Mail online article about how the rolling blackouts will be planned and implemented.

SAC2334

wittynamegoeshere said:

The "S" in the big box is always an S.  I think it's just means Supply or Super or Sunak or Something.

My bill from GEUK has the box with an S but nothing else.  So some suppliers don't include the area letter on their bills.

My bill from my previous supply Eon Next has the same S in the big box, but also has a line stating "Postcode area alpha identifier: H".

It doesn't really matter anyway, everyone gets treated equally badly when there are blackouts.  I don't think there's a VIP code for MPs and Royals, but they wouldn't tell us if there was anyway.

Not quite equally as H is getting 4 x three hour blackouts a week when J and T are getting 2 .

Personally I don t think we will get any as many  are making cutbacks . I certainly am 

[Deleted User]

Sea_Shell said:

I understand the grid (we're J), however, I thought that the blackouts (if they happen) would be for just the peak evening periods, rather than spread out throughout the day.  eg 5pm to 8pm

Each letter having an evening blackout on a certain day(s).

Have I misinterpreted?

Blackouts are more likely around times of peak demand - but can also be caused by extremely low supply (over a cold night with no wind blowing when we need to reserve the gas for central heating for example).  That's why there is the slot rota covering 24/7.

In practice, it's as ariarnia remembered.  National Grid decide each day on the timing of any required blackouts for the next day.  These then get given to the DNOs to implement.  There is no requirement for the blackouts to start or stop at the 3 hr points - they can start at any time - the rota just says who is supposed to be affected at each time.  You could have a blackout starting with only half an hour left of your slot, in which case you would only have a half-hour blackout.

If at the time of the planned blackout, things aren't as bad as they thought (the wind is stronger, a power station gets repaired faster than expected, people are using less stuff than expected...) then they can hold off on flipping the switches and keep you on supply - but knowing that if it starts to go wrong, you are the first to go off.

Sea_Shell

So if it would otherwise be your "turn" but the wind blows enough,  you might get lucky.

Alternatively others may get less lucky, if their "turn" is on a still day.

MattMattMattUK

[Deleted User] said:

MattMattMattUK said:

Interestingly though, I have the box where the load block should be, but on my bill it is blank. I also know that I am on the same circuit as the local hospital which is very close, so I am wondering if that means I am on a line that should in theory never be turned off, or if for some reason EDF and British Gas before them never chose to populate the field that should show in that box. 

You could be - it certainly used to be set up to switch complete circuits at the substation only, and the hospital would qualify as a protected site.

All depends if the hospital has a standby generator or not.  If it does, the circuit can still be disconnected.

The hospital has some backup power, but not enough for the full site, at least that is my understanding. When they had to conduct work on the substation they told people along the road that we would get a four hour power cut, for the hospital they brought in several large containerised generators on the back of lorries to supply full power to the hospital, my understanding is that in an emergency situation the backup power supply only covers essential services, not everything on the site. 

Deleted_User said:
And if it doesn't, the circuit is only protected from being turned off if it doesn't supply enough 'non-essential' load to affect the overall performance of the load reduction (i.e. if there is a lot of 'other stuff' on the same circuit as the hospital, it can still be turned off).

I don't think they would turn it off without having turned most of the rest of the town off first so I might actually be safe from power cuts regardless, not that they bother me, I have power banks, camping stoves, books etc. so I would be totally find without power for the three hour window(s).

Chrysalis

[Deleted User] said:

A few points:

It isn't controversial at all.  It's simple, efficient, understandable, and broadly equitable given the need to be those first three.  It isn't, however, designed to make your personal power outages at the time that you would most like them.  The most important part of the system for a householder (and business owner I guess) is that you know when your outage (if one is ever planned) will be - no bidding process, back calculating, choosing someone else because you had it bad last time, or anything else that would just add complexity to a system that does not need it.

Every DNO has the same blocks.  There is no nonsense like "the rich in the south have less outages".  There is no block F, I or O.

It is designed to concentrate any block's outages either in Mon-Wed or Thur-Sat initially such that (amongst other things) businesses could use those three days as their weekend.  The Sunday rota is necessary but is the least likely to be used given the next point.

It is directly linked to actual available power.  It will be determined by 2pm each day whether there will be any disconnections required the following day, and the timings of the required disconnections will be known by 5:30pm.  It does not mean that someone will announce "rolling blackouts now" and then everyone gets disconnected according to this schedule indefinitely.

No, your home insurance will not cover your freezer in this time.  It might also not cover broken electrical equipment from the switching on/off process.

And it's also a lot better than the LFDD that would happen if we didn't bother with the plan.  That's happened a couple of times in the last decade or so, and caused more problems that we thought each time.

Appreciate the explanation, but I think the decisions made were flawed.

Its far better I think to spread them out over the week instead of clustered together, and you never explained why some have 6 hour outages and others have 12.

