Warnings of COVID Power Cuts

[Ferdinand]

Warnings about potential power cuts:

 

Quote

Powers has written to its priority customers, which includes the elderly and families with young children, to offer advice on what to do if there is a power outage, reported The Daily Telegraph. The firm, which owns and maintains the electricity cables in the South East and East of England and London, gave advice to customers such as making sure they have ‘hat, gloves and a blanket to hand to keep warm’.

 

Other advice included ‘keeping a torch handy’ and ‘reducing heat loss by closing doors on unused rooms’, and keeping a corded telephone in the house, where possible, as well as a power bank to charge mobile phones. The firm said it ‘regularly’ contacts customers on its Priority Services Register to make sure they ‘meet their needs’, adding ‘it’s never more important than in the current circumstances’.

 

Read more: https://metro.co.uk/2020/03/31/power-companies-remind-customers-ready-lights-go-12488892/

 

 

Does anyone have any views or guidance on this?

At present I do not have a generator, nor anywhere (I think) to plug it in.

 

But I am willing to do a little rapid investment now in advance of possible more widespread purchasing by the general populace in a few weeks, as it is something that could be beneficial anyway. I certainly do not want to be forced out in search of solutions at the same time as everybody else, being on 3 month advised social caution for vulnerability reasons.

What strategies do any BHers have in place? Ideally I need a pre-written quick reference.

 

Cheers

 

Ferdinand

[Big Jimbo]

I think i might dig mine out of the lock up and fire it up, just incase. Atleast i could use it to power the gas boiler, cooker, and a couple of lights, and t.v.

[SteamyTea]

I had a letter from my supplier saying no problem.

They have moved the Smart Meter fitters to customer services.

[ProDave]

Electricity usage is about 18% down on normal, so I can't see power cuts due to excess demand.

 

Power cuts due to storm damage might be an issue, but you would expect the network operators to be "essential services" and at least have staff on call to repair damage in the normal timescales.

 

It sounds like a headline to sell newspapers to me.

[newhome]

The power station up here is fully staffed. They have contingency plans in place that if the situation became extreme involve testing the teams and essentially locking them in until the pandemic ends. It’s nuclear so they can’t just lock up and leave! 
 

[SteamyTea]

2 minutes ago, newhome said:

It’s nuclear so they can’t just lock up and leave

Owned by the French, so they will just extend lunch, to 3 months.

[Carrerahill]

32 minutes ago, ProDave said:

Electricity usage is about 18% down on normal, so I can't see power cuts due to excess demand.

 

Power cuts due to storm damage might be an issue, but you would expect the network operators to be "essential services" and at least have staff on call to repair damage in the normal timescales.

 

It sounds like a headline to sell newspapers to me.

Had something along these lines not been written I'd have done it myself. Spot on I'd say.

 

I'd say the risk is possibly to areas, rural predominantly, which would tend to "expect" power outages during storms. That is to say city supplies etc. would not usually be affected. 

 

It is times like these that I really am glad we have a WBS. Even those with self generation ability cannot always operate in island mode and effectively regardless of the £10K's of power generation equipment they cannot generate a watt. 

 

My backup plan is a UPS with a big battery(s) to run critical circuits (at present can support about 500W for 12 hours) and WBS for heat and cooking although gas should remain unaffected. 

 

I suspect that when everything becomes electric the government and the big firms will have control over almost the entire population, they simply want us, the people, to be totally at their mercy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Carrerahill]

7 minutes ago, newhome said:

The power station up here is fully staffed. They have contingency plans in place that if the situation became extreme involve testing the teams and essentially locking them in until the pandemic ends. It’s nuclear so they can’t just lock up and leave! 
 

Torness?

[daiking]

I didn’t expect you to start the bed-wetting on this @Ferdinand . Other posters, maybe.

 

 

[Mr Punter]

What a load of nonsense.  This is just the network companies scaling down their non-essential works programme to focus on the main networks.  There may be the occasional local outage perhaps as a result of a component not being replaced but it would then be a priority.  This is not the 70s.

[Ferdinand]

30 minutes ago, daiking said:

I didn’t expect you to start the bed-wetting on this @Ferdinand . Other posters, maybe.

 

 

 

The general scepticism is quite encouraging ?. Perhaps you are right and I am over-worrying.

 

We generally have a high reliability power supply here, but I'm sensitised on this as someone in the high risk (not very high risk - next layer out) group advised to socially isolate for 3 months, currently under investigation for a low-octane immune system. At present I'm also living alone - not ideal for a Type I D where your final support system is always somebody else.

Several of my Ts are taking this *really* seriously. One 70+ year old even had her son request the garage to keep her car so she can't be tempted to go out in it ?.

 

I've got most of the stuff squared away, time on my hands, and I wondered about a genny before. Seems to be an opportunity to think it through.

Edited April 2, 2020 by Ferdinand

[SteamyTea]

29 minutes ago, Ferdinand said:

I've got most of the stuff squared away, time on my hands, and I wondered about a genny before. Seems to be an opportunity to think it through.

Then go and buy a cheap 2 kW one and an extension lead.

Pointless trying to run the whole house from a generator for the very rare occasion it is needed.

 

Out here in the stick, more and more overhead cables are being buried, looks better and they are more reliable.

