Europe suffers $100 billion power outage and blames . . . swamp gas?

Photo above - Impressive, even when standing still. Bullet train service between Madrid and Lisbon was cancelled yesterday due to a lack of voltage. More details to follow as they get figured out . . .

“Hola . . . is this Portugal? Spain calling here. Say, do you guys have electricity? Mierda!. . . neither do we! Any theories? Yeah, we tried that already - pushing the reset button. Okay . . . thanks . . . we’ll stay in touch.”

That may or may not be an exact transcript of the call that took place between Madrid and Lisbon yesterday morning at 11:33 am local time. My sources will only say “possibly”. The more interesting part: 24 hours later, with power “mostly” turned back on, the experts still can’t figure out what happened.

Portugal’s first theory was “unexpected temperature changes making the power lines oscillate”. Uh-huh. The European version of swamp gas, with a veneer of climate change thrown in for good measure. This immediately struck me as BS, and Portugal was forced to walk back this lame story almost immediately.

Spain was quick to declare “definitely not a cyber-attack”, even though they don’t have any theories about what it actually was. Well, that’s fair enough. No need to panic the proletariat since Russia is already threatening to nuke a half dozen European capitals, and has been cutting transatlantic internet cables. If it had been a cyber-attack, some guy with a Rooshan accent would have told Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez to send a billion bitcoins somewhere, right?

In any case, Spanish trains are stuck in the middle of nowhere. People are trapped all day in elevators with no toilets. Airports can’t allow planes to take off or land. The lights in the hospital OR went out just as they were about to perform a liver transplant on some bullfighter who was gored the day before. It’s a mess. Estimates of economic losses run as high as $100 billion.

This is NOT a rant against our all-electric future. People have been dissing electricity ever since the days of Edison. The electric chair was used as the poster boy for dangerous home electrical wiring. Arguably electricity is safer – and less costly to use – than wood, coal, whale oil, candles, natural gas, and hamsters on treadmills.

There IS doubt about our legacy electric grid – in Europe, North America, and everywhere in the 3rd world. It is decaying, unreliable, and can’t deal with the constantly rising demand for volts, amps, and watts. I may revise this snark if someone in Spain or Portugal finally comes clean on why they had the worst blackout in the history of planet Earth. Cuba . . . pipe down. We know you're without electricity most days too. Just shut up, okay?

In any case, the Madrid Open tennis matches were cancelled yesterday for superstars like Novak Djokovic. Next best thing on clay courts after the French Open at Roland Garros stadium. Hopefully play will resume today. If Russia doesn’t nuke any European capitols or break any more ceasefires in Ukraine.

I’m just sayin’ . . .

What caused power outages in Spain and Portugal?