QrizB

Trapdoor said:

This is the full official document if anyone is interested… makes it a bit easier to read.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/995049/esec-guidance.pdf

Very interesting, thank you.

• At level 3 you begin to see full days of alternating blackout periods.
• From Level 7 some areas get two back-to-back periods (so a 6-hour blackout in total) - or three periods (9 hrs) if you're particularly unlucky.
• At level 13 you start to get 24h outages.
• At Level 18 there's no electricity at all

Let's hope we never get past Level 2!

Tigsteroonie

P not only get four blackouts in the initial programme, two of them are on Sunday! 12:30 to 15:30 then 18:30 to 21:30.

And people still want to argue that the distribution is fair?

Where is location J, i want to move there ...

[Deleted User]

Chrysalis said:

[Deleted User] said:

A few points:

It isn't controversial at all.  It's simple, efficient, understandable, and broadly equitable given the need to be those first three.  It isn't, however, designed to make your personal power outages at the time that you would most like them.  The most important part of the system for a householder (and business owner I guess) is that you know when your outage (if one is ever planned) will be - no bidding process, back calculating, choosing someone else because you had it bad last time, or anything else that would just add complexity to a system that does not need it.

Every DNO has the same blocks.  There is no nonsense like "the rich in the south have less outages".  There is no block F, I or O.

It is designed to concentrate any block's outages either in Mon-Wed or Thur-Sat initially such that (amongst other things) businesses could use those three days as their weekend.  The Sunday rota is necessary but is the least likely to be used given the next point.

It is directly linked to actual available power.  It will be determined by 2pm each day whether there will be any disconnections required the following day, and the timings of the required disconnections will be known by 5:30pm.  It does not mean that someone will announce "rolling blackouts now" and then everyone gets disconnected according to this schedule indefinitely.

No, your home insurance will not cover your freezer in this time.  It might also not cover broken electrical equipment from the switching on/off process.

And it's also a lot better than the LFDD that would happen if we didn't bother with the plan.  That's happened a couple of times in the last decade or so, and caused more problems that we thought each time.

Appreciate the explanation, but I think the decisions made were flawed.

Its far better I think to spread them out over the week instead of clustered together, and you never explained why some have 6 hour outages and others have 12.

Unfortunately, the decision as to why some blocks have more than others was made before I was involved so I have no direct knowledge of the discussions.

I had a few guesses, but they all seem to have been proved wrong.  The only thing left that I can think of, which doesn't really match how the rest of the document was put together so I think is unlikely, is some form of statistical analysis of when power outages were likely to be required leading to the same overall chance for each block to be required.

ariarnia

Chrysalis said:

[Deleted User] said:

A few points:

It isn't controversial at all.  It's simple, efficient, understandable, and broadly equitable given the need to be those first three.  It isn't, however, designed to make your personal power outages at the time that you would most like them.  The most important part of the system for a householder (and business owner I guess) is that you know when your outage (if one is ever planned) will be - no bidding process, back calculating, choosing someone else because you had it bad last time, or anything else that would just add complexity to a system that does not need it.

Every DNO has the same blocks.  There is no nonsense like "the rich in the south have less outages".  There is no block F, I or O.

It is designed to concentrate any block's outages either in Mon-Wed or Thur-Sat initially such that (amongst other things) businesses could use those three days as their weekend.  The Sunday rota is necessary but is the least likely to be used given the next point.

It is directly linked to actual available power.  It will be determined by 2pm each day whether there will be any disconnections required the following day, and the timings of the required disconnections will be known by 5:30pm.  It does not mean that someone will announce "rolling blackouts now" and then everyone gets disconnected according to this schedule indefinitely.

No, your home insurance will not cover your freezer in this time.  It might also not cover broken electrical equipment from the switching on/off process.

And it's also a lot better than the LFDD that would happen if we didn't bother with the plan.  That's happened a couple of times in the last decade or so, and caused more problems that we thought each time.

Appreciate the explanation, but I think the decisions made were flawed.

Its far better I think to spread them out over the week instead of clustered together, and you never explained why some have 6 hour outages and others have 12.

theres probably some weighting for how likely the blackouts are actually to happen? so someone with 6 might have them at what are normally higher demand times so more likely than the ones at 12 when who is going to draw a lot of power before 6am at the weekend? if thats our block we wouldn't even notice as wed likely still be asleep

Chrysalis

ariarnia said:

i think they planned out the hole thing because theres a good chance people will move the peak. sparky i think said that they will look at the demand the day before to see how it matches the supply and that doesn't mean all of the blocks will have a cut in a day so it might only be the peak evening periods (or we might have none at all)

I said the same, logically the peak slots are more likely to get cuts, hence the scoring system I made factors that in as well.

If you got midnight to 6am slots you laughing.