Winter blackout contingency planning

EssexHebridean

TheGardener said:

EssexHebridean said:

...speak to anyone in the Scottish Islands as a starting point - ultimately if you spend any amount of time in those locations then you make sure you know where your torches and candles are, you make sure that you have at least some “emergency rations” in the house - foods that can be eaten “as is” without any additional cooking required, or that need just the addition for example of boiling water - and then you make sure you have a camping stove, pan or kettle to suit, and a safe preferably undercover and partially sheltered outside area to use it. You have blankets to hand in the winter, for warmth when just sitting, and for extra layers on the beds overnight, in case the outage continues longer than expected. 

The Islands have a couple of advantages though - peats are free but for the labour, old crofts had both an electric and a gas stove (before the days of combinations), most homes outside HS1 have propane, and those in town have the Shell St. Gas facility and the Power Station on Battery Point can be fired up in about 25 mins

What the informed voices said yesterday was that outages were unlikely - but more likely than last year....now, I'm off to visit the 'preppers' board - they'll be having a field day

Peat’s only free if you have a cutting and the physical health to cut from it - something which certainly applies to less and less households these days. Gas of any sort is relatively unusual these days - in Uist certainly - many use oil for heating/water but everything else is electric. As for the rest, I’m afraid as someone who spends as much time as possible in the southern part of the chain, it rather has the ring of “Stornoway’s alright, blow the rest of you” - which in fairness is nothing unusual! 😂

You’re right about the prepping threads I suspect - it’s all a bit extreme for me over there! 

Thanks to the poster who questioned whether on modern appliances might have a shut off valve for the  gas when the electric supply fails for prompting me to check my cooker - all good, beans on toast will still be a go then! 😆 (in answer to the earlier question from WittyNGH - a surprising number of folk have matches or a lighter to hand - just look at the popularity of candles these days for the reason!) 

Astria

gt94sss2 said:

For anyone for whom internet access is critical (including if you use a VoIP landline) you may want to consider investing in a UPS..

That would depend on your provider, when I was with Virgin Media there was no point is having the modem on a UPS as it lost connection anyway due to the local cabinet becoming unpowered. Likewise my current fibre line requires power at the cabinet too as it's a rather large walk-in cabinet!

BT cabinets are typically battery-backed however, so those would retain power during an outage.

dunstonh

Hopefully mobile phones will work - if charged sufficiently of course, and the UPS at the local mast and every link in the chain actually works - I wouldn't be very confident in this all working, there'll probably be an enquiry into all this when we find this out.  But at least we can use our phones as torches until they rapidly drain the battery.

Normally mobile phone masts carry backup power for only a very short period.  In power cuts, we tend to lose signal after about 20 minutes.  It may vary in locations.

GingerTim

Miser1964 said:

Looting will be widespread, that's the difference from the 1970s. Anyone with high-street shops and commercial property needs to be planning boarding-up windows etc. as cameras and alarms will be knocked out. Not that the police would respond anyway!

I'd try to be at home during the period of power-cuts, playing battery radio loudly and with LED lanterns on to deter opportunist burglars.

Rubbish. 

Getting_greyer

Following prep should be considered:
1. Get some candles.
2. Have warm clothing on standby.
3. Spend first 90 mins of the blackout reminiscing about the blitz that happened years before you were born.
4. Spend second 90 mins of the blackout imaging in your head how the snowflakes will be crying.
5. Fill up flask before the blackout.

victor2

MattMattMattUK said:

wittynamegoeshere said:

How practical or otherwise would it be to cut off gas temporarily?  It seems that electricity is vastly more critical, so if there's a gas shortage it may be better to keep the gas power stations running and cut off gas customers.  So the heating would go off for a bit but you'd still have lighting, comms and medical equipment.

But I realise that gas wouldn't flick off - the pressure would gradually reduce, then pilot lights would go out, and the danger would be when the supply is reconnected - e.g. an old gas hob would merrily squirt out unlit gas if it had been on previously.

