Free Republic

The massive power outage that wreaked havoc in Europe is being blamed on a pair of likely solar plant breakdowns in southwest Spain, a report said. Red Eléctrica said it identified two power generation loss incidents in southwest Spain – likely involving solar plants – that caused instability in the Spanish power grid and contributed to a breakdown of its interconnection to France, according to Reuters. "We have never had a complete collapse of the system," Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said in a televised address Monday night. Eduardo Prieto, Red Eléctrica’s chief of operations, said the instability in the...

Undisclosed communication devices reportedly discovered in Chinese-manufactured solar panels and related equipment have sparked concerns among U.S. officials about the vulnerability of the nation’s power grid, according to a Reuters report. These “rogue” devices, found over the past nine months, could potentially destabilize energy infrastructure and trigger widespread blackouts, sources familiar with the matter told the outlet. The undocumented devices, including cellular radios, were identified in solar power inverters, batteries, electric vehicle chargers, and heat pumps produced by several Chinese suppliers. ... The U.S. has found Trojan horse communication devices in Chinese-made solar power inverters. They are used to connect...

In a massive sting operation straight out of a crime thriller, Spanish police have smashed one of Europe’s most powerful underworld banks – a slick, secretive syndicate laundering millions using the ancient and shadowy “hawala” method. Cash, crypto and contraband – the works. In unbelievable scenes, Spain’s National Police, backed by EUROPOL and EUROJUST, swooped on a web of luxury and illegality. The secret January raids – now revealed – saw over 250 officers hit 13 locations across Spain and Belgium in a coordinated blitz, nabbing 17 suspects, seizing mountains of loot and blowing apart a money-moving machine that had...

Across Spain and Portugal, more than 50 million people recently experienced the largest blackout in modern European history. Thousands of commuters stood stranded on the concourses of Spain's transit system. In the span of five seconds, 60 percent of the country's electricity supply vanished. This wasn't caused by a storm or a cyberattack—just bad policy and the most underappreciated force in modern engineering giving way: inertia. When a power plant trips offline or demand suddenly spikes, the power grid has no cushion; it must respond instantly or it unravels. That's where inertia comes in. In coal, gas, and nuclear plants,...

President Donald Trump’s Interior Secretary Doug Burgum is warning that the United States is at risk of major widespread blackouts similar to the power cuts that recently shut down most of Spain and Portugal.. Burgum said the blackouts in Europe were caused by over-subsidizing intermittent renewable energy sources. However, he warns that America is now “dangerously close” to suffering from similar “rolling blackouts and grid failure.” Speaking to David Freeberg on “The All-In Podcast,” Burgum admitted that the artificial intelligence (AI) “arms race” with China keeps him “awake at night” due to the amount of electricity that the technology requires....

Communism is not dead in Latin America. In fact, the dominoes are falling south of the border, but no one seems to be noticing. “It’s a new day. Communism is dead. It’s even dead in Cuba.” So declared Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing in May 2002. “I hate to say it,” she continued, “it’s dead.” The senator’s proclamation was a surprise, no doubt, to Fidel Castro, whose regime was (and is) alive and as Red as ever. It also must have come as welcome news to the people of Cuba, still suffering, after nearly half...

Spain’s electricity supply went down last month due to cascading failures traced to faults in two solar plants in Spain’s southwest region, causing a blackout on the Iberian Peninsula. Americans should not be complacent because the North American Electric Reliability Corp., a nonprofit international regulatory authority, has warned that it might happen in the United States. On April 28, the day of the Spanish meltdown, solar provided 59% of electricity, wind about 12%, and nuclear and gas approximately 22%. When the two solar plants went down, insufficient backup, or inertia, was available to keep the system going. The sun shines...

Last Monday, the Iberian grid suffered a disturbance in the south-west at 12:33. In 3.5 seconds this worsened and the interconnection to France disconnected. All renewable generation then went off-line, followed by disconnection of all rotating generation plant. The Iberian blackout was complete within a few seconds. At the time the grid was producing 28.4 GW of power, of which 79 per cent was solar and wind. This was a problematic situation as solar and wind plants have another, not widely known, downside – one quite apart from their intermittency and expense.This is the fact that they do not supply...

Porfirio Lobo, Honduras president elect, said on Sunday he is committed to enable ousted president Manuel Zelaya to leave the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa, where he remains under refuge following a frustrated attempt last week. Honduras now made it clear what it will accept: "It was decided at the highest level of government: it will be a territorial asylum and he may not go to any nation which borders Honduras, ie that is in Central America," said the Foreign Ministry spokesman, Milton Mateo. According to the Honduran government, Zelaya will not be allowed to travel to Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua...

Latest statistics reveal alarming increase in rapes, reaching 5,206 incidents in 2024, nearly triple the figure reported six years ago ... Spain has seen an alarming rise in sexual violence over recent years, culminating in a record-high number of rapes, which reached 5,206 incidents in 2024, ... With an average of 14 rapes per day across the country, the figure nearly triples the 1,878 cases reported in 2019 when five daily incidents were reported. The upward trend has remained consistent year-over-year since 2018 ... Regional breakdowns show that communities like Catalonia, Madrid, and Andalusia report the highest numbers, although increases...

