How Britain Narrowly Escaped A Grid Blackout In June 2026

October 30, 2026 by Maya Posch 16 Comments

Amidst one of the worst heatwaves in European history, Britain’s national grid saw itself faced with a quiet crisis this summer. On June 23rd, the grid frequency dropped to 49.657 Hz, down from the nominal 50 Hz — getting very close to the lower bound before safeties would start disconnecting parts of the grid. In a video by [The Electric Brit] this event is investigated, including its causes and how France’s spare capacity managed to save the day.

Under normal operating conditions the UK grid is kept above 49.8 Hz, with the statutory lower limit being 49.5. Meaning that another drop of 0.157 Hz would have set in motion a series of quite extreme grid protection mechanisms including the possibility of local blackouts.

Fortunately the cessation of energy exports and the importing of French power from hydro and nuclear power stations managed to nip this issue in the bud before it could get any worse. Although an example of correct grid management, it also shows how poorly planned maintenance and events like a heatwave can line up quite a few holes in the cheese slices that invite disaster.

The problems here began weeks prior to the event, with 21.2 GW of generating capacity offline. Of this, 12.6 GW was planned maintenance, another 8.6 GW was unexpectedly offline, while another 2.6 GW of gas generation was mostly unavailable due to the heatwave curtailing production. A couple of interconnections with Ireland and other nations were also down for maintenance, leaving the grid control room with precious few options.

Although the UK’s transmission system operator (TSO) NESO had its predicted capacities for variable renewable sources (VRE) like solar, it could not see local demand and production from e.g. rooftop solar in the control room. This became rather exciting when the evening neared and rooftop solar output dropped. Here NESO turned out to be lucky, but such hidden factors form a major risk factor when such consumers return to grid power.

As VRE sources fell quiet across Europe that evening, this put the onus on remaining generating sources and brought the slowly developing crisis to its apex. Fortunately importing energy from France saved the day here, but there are many lessons to be learned here, many grounded in how complex AC grid management is once you consider all aspects that affect not just generators but also transmission lines.

This event is different from the frequency oscillations that triggered the blackout on the Iberian peninsula in 2025. In that case a problem existed with reactive power management, with oscillations amplified by grid-following converters from solar farms and insufficient capacity on the grid to absorb this surge in reactive power, ultimately leading to the cascading blackout.

Amidst these lessons on grid-management the discussions on whether baseload power generating is truly dead among other tropes, as well as the calls by European TSOs to make grid-forming converters mandatory on VRE generators will no doubt intensify.

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JPEG-XL Is Back On The Menu

October 28, 2026 by Zoe Skyforest 41 Comments

Many of the image formats we’re familiar with have been around for decades. We all know JPEG and PNG like the back of our hands, and GIF even had a bit of a resurgence when tiny annoying looping animations became cool again on social media. There has been a growth in newer formats, though, like WEBP, and AVIF, with various platforms and software companies adopting them for greater efficiency, performance, and image quality.

Amongst the new crop of formats vying for relevance is JPEG XL. It was touted as a format that improved on what JPEG could do in the lossy compression space, while also adding on a lossless mode. There were grand hopes that it would become a universal replacement for all existing raster formats on the Web. A major problem was that Google was seemingly against it, only to backflip—with the format now slated to hit the big time with renewed backing from the search giant. So what’s going on?

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How Bad Is That Bridge: A Government Database

October 27, 2026 by Zoe Skyforest 21 Comments

Bridges! We kind of expect them to just be there and do their job, ad infinitum. They are built into the landscape, and we often take them and the routes they open up for granted.

The reality, as any civil engineer will tell you, is that bridges are living, breathing things that require endless maintenance and monitoring to keep them safe, standing, and functional. A great example of this is found in the US Department of Transportation, and its publicly accessible register of bridge health reports.

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Japan Launches Mission To Study Martian Moon

October 22, 2026 by Tom Nardi 22 Comments

Humanity has been sending robotic explorers to Mars since the 1970s, and for our efforts we’ve been rewarded with not only incredible imagery of the Red Planet’s magnificent desolation, but a wealth of information about the alien world and how it’s changed over the last several billion years. But comparatively, we know almost nothing about the planet’s two moons, Phobos and Deimos. In fact, as recently as the 1960s, there were some scientists that believed the unusual shape, mass, and orbit of Phobos hinted at the possibility that it was no moon at all, and was in actuality a derelict spacecraft of some type.

Once the first Viking probes arrived at Mars, we had the photographic evidence and up-close measurements to prove that Phobos wasn’t artificial. But even today, we still don’t know exactly what it is. The data suggests that it’s not solid rock, and that large voids may be hiding under its surface. While we can be fairly sure there won’t be any mummified remains of Martian astronauts to be found within Phobos, vast deposits of ice are a tantalizing possibility.

With the launch of the Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission earlier this week, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) hopes to bring us one step closer to understanding the formation and structure of Phobos. Should everything go to plan, MMX will deploy a small rover to its tenuous surface in 2029, and by 2031, a sample return capsule will bring pieces of the mysterious moon back to Earth for further study.

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Charlotte’s New Runway Gets A Digital Twin

October 19, 2026 by Zoe Skyforest 4 Comments

The first viable powered aircraft predated the first proper runway by two decades. While it’s entirely possible to launch some planes from austere dirt or grass strips, the aviation world eventually realized that aircraft would be better off launching from a flat, paved surface.

Over the years, paving technology has gradually improved in the aviation world as it has for roads and highways. Now, there’s a project being built in Charlotte with new digital features that hopes to push the state of the art of runways even further.

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Roman Telescope Saves Fuel, Doubles Mission

September 30, 2026 by Zoe Skyforest 18 Comments

Contemplate the events that might end a space mission, and you might picture something dramatic: detonation on the pad, a dead guidance system, or micrometeoroids shattering delicate solar panels. More often, though, the ending is far more mundane. Plenty of perfectly healthy spacecraft have been retired simply because the fuel tanks ran dry. That’s why mission planners guard every kilogram of go juice so jealously, and why careful preparation in a mission is critical to long-term success.

Which brings us to NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. Barely two weeks after its August 30 launch on a Falcon Heavy, the mission team announced that Roman now has enough fuel for at least 22 years of science operations. That’s well over double its original 10-year fuel budget. It’s a huge gain, so let’s explore how NASA pulled it off.

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Geothermal Cooling For New York’s Subways

September 29, 2026 by Zoe Skyforest 26 Comments

You might think that if you dug some tunnels down into the ground where you could be out of the sunshine, that you might find them to be relatively cool and comfortable inside. Yet, fill those tunnels with trains and supporting equipment and millions of commuters, and you’ll instead find yourself sweltering in the heat.

New York’s subways are too hot for comfort, and have been for some time. Unfortunately, unlike any old regular building, you can’t just air condition a subway and call it done. Instead, authorities are looking for other solutions to beat the heat on the famous underground transit network.