We usually get floods when the water supply is cut off then reinstated, as people check their taps while it's off then forget to turn them off again.

Most gas appliances do have a thermal cut-off, but there must be loads of appliances that pre-date this, and an explosion is more of a problem than a flood.

What I'm suggesting is that it may be less desirable but necessary to keep gas on at all costs.  Does anyone know if there is an official policy in this way?  If so then electricity cuts are definitely likely.

The gas being cut off is a real nightmare, network repressurisation takes days and cannot be done without access to all properties, systems in houses need to be bled etc. Water is different as it does not become flammable when mixed with air, however the system can become contaminated when the pressure falls lower than that of the groundwater.

If the gas network loses pressure it will take days, weeks or months to resolve depending on the scale of the depressurisation. Electricity cuts for most would be nothing more than a mild inconvenience, for those where it would be an issue they will almost always have a backup solution in place and for those who do not there would be alternative locations. 

Many years ago I used to work at a British Gas compressor station whose purpose in life was to maintain the pressure in the gas pipeline, should it drop to an unacceptable level. It did this with two jet turbines attached to pumps on the pipeline. Cost a fortune to build, staff and maintain, but necessary to avoid even more costly problems!

daveaspy

The long standing plan for rolling power cuts is here, with example rotas in the second half of the document.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/995049/esec-guidance.pdf

The blocks are 3 hours long as mentioned in the media, but how many of those per day/week would be imposed would clearly depend on the amount of power deficit.

It also states "Should these measures require to be introduced, it is very likely there would be accompanying appeals to the public and industry to reduce electricity demand" - not while Liz is in charge it wont

(this document was first published in 2005, so dont think this is the current administration doing contingency planning!)

Eldi_Dos

brewerdave said:

victor2 said:

Planeteer said:

With the UK's energy dependencies and the reluctance of a PM - increasingly seeming on daily wages - to inform the people of sensible planning or preparations for winter blackouts, are there any other sources of steps to take for household energy management in the winter? How does one minimise impact? Wouldn't be bad for MSE/ML to take a stance for consumers again, just as he did for pricing?

Very unlikely, just the media looking for headlines. But talk to anyone who was around in the 1970's when power cuts were a part of life, for ideas on how to survive power outages. Domestic gas will not get cut off, in the worst case electricity might, but even then it will be on a pre-announced schedule and for a few hours at a time.

Consumers can look at ways to reduce their usage, which many are doing already. It saves money and reduces the load on the grid.

 , we plotted our evenings dependent on which areas had power when  - ie night 1 in the pub, night 2 at the University students Union, night 3 in the digs etc etc

Remember that time but had forgotten that you could not get pint in the pub ,it was cans and bottles while power was off. Unless you went to one of the old fashioned pubs with hand pulled but they seemed to be populated with guys with big beards and haircuts that showed off the ears and with unorthodox ideas on style and hygiene.
The more things change the more they stay the same.

Eldi_Dos

dunstonh said:

Hopefully mobile phones will work - if charged sufficiently of course, and the UPS at the local mast and every link in the chain actually works - I wouldn't be very confident in this all working, there'll probably be an enquiry into all this when we find this out.  But at least we can use our phones as torches until they rapidly drain the battery.

Normally mobile phone masts carry backup power for only a very short period.  In power cuts, we tend to lose signal after about 20 minutes.  It may vary in locations.

The back up batteries will be quickly drained as everyone phones other people to see if power is on in their area.

Saga

elsien said:

Miser1964 said:

Looting will be widespread, that's the difference from the 1970s

Blimey, you’re a cheery little soul.

I’m not seeing how widespread looting automatically follows on from the power going off for a couple of hours?

My cheery contribution 😄 is my worry for increased likelihood of fires and loss of life resulting from the increased use (by inexperienced people) of naked flames and flammable fuels, the rush for cheap dubious quality Li-ion batteries and power packs bought on Amazon, and power surges from appliances being left on despite warnings and instructions from suppliers/government.