The Spanish blackout made us all aware of how unstable the grid can get when renewables are in the driver’s seat, but one should also not forget that they don’t come cheaply. The idea of getting free energy from wind and solar is inaccurate. Man must build machines to extract energy from nature and those machines, windmills and solar panels, are expensive. ... renewables are unreliable and expensive

~A headline from Scotland's Daily Record: Three masked children held captive in 'house of horrors' since Covid pandemic So who was holding them captive? Well, that would be their German dad and American mom. Where was this house of horrors? In the couple's second home, in the Spanish town of Fitoria, on the outskirts of Oviedo, capital of the Principality of Asturias. It's a spacious property with commanding views over the metropolis [see picture above] in a neighbourhood where such agreeable accommodations can set you back a million euros. Nevertheless, a lady became concerned when she heard children's voices coming...

An archaeologist holds a mandible bone attributed to Homo antecessor, dating from about 800,000 years ago, during a presentation of the latest discoveries and cataloguing at the site of the Sierra de Atapuerca in northern Spain June 20, 2005. This mandible, which shows a primitive structural pattern shared with all African and Asian Homo species, adds to the hominin sample recovered from this site between 1994 and 1996. It is the left half of a gracile mandible belonging probably to a female adult with premolars and molars in place.

Scientists in Spain say that they have found a tooth from a distant human ancestor that is more than one million years old. The tooth, a pre-molar, was discovered on Wednesday at the Atapuerca site in northern Spain's Burgos Province. It represented western Europe's "oldest human fossil remain", a statement from the Atapuerca Foundation said. The foundation said it was awaiting final results before publishing its findings in a scientific journal. Human story Several caves containing evidence of prehistoric human occupation have been found in Atapuerca. In 1994 fossilised remains called Homo antecessor (Pioneer Man) - believed to date back...

Zanolli and colleagues examined dental remains from the sites of Fontana Fanuccio, located 50km southeast of Rome, and Visogliano, located 18km northwest of Trieste. At around 450,000 years old, these teeth join a very short list of fossil human remains from Middle Pleistocene Europe. Using micro-CT scanning and detailed morphological analyses, the authors examined the shape and arrangement of tooth tissues and compared them with teeth of other human species. They found that the teeth of both sites share similarities with Neanderthals and are distinct from modern humans. There has been much debate over the identities and relationships of Middle...

The 257 fossil footprints were found in a coastal creek bed in Le Rozel in northern France. They were made around 80,000 years ago and preserved in sandy mud. Most of the footprints were from children and may show that Neanderthals could have been taller than previously thought. "The discovery of so many Neanderthal footprints at one site is extraordinary," says Isabelle de Groote at Liverpool John Moores University, who was not involved with the study. Before this, only nine Neanderthal footprints were known, from 4 different sites, says Jérémy Duveau of the MuséumNational d'Histoire Naturelle in France, who led...

Blackouts are becoming longer and more common in Xcel’s Colorado service territory, with 90,000 customers experiencing 6 or more outages in 2024.. Xcel Energy, Colorado’s largest electricity provider, is having increasing difficulty answering customer calls, sending out bills and keeping the lights on, according to two reports by state utility regulators. Blackouts more than doubled in 2024 and customer complaints have jumped 100% in three years, according to a Colorado Public Utilities Commission briefing Wednesday on outages. Outages have become more prevalent across Xcel Energy’s service territory which includes zones from the northeast, near Sterling, to Greeley, the Denver metro...

LISBON — Following massive power grid failures that plunged multiple countries into blackouts, Europe promised its citizens it would get electricity back up as soon as possible so everyone would be able to hear the Muslim call to prayer over the loudspeakers. Officials said they were aware that essential staples of European life, like pausing to pray in the direction of Mecca and asking Allah to grant them bloody victories against the infidels, had been disrupted by the blackouts, but assured everyone the normalcy of assaults and stabbings could resume very soon. "Our way of fundamental Islamic life will continue...

"Spain's power grid ran entirely on renewable energy".. Spain was supposed to be Europe’s Green Energy success story. With massive amounts of renewables in the power grid, Spain was going to save the planet. Here’s Red Electrica, Spain’s state-owned power company, last year bragging about its renewables. “Renewable energies generated 56% of Spain’s electricity mix in 2024 Renewable generation increased by almost 11% in a record-breaking year on two fronts: achieving the highest renewable electricity generation ever recorded and capturing its largest share since records began.” Now, Red Electrica is trying to explain why all the lights went out. Spain...

On April 16, 2025, Spain celebrated a green energy triumph. Just six days later, the lights went out across the entire country. April 16: Spain’s first weekday of 100% renewable power In a historic achievement, Spain’s national grid was powered entirely by renewable energy on Tuesday, April 16 – the first time this has ever happened on a weekday. Between 10:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m., wind, solar, and hydro met 100 per cent of mainland electricity demand, according to Red Eléctrica (cited by PV Magazine). At 11:15 a.m., wind and solar alone produced 100.63 per cent of demand. April 22:...