroid strike 66 million years ago, this planet went through 80 million years mostly as a Greenhouse world. There was no ice at the Poles, and sea level was hundreds of feet higher than today. That was the Cretaceous Period. Within that, scientists now find signs of a time with similar sea surface temperatures as today, and ice at the Poles. Can we learn from that to understand the future? Will global warming make an ice-free world again?

Dr. Robert Spicer is Emeritus Professor of Earth Sciences at Open University in the UK, and currently a Visiting Professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Dr. Spicer is co-author of the new paper “Back to an ice-free future: Early Cretaceous seasonal cycles of sea surface temperature and glacier ice”. We find him in Southern China.

Listen to or download this 22 minute interview with Robert Spicer in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

It has been 18 years since we last spoke. In 2007, Dr. Spicer explained how fossil leaf patterns reveal clues about the atmosphere and climate in distant times. We talked about the Cretaceous Period, from about 143.1 to 66 million years ago. These days, sea temperatures around the equator these days range between 25°C and 30°C. But sea surface temperatures during the Cretaceous went over 36 degrees C. So at the equator, the ocean would be the same temperature as our bodies.

Humans evolved during the back and forth of ice ages. Like most current animals, we are built for a narrow range of temperatures. In it’s long planetary history, Earth is more often hotter and ice-free. Would a new hot world be more geologically “normal”?

Scientists like Bob Spicer patiently dig up signs and records of past climates. A favorite comes from tiny shell-making organisms in seabed samples. They are carefully collected and then examined right down to the formation of oxygen atoms over time. That can reflect the climate. There are a lot of very old rock formations in China, and many fossils can be found there, including fossil patterns of leaves that Spicer specializes in. Yunnan Province in southern China is famous for hundreds of dinosaur fossil footprints there.

In the UK, Spicer founded a Centre for Earth and Astronomical Research at Open University. These days he is are a Visiting Professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Unlike the United States, China decided climate change was real and heavily funds climate research. I see a growing stream of science papers coming with Chinese authors, many from the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

One insight I take from this new paper:

Earth may not go straight from current Polar ice caps to ice-free, but might first encounter a long period where ice forms on Greenland during winter, and in Antarctica during summer – like alternating polar ice caps.

THE WEISSERT EVENT

After decades of analysis of deposits from shell-making organisms, scientists were able to break down the 120 million year long Cretaceous period into smaller and smaller slices. One is a million-year development called the Weissert Event. It appears to be a great cooling, fairly rapid, with ice building on the Poles and so very low sea levels. During the interview, we discuss “the Weissert Event” about 133 million years ago.

The paper says:

“Paleoclimatic reconstructions from this time indicate a global cooling interval, characterized by the lowest Cretaceous sea level,modern seawater oxygen isotope composition, the presence of polar ice, and low atmospheric PCO2. “

Then there was another warming. This study shows polar ice can be lost faster than previously thought. This warming, which is even recorded in ancient oyster shells dug up around Madagascar, is a potent model for our future, as we heat up the planet with fossil fuels.

MOIST ENTROPY

Robert Spicer also talks about “moist entropy”. In atmospheric thermodynamics, moist entropy is a crucial variable that combines the effects of both temperature and moisture content of an air parcel. It’s particularly useful because it is conserved in reversible adiabatic processes, even when phase changes of water (like condensation and evaporation) occur.

OFF TO SHANGRI-LA

Spicer gives us a mind-blowing quick trip through time as the Tibetan Plateau was formed. No, was not as simple as the Indian land mass crashing into Asia. On that Plateau people were very isolated, leading to popularization of “Shangri-la”. Wikipedia says: “Shangri-La is a fictional place in Tibet’s Kunlun Mountains, described in the 1933 novel Lost Horizon by the British author James Hilton.”

That novel led to a massive 1937 Frank Capra “The Lost Horizon”

Robert Spicer was an advisor for the BBC documentary called “Prehistoric Planet”, a series narrated by Sir David Attenborough. It depicts life on Earth 66 million years ago, during the Late Cretaceous period just before the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs. It features dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals recreated with CGI, based on current paleontological research. It was released in 2022. It’s on Apple TV. Trailer here:

Robert Spicer is also co-author of “The Cretaceous World” 2003. The illustrations and maps are incredible. I’ve read it, and this book took me to almost a different planet – Earth millions of years ago. Even the map of continents was entirely different than today. Strange creatures lived then, including the dinosaurs.

ROBERT SPICER PREVIOUS ECOSHOCK INTERVIEW:

GREENHOUSE WORLDS Interview with deep time expert Dr. Robert Spicer of UK.

Dr. Robert Spicer, Open University, UK on past abrupt climate change. 29 min. CD Quality 27 MB [recorded December 2007].

================

THE CASE OF TEXAS HELL

The one hour program includes 4 minutes from this special report by the Canadian Broadcasting Network (government owned) on July 2, 2024. It’s called “Hell on Earth in Houston” After Hurricane Beryl roared through, over a million people in Houston lost power for five days. A couple of days after the hurricane, still with no power, the heat index went above 100 degrees F, 38 C danger warning.. with no AC ! Hospitals became so backed up ambulances had to wait 3 hours. They set up an emergency center at their sports center. “Frustrating” says everyone. It’s a good listen.

The shorter 58 minute “Affiliates” version ends with this song: “Gasoline Disease” Lyrics by Alex Smith, AI music.

===============

I’m off to Shangri-la myself next week. I prepared a program with key interviews from past shows. They knew about today ten years ago. Then it’s back to reporting from the edge.

I’m Alex. Thank you for listening, and caring about our world.