What causes power outages?
Power outages can have several triggers, including natural disasters and extreme weather, human-caused disasters, equipment failures, overloading transformers and wires, and so on.
Electric grids are sensitive to imbalances in the amount of energy generated versus what is used.
Enric Bartlett, an energy expert and professor of public law at Spain’s Esade business school, likened a grid’s supply and demand balance to a tandem bike. “To avoid falling, everyone must pedal at the same cadence,” Mr Bartlett said.
“Electrical grids are large interconnected systems, and their stability is related to a very close balance between electricity generation and demand,” said Grazia Todeschini, an engineering researcher at King’s College London.
“If one area is disconnected, it can cause knock-on effects in nearby areas,” she added, explaining that while grids have measures in place to limit the impact of outages to small areas, when the imbalance is large, disruptions can spread quickly and far.