Europe: close to power grid blackout (49,74Hz power line frequency)

https://twitter.com/netz_frequenz/status/1347532305850634243

by tosh • 6 years ago

129 139 6 years ago

alexgmcm• 6 years ago

As someone who doesn't speak German and has only a cursory understanding of the electrical grid - how significant is this?

mherrmann• 6 years ago

One of the comments in the Twitter thread was "I've been measuring the grid for 10 years and have never seen anything like this".

OnACoffeeBreak• 6 years ago

In general, slowing frequency is an indicator of a heavily loaded grid. I don't have an appreciation how much the frequency can practically be off the nominal 50 Hz (in Europe) before it indicates grid failure.

cookieswumchorr• 6 years ago

does this happen if the heavy load is at region scale? because at small scale (within a village in my experience) the voltage would drop. I didn't measure the frequency though.

foobarian• 6 years ago

This is fascinating to me. What is the mechanism by which this happens? The added load causes an average slow down across the population of actual spinning generator bits?

fennecfoxen2• 6 years ago

In practice it depends a lot on how a bunch of specific power equipment is set up.

Remember that the A/C power grid needs to be synchronized across the entire continent, so each A/C generator that makes A/C power and runs at 50Hz needs to have the position of a physical object (the rotors) match the position in the current power cycle. If it's badly wrong, you have power-plant sized energy feeds fighting each other — imagine a train wreck, two massive oversized freight trains smashing right into each other. It's like that, but with electricity instead of a physical collision.

This can obviously cause major damage, so once you start deviating from the reference frequency by enough, it's safer to just cut off the interconnects and go offline.

posix_me_less• 6 years ago

Under 49Hz they start disconnecting consumers. If that does not stabilize the dropping, under 47.5 Hz they disconnect the power plants and the network fails. [1]

[1] https://www.netzfrequenzmessung.de/abschaltung.htm

jaywalk2• 6 years ago

Very. It means that the grid suddenly lost a significant amount of generating power.

throwaway0a5e2• 6 years ago

Or added a ton of load faster than it could ramp up

tashbarg• 6 years ago

The grid was overloaded significantly, but not critically. For everybody concerned with the grid, this is a major event because the grid is usually extremely stable. For everybody else, it's not significant. Grid operating as designed.

This graph shows the frequency drop we encountered: https://www.netzfrequenzmessung.de/bilder/2020_01_08_Abschal...

The red line at 49Hz is when things actually get switched off for the first time (12.5% of load).

tosh2• 6 years ago

If I haven't miscalculated, then this waste means the #Netzfrequenz that there was a sudden drop in power of over 4.5GW. That would be a lot more than a power plant. So junction could get there.

https://twitter.com/netz_frequenz/status/1347537615097049101...

LatteLazy• 6 years ago

At least 3 large power stations. But is that necessarily a loss of supply or could it be a spike in demand? The UK was famous for demand spikes when people turned on kettles during the break in popular soap opras or football games. Maybe a cold day tripped a bunch of houses to turn on their electric heating?

0-_-0• 6 years ago

The drop in the graph seems to be very sudden

tosh2• 6 years ago

related: Water usage (toilet flushes) in the city of Berlin during the Germany - Portugal soccer match

https://www.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/28mmsn/water_usage_...

littlestymaar2• 6 years ago

CNPE Graveline[1] (a French Nuclear powerplant) Cattenom, and Paluel are >5GW, so it could actually come from a single plant (not that I think this is the case, this is just for the sake of argument)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravelines_Nuclear_Power_Stati...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattenom_Nuclear_Power_Plant

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paluel_Nuclear_Power_Plant

programbreeding• 6 years ago

Google translate of the first tweet (in German):

Extreme nightcap in the #network frequency. Quite unusual at this height and at this point in time. One of my measuring devices even shows 49.74Hz as a minimum. Has a major #power plant failed somewhere?

And second tweet:

Here is another representation of the # mains frequency from just now. Extremely unusual, as a malfunction is to be suspected. Unfortunately, none of my network analyzers are currently running to check the exact course.

mig39• 6 years ago

There's a translate tweet button right on twitter, isn't there?

wil4213• 6 years ago

I do not have the option on Safari in iOS.

johncessna2• 6 years ago

My German is limited to introductory conversations and ordering food, so I'm not really sure what's going on with this case. It does, however, look like the warning signs were there.

https://www.mobilityhouse.com/int_en/magazine/company/tmh-wo...

https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/markets-by-sector/energy/...

whalesalad• 6 years ago

Twitter has a translate tweet button.

brummm• 6 years ago

From this link [1] it looks like it's back to normal.

