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Old 13th December 2021, 01:20   #31
guru
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MarkS View Post
People are installing electric garage door openers, which, with power loss, are keeping their (all-weather, 4 wheel drive) cars in the garage.
In addition, people are abandoning all home phones with cords, which will continue to work during power cuts, unlike cordless home phones.
And some people are swapping their PSTN phones for VOIP phones, which rely on mains power to their broadband connections.

I think people, in the countryside, reliant upon power, coming over overhead power lines, need to seriously consider their options, in the event of power loss. Overhead power lines will always be vulnerable to bad weather. And multiple faults increase the time to repair.

This can be easily simulated, by switching OFF their mains electricity, and see what is left working.

Being prepared for a power loss will dramatically reduce the impact, if a power outage does occur, rather than just going for the cheapest, or more 'convenient' option.

Be prepared.

(And keep a manual toothbrush to hand !!!)
Apologies if I seem to lack sympathy.

Rant over
Well if you have an electric garage door you can go in the side door and pull the cord to disengage the motor drive and then open the door manually. As for PSTN phones ALL of them will be VoIP very soon anyway as BT are phasing out PSTN connections by 2025.

Fortunately most of us who live in the country get the chance to test how prepared for power cuts we are on a fairly regular basis! In our house we have plenty of torches which are kept charged all the time and I have leisure batteries and a mains invertor for longer outages.
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Old 13th December 2021, 08:56   #32
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Originally Posted by dattrike View Post
See post #27
if i was convinced that that applied to those on fibre i would not have asked the question and so i need a reply that says yes or no.

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Old 13th December 2021, 09:28   #33
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Most houses are powered by gas, oil, coal, LPG and electricity.

Has anybody here experienced a gas supply cut as a result of a storm or electricity failure ?

I would suspect not, as there is always a substantial amount of gas in the pipes, keeping supply going, even if local gas pumping stations suffer electricity cuts.

And if you have oil tanks, they take weeks (if not months) to empty.

Coal can last weeks.

So the killer issue is lack of electricity to run the essentials: gas or oil central heating, water pumps, fridge freezers, LED lighting, broadband and mobile phone chargers.
(Corded phones, remember them, do not require mains power, and have no batteries to run flat.)

As I understand it, wind and solar inverters require an existing mains supply before they will feed power into the wiring. So they are of no use in a power cut. And generators require refueling every ~4 hours (and should be stopped, while being refueled with explosive petrol).

So the trick is a continuous supply of electricity, in the ~<500W region, to run the essentials.

A mains inverter (1500W pure sine wave continuous output) and a couple of 130Ah lead acid batteries can keep the essentials going for several days, for a cost of ~£210, and can be recharged from your Rover 75 (other cars are available ) assuming you have a reasonable amount of fuel in it, and a set of jump leads.

As long as the mains isolator is turned OFF, the inverter output can be fed into any 13A socket, powering up all the essentials.

Obviously electric ovens, microwaves, electric kettles, washing machines, dishwashers, etc, are unusable, but in my opinion, not essential. Toasters are doable.

(PS Mobile phone charging doesn't even need mains power, a cigar lighter socket in your Rover 75 can charge a phone in less than 2 hours, without taking much power from the battery.)

(I noticed that somebody complained that their electric toothbrush was unusable, during a power cut. I really do wonder at people nowadays ! Toothbrushes are available !)

This assumes you have a car full of fuel to charge the battery. I would not recommend doing this given how long it will take.

A small generator is the essential piece of kit as it can power a kettle (ordinary power 1.7ish kW kettle as opposed to the modern 3kW type), microwave, hotplate etc. These are the essentials in a power cut situation. Also keep a few microwavable meals in the freezer.

I always have at least one spare, fully charged battery at home for charging the phone, running a single LED light etc. but would use it sparingly in a power cut. A 3kVA (2.8kVA in reality) generator is used for the microwave, topping-up the freezer etc.

An electric toothbrush can be used as a manual toothbrush!

A torch is a handy piece of kit!
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Old 13th December 2021, 10:16   #34
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I have one of those bottled gas fires on wheels, complete with a near full gas bottle. That bought decades ago and not really used, just for emergencies.


I have a small single ring gas burner with disposable gas cans.


My caravan, in my drive, with 15kg of gas, gas oven hob, gas or electric heated, LED lit from it's 12v battery, so can cook, eat and it's fridge can run on gas, or mains.


Half a dozen 12v batteries all fully charged.


Gas oven, gas hob. If power fails, no CH, but we have gas fire, which doesn't need power to work.


If phones go out, I have VHF and HF radios all able to work on 12v. I normally use a set of wireless phones, which will not work in a power cut - however, I keep a cheap line powered phone in a drawer, in the kitchen, always plugged in to a socket at the back of the unit.



I would have liked a log burner, but I just cannot really justify one.



In 50 years, we have never been without gas - we have lost electric for the odd few hours though.
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Old 14th December 2021, 00:58   #35
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MSS: How often do you need to refuel the generator ?
Do you refuel while the generator is running ?
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Old 14th December 2021, 01:10   #36
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Originally Posted by MarkS View Post
MSS: How often do you need to refuel the generator ?
Do you refuel while the generator is running ?
My generator can run for about 3 hours on a tank of fuel, but I don't usually run it for more than 1 - 1.5 hours at a time. We use the this max 1.5 hours for the cooking, tea/coffee making, freezer top-up, battery top-up etc. In between the generator runs, the battery is used for low-level background lighting, refueling etc. The times I have had to work in this mode over the last 20ish years, it has worked very well.

The generator duty cycle probably ends up being 1 - 1.5 hours on, 2 hours off.

I never refuel the generator with the engine running. Ditto my lawnmowers etc. It's just not worth the risk.
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Old 14th December 2021, 13:27   #37
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Originally Posted by guru View Post
I'm sorry to hear about your situation and hope you get power back soon. We also have occasional long power cuts (4 days after a storm was our record) so I do know how it feels.

I wasn't suggesting that teams of electric JCB's and 4x4's will be coming to your rescue, merely that having a massive battery parked outside capable of powering your central heating pump and boiler for a few days might be useful in extended power cuts.

Our current mk1 ZS EV doesn't have vehicle to load so I currently have a bank of leisure batteries always trickle charging in the barn and a mains invertor on standby however when we upgrade to the mk2 to that does have it I'll be able to ditch that and rather then being able to run the heating for around 18 hours we should be able to keep it going for 3 to 4 days, if not more.
Perhaps one of these ???
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Old 14th December 2021, 18:23   #38
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Perhaps one of these ???
A diesel lorry
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Old 25th December 2021, 23:39   #39
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Had a trip up to Northumberland about 2 months back house hunting. Nice part of the country. Noticed that a lot of the o/h network hadn't been upgraded. From some of the photos on the news it also seemed they hadn't carried out any tree trimming adjacent to the damaged network. A reliable source said they had very few o/h line staff to deal with the damage from the storm, my former company sent some 200 staff up there to help out under and industry wide mutual aid agreement. Even so customers off for almost 2 weeks(?) is, quite frankly, in excusable.

To compound the problem it appeared the DNO's customer liaison and messaging was also an issue. It never ceases to amaze me, when ever there's an incident such as this, the appalling level of communication by who ever owns the organisation. Sadly it's not as simple as telling customers their power is going off beforehand, they should engage with them beforehand to explain how it all works. Or not.

No doubt lessons will be learned. I mean it's not as if we've never had extreme weather incidents of this nature in this country before, that affect the distribution infrastructure a mostly o/h network.
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