power outage

Justme83

My electricity was out for 26 hours so I lost the food in my freezer. The power company advised me to claim on my house insurance. Because I wasn't in at the time of the power failure and they could not access my house to provide a generator the guaranteed payment of £54 that they give out after 18 hours they will not pay and have offered " a good will payment of £25". Obviously I am unhappy with this. I have contacted my insurance company and to claim for my freezer contents I would have to pay an excess of £100 plus the likelihood of my premium increasing next year as I would have made a claim plus if I had allowed a generator to be connected to my home and left the down stairs window open then I would have invalidated my house insurance if a break-in had occurred so a no win no win situation. Everything seems loaded against the consumer. Has any one any advice as I don't intend to let this go:mad:

chanz4

not their fault you were not in, as they say its a gogw

Cknocker

Couple of things to confirm, at what point did you report the power outage? The 18 hours is from time of report (The power company does not know someone as lost power until they report it, unless it is as a result of a High Voltage Fault).

If say you went out at 8:00am and returned to find no power at 5:00pm and reported the power as being lost at 9:00am (Which you may be able to tell from a stopped clock for example), it will not be considered as 18 hours until 11:00am the next day.

Also power companies can "stop the clock" if they are unable to gain access to a customers property - although this is normally used in situations where they need enter the property in order to effect a repair.

Was your property the only property affected?

Personally if I was you I would tell the power company you are unhappy with there offer and that you want the full £54.00 (assuming that you first reported it more than 18 hours before the power was reconnected).

Ich_2

As long as the DNO can show that the generator was on site before the 18 hours were up and ready to be connected they are exempt from the payment.
The affected customer does not need to report the outage personally, the time starts from the first confirmed report.
Part of the problem is that they cannot just connect a generator unless they can make some safety checks once it is running. i.e. it could be connected to the service cable outside the property, but checks need to be done at the meter position.

Cknocker

With the info given, to me it sounds like a single premises affected (If it was more then one property, the chances are they would pick up the whole lot on a larger generator - depending which part of the country - access would not be needed to every property for checks), if the DNO did have to carry out further checks, this would then be a situation where the clock was stopped, as they could not gain access to effect repair.
If it is a single premises affected, the clock would start from when the customer reported it - as this would be the first confirmed report.

Ratboy

I love the terminology a non win-win scenario; that would be a lose-lose scenario then!

I live in the sticks, not far from a main town (4 miles or so), but not isolated, plenty terraced houses, plenty fields, maybe 3 shops, 2 pubs.

But I get power cuts almost monthly. WHY in this day and age? They usually range from a few minutes, then another powercut shortly after that lasts longer, presumably because they are fixing the fault that caused the initial fault?

But I noticed that these power cuts coincided with electronic equipment going faulty within my home, immediately or shortly after these power cuts, so I rang the power company, and as the OP says, they are less than helpful. They stated that to claim for electrical damage to the equipment, that they will judge how many people ring in and complain the same, and only then will they consider compensation. Apparently I was the only one, because what layman can translate repeated power failures to faulty electronics in the home. Hindsight is key.

I'm interested with the poster that states they only come out when a power outage is reported;

After an outage; love the peace and quiet from the constant hum, decided to have a ciggy watching the stars, and a bloke turns up..maybe 3am..can you open these security gates for me; to access the mains transformer. Comes back, nope thats ok, off to the next one. Then after an hour he comes back, fixed power comes on, stops by to check presumably, I say thanks fella, wanna cuppa for fixing it? No - the next town just went down....

SO - When there is a powercut, in these modern times; it needs a man in a van to manually reset a fuse in a substation???

Cknocker

What would you suggest as an alternative to a "man in a van" replacing (they need replacing like a fuse in your plug - not resetting like a MCB) fuses?

Wywth

Justme83 wrote: »

My electricity was out for 26 hours so I lost the food in my freezer. The power company advised me to claim on my house insurance. Because I wasn't in at the time of the power failure and they could not access my house to provide a generator the guaranteed payment of £54 that they give out after 18 hours they will not pay and have offered " a good will payment of £25". Obviously I am unhappy with this. I have contacted my insurance company and to claim for my freezer contents I would have to pay an excess of £100 plus the likelihood of my premium increasing next year as I would have made a claim plus if I had allowed a generator to be connected to my home and left the down stairs window open then I would have invalidated my house insurance if a break-in had occurred so a no win no win situation. Everything seems loaded against the consumer. Has any one any advice as I don't intend to let this go:mad:

I think we are getting into the realms of fantasy here. :cool:

If there is a power outage and the supplier cannot get you back online quickly by diverting power from elsewhere, they don't usually come knocking on each persons door with a portable genny. They have huge gennys, transported on trailers (or on a back of a lorry) and park up in a suitable place and then patch that in to provide the local supply.

Ich_2

they don't usually come knocking on each persons door with a portable genny. They have huge gennys, transported on trailers (or on a back of a lorry) and park up in a suitable place and then patch that in to provide the local supply.

Nope, we have them from suitcase sized 2kW generators up to the larger sizes. Depending on how many customers are off, depends on what size we use

Wywth

Ich wrote: »

Nope, we have them from suitcase sized 2kW generators up to the larger sizes. Depending on how many customers are off, depends on what size we use

Lol - my cooker alone can draw at least 6kW

I don't think one of these will give me the clean and regulated electricity some of our senistive electronic devices require



I'd expect something like this (but they do come in different sizes)



This is what UK Power Networks have to say on the matter
http://www.ukpowernetworks.co.uk/internet/en/help-and-advice/documents/Temporary%20generators.pdf

Cknocker

All DNO's have different policies on generators. WPD as an example don't use small generators as a rule - I believe 50kVA is their smallest. Central networks never used generators at all! There are major implications for DNO's plugging small generators into houses - for starters most DNO's do not employ Electricians and as such cannot certify the domestic installation that they have in effect altered by installing a local generator. And yes for a domestic house a 2kVA generator is useless as it will trip the moment someone switches on the kettle! Let alone gets into the shower.