[1] https://www.netzfrequenzmessung.de/aktuelles.htm#2021_01

Havoc2• 6 years ago

These of things either recover fast or the entire grid collapses. There isn’t much in between.

That’s why this is so scary

u678u• 6 years ago

UK has had similar problems recently. Its the cold winter nights with no sunshine or wind put system under strain.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/u-k-power-grid-creaks-0951256...

nottorp3• 6 years ago

Romanian news are screaming about several counties (like 1/5 of RO) being blacked out and this being a problem at the interconnection with the neighboring power grids.

From the little I know about power lines, events like this can cascade to half a continent.

k3liutZu• 6 years ago

High voltage fluctuations today.

Instead of 220V we got down to ~165V.

Internet outages on top (I assume some hardware failed since multiple counties were affected on the RDS network).

Edit.

Here's a power graphic: https://www.transelectrica.ro/widget/web/tel/sen-grafic/-/SE...

Seems Romanias production fell under the consumption at around 15:30

Water fell at that time, so maybe some hydro was shut down? We did have multiple floods reported yesterday.

nottorp3• 6 years ago

Seems Romanias production fell under the consumption at around 15:30

But the incident started at 15:05, that was just a consequence of interconnects failing i think.

gruez• 6 years ago

Instead of 220V we got down to ~165V.

Are homes experiencing brownouts? Or is it only in the distribution system?

raverbashing2• 6 years ago

I think voltage fluctuations from 220v to 165v are usually a local issue rather than an upstream issue (trees falling on wires, etc)

paganel2• 6 years ago

Water fell at that time, so maybe some hydro was shut down?

That was my first reaction on /r/romania, too, but some commenter in there suggested that maybe the hydro power production went down as a result of the network not being available (no reason to "pump in" electricity if there's no available network to transport it).

reddotX2• 6 years ago

https://www.digi24.ro/stiri/economie/energie/ministrul-energ...

Youden• 6 years ago

FYI, in English, "news" is singular, e.g. "I saw a politician shouting on the news", so it should be "Romanian news is" (and I think it should also have a "the").

I know this makes no sense and in other languages "news" has both singular and plural but that's English for you.

reddotX2• 6 years ago

https://www.digi24.ro/stiri/economie/energie/ministrul-energ...

the romanian blackout is linked to the european one

wil4213• 6 years ago

Are Kosovo and Serbia having issues again? [1]

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/serbia-kosovo-energy/serbia-...

ju-st• 6 years ago

Apparently: https://www.electricitymap.org/zone/RS

Serbia is currently only consuming ~30% of the usual power, Bosnia and Montenegro are at 60%, Croatia 50%, other neighbouring countries had quiet some spikes as well.

Tomte• 6 years ago

Some large energy consumers that also have slow processes (so they can survive a temporary blackout) have contracts that give them cheaper electricity, and in exchange the electricity company is allowed to just cut them off for some time, if load gets too high.

cjdell2• 6 years ago

Am I naive in assuming that many grid stability issues could be fixed by mandating all electric heaters automatically cut off at, say below 49.9Hz?

It is my understanding that modern home EV chargers have the capability to do this to some extent, but I'm not sure if it's actually utilised?

johncessna2• 6 years ago

It seems like a better solution would be batteries and/or the allowance of dirtier power generation (in emergencies). I can't even wrap my head around the regulatory nightmare of shutting off everyone's heat at night in January.

corty• 6 years ago

Batteries maybe. Allowing "dirtier" non-50Hz power would make things worse, power plant turbines are optimized for 50Hz, different frequencies get inefficient quite fast. So your generation will shrink the lower you go. At the same time generators running at different frequencies will work against each other. At the same time machines will pull the frequency down even further, landing you in a vicious circle that forces the frequency toward 0Hz. No choice but to cut power before you damage too much of the grid and equipment.

cjdell2• 6 years ago

Perhaps I don't understand the grid properly. I thought the average frequency was always maintained at 50Hz over a 24 hour period. Having the frequency dip below 49.9Hz would normally be exceptionally rare.