Wish they would do the one 4 metres from my front window and the one 40 metres from my back window.

The rear one is shared with the phone wires, so would get a reliable phone service,, may temp me back to a landline, but I doubt it. 

[Cpd]

Power cuts and quarantine........not sure the general population is ready for that ! ....  hopefully just scaremongering to sell papers. 
being in the wilds and having plenty of tools left over from when I was contributing I have a couple of generators but would not rush out and buy one if I did not. 

[Carrerahill]

47 minutes ago, Ferdinand said:

Perhaps you are right and I am over-worrying.

I'd add this worry to the back of your queue, I really would. 

[newhome]

1 hour ago, Carrerahill said:

Torness?

Yes. A few miles up the road. Massive local employer. 

[Ferdinand]

Ok.

 

Will give it a bit more thought, then go back to the next bit of garden.

[jamieled]

23 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

 

Out here in the stick, more and more overhead cables are being buried, looks better and they are more reliable.

It does look better, but I thought DNO's were generally reluctant to bury OHP's as buried cables are more prone to faults/less reliable?

[Jeremy Harris]

11 minutes ago, jamieled said:

It does look better, but I thought DNO's were generally reluctant to bury OHP's as buried cables are more prone to faults/less reliable?

 

 

Underground cables are a lot more reliable, but cost a great deal more to install, so the DNO preference for running cables overhead is mainly to do with initial cost.  When I offered to put in a duct to re-route an overhead cable underground the DNO were pleased to do it, and the chap that came around told me that he wished that more of their network was underground, as those were the parts that rarely caused him any problems.

[ProDave]

We are all overhead here.  The usual cause of an unplanned power cut is a tree or a large branch brings an overhead line down.

 

It's blowing a hoolie good and proper today, as strong if not stronger than most of the "named storms" we have had this winter.  There was a forecast for gales in Shetland but we are some way from there.

 

Gusting to 55 at Sumburgh, gusting to 43 at Inverness.  I guess it's a bit blowy all across the north today.

 

[daiking]

2 hours ago, Ferdinand said:

 

The general scepticism is quite encouraging ?. Perhaps you are right and I am over-worrying.

 

We generally have a high reliability power supply here, but I'm sensitised on this as someone in the high risk (not very high risk - next layer out) group advised to socially isolate for 3 months, currently under investigation for a low-octane immune system. At present I'm also living alone - not ideal for a Type I D where your final support system is always somebody else.

Several of my Ts are taking this *really* seriously. One 70+ year old even had her son request the garage to keep her car so she can't be tempted to go out in it ?.

 

I've got most of the stuff squared away, time on my hands, and I wondered about a genny before. Seems to be an opportunity to think it through.

I would encourage anyone to take the serious personal protective measures they  feel they need to be comfortable with themselves at this time.

 

But I’m not so bothered about power cuts - and would probably say cancel the lockdown if we get to that stage but that’s a long way away from where we are now. I think there’s likely to be more stress in supply chains for essential goods depending on how long this lasts.

[AliG]

I saw the story too. I think the main concern is that they have less staff to fix things if they break so it may take a bit longer than usual.

 

Thus if you are in the countryside and a bit more prone to power cuts then you might worry that they take a couple of days rather than a couple of hours to fix.

 

I don't think it is a matter of having a generator, but a vulnerable person might need to keep warm all the time for example. I do think they might have put more language in it to say that they aren't expecting anything and it is precautionary. As the weather improves and the chances of builders cutting through cables by accident have collapsed I don't think there is much to worry about.

 

As an aside, is anyone else seeing massive numbers of colleagues self isolating due to possibly being sick? Everyone in my company is working from home and everyone is fine, I have read for example that an enormous percentage of the tube staff are off sick. It is hard to see why?

 

The DM comments were as usual ridiculous, numerous people blamed it on wind turbines and said it would never have happened if we still used coal.

[newhome]

1 minute ago, AliG said:

As an aside, is anyone else seeing massive numbers of colleagues self isolating due to possibly being sick?

Yes. There are a ton of people self isolating. Either they’ve been in the office with someone who has come come down with a temperature or diagnosed with Covid 19, or one of their family members has, or they are coughing. 
 

[AliG]

Maybe we just closed the office really early, for most people the last day was the 12th of March. A very strong argument was that it was a bad idea to be asking people to come to work on the tube in London. A few people continued to go to the office who walked or drove until it was totally shut down two weeks ago.

 

Clearly if you work somewhere where you couldn't do that you have been taking more and more risk, especially in London. I have already brought up I do not see how we reopen an office in central London if most people have to take the tube to work at any time in the foreseeable future.

[ProDave]

Could this provoke a long term re think of the stupidity of making so many people work in such a small area and forcing them to travel on overcrowded public transport every day to get there?

 

 

[AliG]

It could, tbf I think there is a bit of chicken and egg. People go where the money is, then a network effect generates more money, so more people go etc. Maybe this cycle will be broken by this.

 

We are finding working from home relatively easy. We were in the lucky position of just having moved to use Microsoft Teams a few weeks before this. Really in a service oriented business you can pretty much work as normal. Definitely not the same as fixing power lines!

 

However, I am not sure things are as straightforward as it seems. With everyone working from home it is working very well. It may be that if some people were together in the office and some people were at home it would be more of a struggle to keep everyone equally involved.