Power cut

[Mick]

Anyone else get a power cut last night?
Ours was off from 8pm till about 9-30pm
According to the service it was a high voltage problem and they said over 1000 houses where out in the BB5 area and they would be bringing it back on line in stages and it could be 12 midnight before it would be back on
We where up and back by 9-30 as I say but it's strange as you don't think how much you need electric no lights no TV no Broadband

[Less]

I only live a spit away from you, mine stayed on.

[US Angel]

Power company over here are like that also
here they can be working on the Net 2 miles away
but for the fun of it decide to cut it off for a 10 mile area

[DaveinGermany]

Originally Posted by Less

I only live a spit away from you, mine stayed on.

That's because you bulldog clipped onto another supplier.

[Less]

Originally Posted by DaveinGermany

That's because you bulldog clipped onto another supplier.

You still use a supplier?

I Followed in the family tradition and by-passed the meter.

[westendlass]

:I use the tube system, rubber pipe and dogs bottom. The dog gets his grub shovelled in and we get the gas mantles and cooker on tap. Good all round!

[Margaret Pilkington]

No damn good for powering the internet .

[Margaret Pilkington]

A couple of weeks ago, Ma's electric was off from 5am Sat morning until 7pm.
The power failure activates the lifeline safety device......so I was phoned at 5.15 by the lifeline team. Not being able raise Ma by landline or mobile phone meant that we feared something had happened to her.
We hared over to her house, I ran(yes, ran) up the hill to,find her tucked snugly in her bed and fast asleep.
Not that she stayed asleep when we appeared at the foot of her bed.
This is about the third time we have had this happen.

I bought her a mobile so that she could have it with her at all times.
Where was the mobile? On top of the blooming piano in the living room(sigh).... I despair, I really do. It would be funny if it wasn't so serious.

Trying to contact her electricity supplier was a joke. It was an automated system and if you didn't key in the numbers in time you were cut off. How do they think the old and vulnerable can manage this system......oh dear me.....how silly....they only want to make money.

[MargaretR]

Ma needs to be on the priority service register of her fuel supplier.

http://www.accringtonweb.com/forum/f...ter-65852.html

Citizens Advice - Priority Services Register for older and disabled people
extract -
"priority reconnection if your supply is interrupted and advance notice if they have to stop your supply
alternative facilities for cooking and heating if your energy supply is interrupted"

[Margaret Pilkington]

Margaret, I was under the impression that she was already on this register.
I know that a couple of years ago she had similar problems and I answered questions about her health and disability..... And I was told that she was on a priority list.

Since she had a stroke a few years ago her right hand is weak......she finds it difficult to deal with automated systems. I usually do such things for her.....on this occasion I sought information via the automated system. I finally got through to a live operator and found out that this was an emergency situation where water had got into cables.....and that was the reason for the power cut. I was also given an approximate time of reconnection.

[Studio25]

Originally Posted by Mick

...no Broadband

The last time we had a power cut I still had plenty of juice in the laptop battery so just tethered my mobile to it and managed to stay online. Did it all in the kitchen so there was enough glow to get a brew on by boiling a pan of water.

Virgin Mobile have since banned tethering on their data plans, so if it happens again I'll have to talk to my wife.

[Gremlin]

Just checked my Virgin mobile and I can tether my iPad to it no problem.
I am a contract a tenner a month unlimited text, 250 minutes gobbing and 1Gb internet.
I could manage with a third of that but that's as little as they will go down to.
I have been lucky since I moved here but last year the Read Con had two power cuts and we had to drink either hand pulled draught, shorts or bottles ale. A few candles on the bar and we had an enjoyable evening without the electric. The till didn't work but the steward managed with paper and pen.
That's what it was like in the old days when you could go out on a Saturday night with half a farthing, get blathered, two fish suppers, a new suit, stage coach home and still have enough left over to pay your mortgage and feed the family. So they say.

[DaveinGermany]

Originally Posted by Less

You still use a supplier?

Serpently! When the neighbour on the left gets cut off, I clip onto the one on the right! Nothing wrong with changing suppliers, it spreads their bills!

Originally Posted by Gremlin

That's what it was like in the old days when you could go out on a Saturday night with half a farthing, get blathered, two fish suppers, a new suit, stage coach home and still have enough left over to pay your mortgage and feed the family. So they say.

Don't go giving us that old blarney you!

[Neil]

Originally Posted by US Angel

Power company over here are like that also
here they can be working on the Net 2 miles away
but for the fun of it decide to cut it off for a 10 mile area

That all depends what the fault is and what they need to isolate to fix it. They already do a lot of live working to keep our supplies on. How would you like to work in a wet hole in the ground live jointing a cable to a streetlight so people don't miss Jeremy Kyle on TV. Or those crazy dudes that get dropped off a helicopter onto 400,000 volt power lines without turning it off.

We have that small a capacity reserve these days they can't turn some bits off to work.

Remember when the US East coast when off supply the other year, that was caused by one Canadian power station going offline. Just loosing one was enough to overload one in the US and it went offline and that cascaded all down the East coast.

We are running that risk in the UK now with only a tiny safety margin compared to only a few years ago.

[accyman]

Originally Posted by Neil

We are running that risk in the UK now with only a tiny safety margin compared to only a few years ago.

when i lived near aldi in accy we were plagued with powercuts infact iv still got candles from when i lived there that i stockpiled lol. Anyway to get to the point one of the times it went off for almost 2 days i got talking to the engineer and he said that a lot of substations around england not just hyndburn simply cant cope with the demand of power required these days but teh electric companies tend to patch up and botch things until replacement or upgrade is the only option left

every electircal device of value such as tv and computer is plugged into a surge protector because when teh power goes off and comes back on theres a good chance your tv will get blown if its plugged in and teh switch put to on as it was before the powercut.I learned that at the expense of a £800 tv which luckily the insurance sorted because the electric company wasnt for fixing it