I mean, if the alternative is a blackout, having heating turned off for a few minutes over a 24 period would be preferable to a nationwide blackout? It's not as if people would suddenly freeze to death anyway.

Just curious if someone who understood this better had a good explanation for why this might be a bad idea.

formerly_proven3• 6 years ago

Dirtier power generation doesn't work because physics. Frequency gets too high (a few Hz or so), turbogenerators/turbines blow up. Frequency gets too low, resonances destroy them. Frequency shifts quickly, massive torque and current spikes ensue. Load is dumped, frequency ramps up quickly and voltage rises very quickly. There are a number of control and monitoring systems in a power plant which ought to prevent these from happening, but in the bigger picture this means that grid power needs to be balanced continuously in order to keep nominal frequency. This becomes challenging when an interconnect fails, because this leads to very fast load changes.

The reason for 50 Hz +- 0.2 Hz isn't so much about consumers; it's about being able to run the grid. In Europe there is a long-term control loop that makes it a quite accurate 50 Hz, so synchronous motor clocks work, but that has essentially nothing to do with the normal frequency control.

avianlyric6• 6 years ago

It’s all about speed. A power grid must be perfectly balanced at all times, there no natural storage in a power grid.

If large power supplier disconnects without warning, that impact propagates at the speed of light. Other suppliers will respond by reducing their frequencies to keep voltage up, this is caused by generators physically spinning slower and converting their physical momentum into electrical energy. As you can imagine the momentum of a generator is large, but the stored energy is small compared to the rate of consumption.

So you need systems that can respond within milliseconds to restore some stability. Batteries are actually one of the few technologies that can do that, but mostly your looking at shedding load. Disconnecting a consumer can happen in milliseconds, after all you just need to flip a switch (admittedly they’re very large switches).

Once you shed load, then you have the time you need to spin up you “dirty” power supplies. But even the fastest response suppliers take minutes (think Hydro), not milliseconds to respond. So they’re not viable for dealing with the initial shock to the grid.

tgsovlerkhgsel3• 6 years ago

It depends on how long you shut the heat off for.

If you do it for 5 minutes while the gas plants spool up, few will notice and fewer will care.

monocasa• 6 years ago

I'm not sure that cutting off people's heat in the middle of winter is the most politically viable option.

avianlyric6• 6 years ago

It’s tends to be very viable. Most places can afford for heat to be shut off for 10-15mins without issue (think water heaters and whole building heaters).

That then gives the grid some time to spool up reserves. After all having your hear turn off for 10mins is better than having everything turn off for an hour, which could happen if the grid needs to shed load involuntarily.

avianlyric6• 6 years ago

Most grids have a rapid response system like this. They’ll have contracts with very large power consumers (think big hydro pumps, metal smelters etc) that can afford to have their equipment power down without notice in exchange for energy rebates.

Then when the frequency drops these consumers will automatically turn off their equipment to reduce power draw.

The seeing such a huge drop like this is extremely unusual, no doubt many systems immediately started load shedding (both voluntary and involuntary) to compensate

calaphos• 6 years ago

Apparently first threshold for cutting of hydro storage pumps below 49.85 Hz was undercut very briefly. Immediately afterwards the frequency reaches that threshold again, so I assume those measurements were working as planned.

Below 49Hz larger consumers would be cut off in steps of ~10% of the network load. AFAIK this includes large industrial consumers who are legally required to have the equipment in place to allow for that.

q3k• 6 years ago

There already are load shedding measures [1] put in place for situations like these.

[1] https://www.netzfrequenzmessung.de/abschaltung.htm

PragmaticPulp• 6 years ago

This needs central coordination to really work. You also need customer incentives to get buy in.

Power companies do something similar with air conditioning units in hot areas. Customers can opt-in to have a control module installed that modulates their A/C on and off at peak loads to control demand. Customers get some nominal discount on their bill for participating.

Worked better when people weren’t working from home and it didn’t matter if your house was a bit warmer than normal for an hour or two mid-day.

Controlling this on end devices introduces a lot of distributed systems problems, like stampeding herd when all of the devices switch back on. You could try jittered back off and such, but cold customers would just unplug and replug until it worked.

epistasis5• 6 years ago

The term in the industry for this is "demand response," and usually it's voluntary and customers should get paid for participating.

