On: Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal

[suslik]

Mobile internet still works.

[codetrotter → suslik]

It works, but only some of the time now. It’s been very unstable for me since the outage started. I’m in Spain.

[cowfarts → suslik]

"Cell towers have backup generators?"

All essential infrastructure has to. Heck, if you have a landline you can probably siphon off some power from the DC component.

[samlinnfer → suslik]

Cell towers have backup generators?

[Tuna-Fish → samlinnfer]

Most of them have batteries. How long they last depends, in my country they can typically manage 4 hours.

[Semaphor → samlinnfer]

We had a (much smaller) regional (Lübeck and Ostholstein) power outage here in Northern Germany in I think 2018 or 19. No mobile internet until everything was restored ~6 hours later, and most of the time no other cell service either.

[sofixa → samlinnfer]

They still need other infrastructure to get anywhere though (routers and other networking infrastructure).

[throw0101b → sofixa]

Cell towers have batteries and/or generators, with fibre connections to data centres, which also generally have batteries and/or generators.

[xen2xen1 → throw0101b]

Always picture someone with a big can of diesel filling up a generator. Experience says it could be a genny running on natural gas. Had that at work before.

[raxxorraxor → xen2xen1]

I think cell phone towers use surprisingly little energy, just a few kW. So even longer term operation should be possible withs bobs backyard generator running on vodka.

But I would guess the whole network equipment would draw quite a bit, especially a modern infrastructure.

[rdtsc → samlinnfer]

Batteries at least.