Winter blackouts

Uxb1

This was an interesting analysis from a while back in 2015
Royal academy of engineering report living without electric - experiences following a major substation failure
pdf available on this page
https://www.raeng.org.uk/publications/reports?p=5

Ultrasonic

MattMattMattUK said:

Ultrasonic said:

MattMattMattUK said:

Ultrasonic said:

Out of interest, in the '70s was there any attempt to persuade people to voluntarily limit/redistribute their energy usage before the rolling power outage approach was introduced? 

You'd hope that given the choice most people could be persuaded to voluntarily say limit their use to lights and maybe a TV in a single room for a period as an alternative to actually have to cut off power completely. 

Evidence from the last few years would tend to indicate that whilst some people might, many would not and indeed many may increase their usage in anticipation of any potential power cuts. 

I'm not quite sure what you have in mind here? The successful covid lockdowns are arguably a demonstration of people being willing to do things they don't want to when the alternative is obviously worse.

I am thinking of the significant minority who refused to follow the rules even in the first lockdown, those who bought up all the toilet roll, those who stripped the shelves of dried and tinned goods etc. Sure many of us were sensible, many of us helped out in our local communities, but many more were incredibly selfish. 

Hmmm... I think the toilet-roll silliness was rather a triviality compared to the overwhelming compliance with lockdown restrictions.

Personally if the government/UK energy supplier decision was to jump to a programme of rolling power cuts without first asking people to voluntarily modulate usage to avoid this being necessary I would be angry. Let's try treating people like grown-ups not children...

Ultrasonic

aaiiee said:

Ultrasonic said:

aaiiee said:

If there's a real risk of power cuts next winter, it makes even less sense that there is no government drive for improved insulation, or other measures to reduce energy usage (in my humble opinion).

Potentially but of course only relevant to the minority (<15% from quick Google) of homes with electric heating.

I take your point, but gas and electricity are connected surely? If we use less gas for heating, there will be more for generating electricity? Also, is there a situation where there would be electricity blackouts, but no problems with gas supply? Just theorising, I'm not personally expecting any problems other than extremely high prices.

On the latter point the immediate impact for most is that gas central heating needs electricity to run, so an electricity cut would stop heating working for everyone.

You make a good point about insulation helping to reduce gas usage for heating being beneficial in the wider context.

daveaspy

Ultrasonic said:

I'm not quite sure what you have in mind here? The successful covid lockdowns are arguably a demonstration of people being willing to do things they don't want to when the alternative is obviously worse.

I wonder how many would do the same again though knowing what we know now about the behaviour in government - nobody is going to turn Netflix off if Downing Street is burning brightly 

markin

The only thing that would make a difference is oven use and elec showers, So if they wont use the smart meter to limit the usage to 2kwh, We could be texted by the supplier not to use the oven/shower in are time block, #virtualBlackout

#We.will.eat.and.shower.when.they.let.us.and.be.happy

brewerdave

markin said:

The only thing that would make a difference is oven use and elec showers,

Maybe highest instantaneous loads but heaviest use over time ,electric heating and tumble dryers

Mstty

20 gas cans for the dual camping stove

2x13kg full calor gas for BBQ

2.8kW Petrol generator run time 12 hours

Multi fuel burner with stove top pan/jacket potato cast iron oven and kettle

Bring it on 🤣

MattMattMattUK

Ultrasonic said:

MattMattMattUK said:

Ultrasonic said:

MattMattMattUK said:

Ultrasonic said:

Out of interest, in the '70s was there any attempt to persuade people to voluntarily limit/redistribute their energy usage before the rolling power outage approach was introduced? 

You'd hope that given the choice most people could be persuaded to voluntarily say limit their use to lights and maybe a TV in a single room for a period as an alternative to actually have to cut off power completely. 

Evidence from the last few years would tend to indicate that whilst some people might, many would not and indeed many may increase their usage in anticipation of any potential power cuts. 

I'm not quite sure what you have in mind here? The successful covid lockdowns are arguably a demonstration of people being willing to do things they don't want to when the alternative is obviously worse.

I am thinking of the significant minority who refused to follow the rules even in the first lockdown, those who bought up all the toilet roll, those who stripped the shelves of dried and tinned goods etc. Sure many of us were sensible, many of us helped out in our local communities, but many more were incredibly selfish. 

Hmmm... I think the toilet-roll silliness was rather a triviality compared to the overwhelming compliance with lockdown restrictions.

Personally if the government/UK energy supplier decision was to jump to a programme of rolling power cuts without first asking people to voluntarily modulate usage to avoid this being necessary I would be angry. Let's try treating people like grown-ups not children...

The thing is there seemed to be quite a split in the initial lockdown, around 70-80% of people were very compliant with the rules, 10% of people were somewhat compliant with the rules and 10-20% of people ignored them almost entirely. There were two houses further down the street from me who held pretty much daily throughout April and May 2020 with large groups attending (the police did nothing even with reports and photos). It was also obvious that a not insignificant minority were ignoring the rules, both from observed behaviour and from community transmission.

The clearing the shelves of toilet roll, canned and dried goods was also fairly strong evidence that at significant minority were not willing to be community minded.

I agree that it would be sensible to ask people to voluntarily cut their usage first, but my gut feeling says that the majority are not that wasteful and do not have much headroom, that there is a group who will just not care and then there is a third group who will actually increase their usage in response (washing on half empty loads, heating their house hotter so that it does not drop as low during an outage etc.). When people are asked to make changes which offer no immediate benefit, things like climate change, evidence shows that most are unwilling to make changes. 

daveaspy

Ultrasonic said:

Personally if the government/UK energy supplier decision was to jump to a programme of rolling power cuts without first asking people to voluntarily modulate usage to avoid this being necessary I would be angry. Let's try treating people like grown-ups not children...

If a polite request to reduce power usage didn't work - people would be looking who to blame for not turning off their electric heaters

I think because electricity supply needs to match demand instantaneously, in case of severe shortages of power they just go straight to load control - its alright telling everybody not to use their ovens this week but if people do ("my oven wont make much difference", "hopefully I'm being clever trying to cook at an unusual time" etc.) the whole grid could collapse (that might be a bit dramatic, I'm not really sure!). Planned power cuts are much more preferable to random cuts.

The gov doc linked in this thread says
3.16. It is considered impractical to enforce statutory restrictions on domestic customers. Therefore, it will be necessary to use the non-protected site Load Blocks set out in the VRDP in Annex 1 for as long as possible.

Silvertabby

Our integrated fridge freezer has started to make death rattle noises.  Rang a local chap to ask him to have a look at but, to give him his due, he said that once a 20 year old ff started to give up the ghost we'd be better off getting a new one rather than paying him to do, at best, a temporary fix.

Mr S being Mr S then commenced his mission to find a good replacement.  He started by googling the difference between frost-free and not frost-free - and was surprised to find that on top of the frost-free models being more expensive,  use more leccy (and have more bits to go wrong),  the not frost-free are better in a power cut because the layer of ice keeps food frozen for longer.