Typically it's just larger customers that can reduce demand on a very large scale. In the US there are a few startups that are aggravating residential customers into larger groups, so that each of thousands of households cuts consumption by a few hundred watts, so that the aggregate drop is big enough for the utility to care about. Utilities, at least in the US, have extremely poor capabilities for innovation and for customer relations, so that is why a startup is an intermediary.

Typically, the signal for this is not the grid frequency, however! Better to plan ahead by a bit before the frequency drops, and allow people to opt out as necessary.

avianlyric6• 6 years ago

For rapid response systems grid frequency is the signal!

You always need something that can respond quickly to unexpected events to maintain grid stability. The best signal for that is grid frequency, as it’s a very direct measure of grid health.

Many of those large consumers you speak off will be contracted to respond directly to grid frequency, either shedding load or adding supply, to make sure the grid doesn’t completely collapse if a shock event happens. That buys grid maintainers the time they need to recover the grid in a more controlled way.

bzb6• 6 years ago

That would be such a gross government overreach.

lispm• 6 years ago

France seems to have problems generating enough electricity for the current winter demand.

https://www.lefigaro.fr/conso/electricite-pour-eviter-des-co...

https://www.connexionfrance.com/French-news/People-in-France...

Britain, too:

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/britains-national-grid-issues-warn...

German press reports about cold temperature and of not enough nuclear power online in France. Reason: maintenance backlogs due to Corona. 44 of 56 reactors are online, next week only 43.

They'll may import up to 12 GW electricity from Switzerland and Germany.

https://www.fr.de/wirtschaft/droht-frankreich-ein-blackout-9...

gonzo412• 6 years ago

People are meant to be sharing heating in an office building during the day. I have a wood fire, and I usually have enough wood stacked in summer to make it through winter. Last year I was out in the cold chopping because we had the fire on all the time.

littlestymaar2• 6 years ago

While true, it's very unlikely to be the reason for what we're seeing here (a sharp drop at 14:05), it's most likely related to a plant failure (likely a nuclear / hydro plant) somewhere in Europe.

Edit: according to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25685833 it means that there's more than 4GW went missing, which rules out a hydro plant failure and make nuclear plant failure unlikely (only three plants, all of them in France, would be big enough for that and there was no drop in French electricity production today: https://www.rte-france.com/eco2mix/la-production-delectricit...)

GekkePrutser4• 6 years ago

Indeed, it's too sharp.. I wonder if we'll find out what happened.

raverbashing2• 6 years ago

The weirder part to me is that small peak right before it started going down. Maybe some overreaction by the grid (or a plant failure as speculated)?

GekkePrutser4• 6 years ago

It's also more than ususally cold here in Barcelona, and many people have electric heating (inefficient but rarely needed).

I don't know what I'd do if the power fails :S I have UPS power backup for my servers but not for heating obviously (that's way too much power for batteries)

a9h74j• 6 years ago

If you aren't aware, heated vests consume ca 10W. I haven't tried one yet, but this is a direction I see things heading.

lima• 6 years ago

Amprion, the company currently in charge of coordinating the network, states that the cause is still unknown as of two hours ago:

https://twitter.com/Amprion/status/1347595605971972100

epistasis5• 6 years ago

Time to start deploying big batteries across the grid at substations. A shipping container here and there would work wonders.

gonzo412• 6 years ago

I want to get rooftop solar and a battery pack for my house. But I really don't want to a lithium battery attached to my house. I feel like there'd be a good business in selling battery 'space' in a big fire proof box down the street that I could then offset my meter against. Wouldn't even need to be in my street if I could get the offset.

epistasis5• 6 years ago

I get where you are coming from, but my car is already a ~50 kWh lithium ion battery in my garage, so I'm already living with that fire risk. I just wish I could use my car to power my house when there's a power outage, it's a big enough battery to last for a couple days even when it's at half charge.

bob10292• 6 years ago

Why does it have to be lithium technology? The reason electric cars use it is because of energy density (weight savings). For home use, weight is completely irrelevant. You could use much safer lead acid batteries (sealed/AGM) and rig your own inverter setup. This is also a lot easier to maintain over time, as you can scale up/down and swap individual batteries as required.

danielovichdk• 6 years ago

I like these stories because they make me remember that things like electricity and water are not free.

Water and electricity should be a lot more expensive, then people would start to understand that having an Electric car, 10+ devices in the household, a washer, a drier, lights, tvs and all that shit is expensive for the lot.

But people don't really care, as long as our things work and we are not bothered by anyone else.

Pretty much like this

xenocratus• 6 years ago

So you want people to use gas cars and gas-powered boilers to heat their home? Or should we make that more expensive as well so we can make sure more people spend more time with heating off in the winter?

astrange2• 6 years ago

Isn't a gas-powered heater more efficient than an electric heater powered by an LNG plant? Electric heating is pretty ineffective, although heat pumps can work well.

numpad0• 6 years ago

Infrastructure is infrastructure

stinos• 6 years ago

Water and electricity should be a lot more expensive, then people would start to understand

In combination with educating people not to waste these sources, perhaps. Even then, just a fixed rate might not actually do it: don't recall the exact numbers but just like some small percentage of the entire population earns most, there's also a certain percentage who spend (or waste, depending on how you look at it) more of these sources and because they have the money anyway, making things more expensive will not hit them at all. Instead the lower end of society will take a hit. Which is of course part of the idea, but for some of them that might actually be the extra costs leading to not being able to pay all bills anymore or worse. tldr; I'm not entirely convinced yet, but it seems that to solve problems like this a system where those who use most pay extra (think: you wanna fille your huge pool with drinking water? you'll pay)

fulafel3• 6 years ago

There's no single "Europe" grid.

diarmuidie• 6 years ago

There isn't a single grid, but there is a large synchronous grid covering most of continental Europe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_grid_of_Continenta...

fulafel3• 6 years ago

Maybe. Some of the "continental" grid is in Africa, the above second map doesn't color in Russian bits of Europe, and then there are the other European grids. But the high bit is that there are significant parts on not this grid, there are 6-ish grids.

tremon• 6 years ago

All of Europe's national grids are interconnected, and most of them import or export more than 10% of their power budget (some both, depending on the time of day). A large power fluctuation/blackout in one country can easily spread to neighbouring countries, the junctions can't absorb the sudden shift in network load.

pmlnr5• 6 years ago

Yet governments insist newbuilds to be on electric heating... I was saying this won't be nice for a long time.

Example: my house, a 1954 built semi-detached - the official average unit in England - has a single phase 100A main cutout.

Hob 32A, 2x sockets circuits 2x16A, 2x light circuits 2x6A, oven 16A. That's already 92A at total theoretical capacity.

If I was to add FIR panels, that's bare minimum +32A, plus water heating - let's play it down, +32A, car charger +32A again.

This means I'd need a 3 phase extension. If everyone in the area were to do this we'd literally burn down the system on day one.

paganel2• 6 years ago

Yet governments insist newbuilds to be on electric heating

Not only that, but they insist that almost all vehicle transportation should be electric in maximum 10-15 years.

AnthonyMouse• 6 years ago

They should install FTTH while they're upgrading everybody's electrical service. :)

avianlyric6• 6 years ago

Not quite, they’re insisting all all new vehicles will be electric.

Even at that point it’ll still be decades before electric vehicles make up the majority of road traffic.

gotoeleven• 6 years ago

If some people have to freeze to death to keep the planet from warming so be it.

pmlnr5• 6 years ago

Wasn't the point of the comment.

formerly_proven3• 6 years ago

Yet governments insist newbuilds to be on electric heating

Which governments are those?

ahartmetz• 6 years ago

It should at least be heat pumps...

readflaggedcomm• 6 years ago

This UK document specifically mentions phasing out "high carbon fossil fuel heating" installations in new construction, which seems like the sort of thing the GP referenced, though it also mentions heat pumps as a non-resistive-heating option: https://www.gov.uk/government/groups/heat-in-buildings

tomatotomato37• 6 years ago

I live in a tropical climate so I'm completely clueless on heating systems but has municipal steam heating been completely abandoned? It seems more efficient than both individual gas or electric heaters once you take conversion loses into account

cjg_2• 6 years ago

Would say that almost all cities / larger towns in Sweden has municipal heating via hot water. And acc. to wikipedia around half of all housing units in Denmark, Sweden and Finland has municipal heating.

sorenjan• 6 years ago

That's strange, here in Sweden electric heating is seen as old and wasteful. In cities most use district heating, others use heat pumps or some kind of bio fuel. At least for new houses, but it's also common as a retrofit.

ericd• 6 years ago

I kind of assumed they meant heat pump or resistive, mandating resistive heating would be insane.

pmlnr5• 6 years ago

Read on FIR panels; they are pretty new, and, after testing one, highly pleasant to use.

EDIT FIR = far infrared, eg. https://www.herschel-infrared.co.uk/

tgsovlerkhgsel3• 6 years ago

That just means that you can't max out all your circuits at the same time. I'm pretty sure that's considered normal.

If instead of FIR panels you use a heat pump (isn't that the main point of electrical heating), would you still need 32A? And if you're cooking and baking with 10 kW, would you still need heating at the same time? And a 7 kW heat pump water heater should give you ~10 liters per minute of hot shower water.

Seems like any automatic system that could make sure not all high-draw consumers get turned on at the same time would be enough. It does mean that if someone is taking a shower while two people are vacuuming with all the lights on and the kitchen is cooking up a feast, you wouldn't be getting any additional heat or electric car charging, for the hour or so that such high demand can last, but that doesn't seem to be a serious problem (especially as this would only affect older houses).

And you said it's required for new construction, so I assume they'd be putting in 3-phase for those.

The main power lines for the whole street could be a problem, so yes, this may require some new construction. Might as well put down FTTH while at it.

Additionally, if houses add solar, it should reduce typical demand on the grid, as a lot of the current wouldn't have to flow all the way from some substation but would be supplied either within each house or from neighbors.

pmlnr5• 6 years ago

Heat pump is a no, thank you. 10k for air source, noisy, ugly, big; 3x100m deep holes for ground source, don't even want to know the price.

EDIT: for <5k I'd have the whole house on FIR panels and electric boiler, then I could spend another 5k on solar.

srg0• 6 years ago

The point is that electricity allows to change energy source anytime and be carbon neutral.

Yes, the issue is not plugging in some resistance. Infrastructure should be adequate. Hence, it makes sense to do it right in newly built houses. Upgrading existing buildings will also be necessary. It will also solve the EV charging.

There's no other way to replace fossil energy but to increase electrical power use. 1954 assumptions about maximum household power and current thresholds are no longer valid.

Havoc2• 6 years ago

UK also issued (another) notice requesting providers supply more today

https://www.current-news.co.uk/news/national-grid-eso-issues...

99_002• 6 years ago

Why aren't power outages in California and Europe partly due to the adoption of solar and wind?

dadzilla• 6 years ago

That would be politically inconvenient.

MayeulC2• 6 years ago

No, that would be using solar as a scapegoat for bad planning.

bob10292• 6 years ago

It is unfortunately true that intermittent sources of power generation subtract from grid stability. Texas (ERCOT region) had a huge incident back in 2019 with rates skyrocketing to $9/KWh for over 90 minutes. Many attributed this to an over-reliance on wind generation.

formerly_proven3• 6 years ago

Which outages?

fsh• 6 years ago

The average duration of power outages in Germany has been on a steady decline over the last 15 years [1]. The fraction of electricity generated from renewable sources has increased from around 10% to over 40% in the same period of time [2].

[1] https://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/DE/Sachgebiete/Elektrizitae...

[2] https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/themen/klima-energie/erneuerb...

mikewarot• 6 years ago

There is a very nice ongoing effort at the University of Tennessee Knoxville to monitor the US power grid. http://fnetpublic.utk.edu/

The video is 10 years old, but depicts a box with GPS timekeeping, and sampling the normal outlet, with Ethernet to report to the server. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Vt2OlVoBJc

One of the best real time views, is this view of the phase across the US. http://fnetpublic.utk.edu/anglecontour.html

andreasdz• 6 years ago

Without really understanding much what is going on, this seems to be related:

"System split registered in the synchronous area of Continental Europe – Incident now resolved"

https://www.entsoe.eu/news/2021/01/08/system-split-registere...

smartbit• 6 years ago

From https://www.electricitymap.org/zone/RO it seems there was a drop in hydropower ~1GW around that time in Romania.

xenonite• 6 years ago

commentary in German: https://www.saurugg.net/2021/blog/stromversorgung/bedenklich...

Europe: close to power grid blackout (49,74Hz power line frequency)

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