In the event of a power outage like Spain.......

WibbleBaaaaaa

Anyone old enough to remember the 3 day week in the early 70s and the lekky being turned off off daily to ration it for over 2 months duing the winter, will be wondering what all the fuss is about. lol

pseudodox

WibbleBaaaaaa said:

Anyone old enough to remember the 3 day week in the early 70s and the lekky being turned off off daily to ration it for over 2 months duing the winter, will be wondering what all the fuss is about. lol

And we coped without all the current techie stuff in our lives which whilst a blessing in so many ways is also a curse for the stress and anxiety it causes.  Less to worry about in the 70s, just kept calm and carried on!  And a power cut then, as now, was nothing to what our parents and grandparents survived in the wars.

Spoonie_Turtle

WibbleBaaaaaa said:

Anyone old enough to remember the 3 day week in the early 70s and the lekky being turned off off daily to ration it for over 2 months duing the winter, will be wondering what all the fuss is about. lol

Timetabled localised power cuts you can plan for are slightly different from a sudden, unexpected nationwide (and beyond) powercut.  

pensionpawn

michaels said:

Rather than all those tins and a backup generator, surely cheaper to just have a shotgun licence and some large mates?

...and although not endorsing that means of survival, it is undoubtedly what will happen. If you have solar and 10's of kWhrs of battery, a good food and medicine store, heating and cooling for winter and summer and potentially a means of capturing / storing rain water for consumption, this would soon become apparent to those without who would soon "offer" to share it with you... 

MWT

pensionpawn said:

michaels said:

Rather than all those tins and a backup generator, surely cheaper to just have a shotgun licence and some large mates?

...and although not endorsing that means of survival, it is undoubtedly what will happen. If you have solar and 10's of kWhrs of battery, a good food and medicine store, heating and cooling for winter and summer and potentially a means of capturing / storing rain water for consumption, this would soon become apparent to those without who would soon "offer" to share it with you... 

A slightly more dystopian set of plans required by then, but due to helping someone out some years ago, I have an open ticket to join them at their 'facility' in Alaska should the zombie apocalypse come to pass...

I'll worry about how to get there when the time comes...

Scot_39

michaels said:

Final thoughts is why are there not more experts chipping in to the debate?

Some did - but part of the information that they commented on - and iirc initially attributed to the Portugese grid operator - was then denied officially by the supposed source - within 24 hours.

So in general - often better to wait - for real data to be shared - or simply for the report of the grid operators.

WibbleBaaaaaa

Spoonie_Turtle said:

WibbleBaaaaaa said:

Anyone old enough to remember the 3 day week in the early 70s and the lekky being turned off off daily to ration it for over 2 months duing the winter, will be wondering what all the fuss is about. lol

Timetabled localised power cuts you can plan for are slightly different from a sudden, unexpected nationwide (and beyond) powercut.  

It was 1 day in the modern world were most places like hosptials and the likes would have had back up gens for decades now, with well made plans and failsafes in place for such a unlikely event, so not the apocalypse that the news would have to believe, but i get it, people could not access their mobile phones or the internet, so the end of the world was nigh. lol

chris1973

Weren't large parts of Yorkshire / North East off for a week or almost two during a heavy snowfall and below freezing temperatures a few years ago when lines came down?. I wonder if that made the Spanish media?. Unless you have a medical requirement for continuous Electricity, I think the biggest issue for today's society is not being able to post to Social Media and parted from their Hand Held comfort blankets. Let's take a minutes silence for all of the food and tanned leg photos which never stood a chance of being uploaded.

WibbleBaaaaaa said:

Spoonie_Turtle said:

WibbleBaaaaaa said:

Anyone old enough to remember the 3 day week in the early 70s and the lekky being turned off off daily to ration it for over 2 months duing the winter, will be wondering what all the fuss is about. lol

Timetabled localised power cuts you can plan for are slightly different from a sudden, unexpected nationwide (and beyond) powercut.  

It was 1 day in the modern world were most places like hosptials and the likes would have had back up gens for decades now, with well made plans and failsafes in place for such a unlikely event, so not the apocalypse that the news would have to believe, but i get it, people could not access their mobile phones or the internet, so the end of the world was nigh. lol

Lots of places USED to have back up generators, but generally they'd be diesel, and that doesn't sit well with the Green Taliban, so they've probably all been removed to meet net zero targets. Wasn't that the main issue, with the Heathrow Sub Station fire?, the majority of their back up generators had recently been de-commissioned hence the resulting chaos. You'd hope that common sense would apply to relation to Hospitals, but nothing is certain in a Country where common sense is as rare as a superpower. Those reliable old Genny's which (when kept topped up with fuel) could plough through power cuts of any duration have probably al now been replaced by Solar Panels and Battery banks....

QrizB

michaels said:

Rather than all those tins and a backup generator, surely cheaper to just have a shotgun licence and some large mates?

I'm sure you're joking, but that's a good way to get locked up (or shot dead) once law enforcement catches up with you.

Spoonie_Turtle

WibbleBaaaaaa said:

Spoonie_Turtle said:

WibbleBaaaaaa said:

Anyone old enough to remember the 3 day week in the early 70s and the lekky being turned off off daily to ration it for over 2 months duing the winter, will be wondering what all the fuss is about. lol

Timetabled localised power cuts you can plan for are slightly different from a sudden, unexpected nationwide (and beyond) powercut.  

It was 1 day in the modern world were most places like hosptials and the likes would have had back up gens for decades now, with well made plans and failsafes in place for such a unlikely event, so not the apocalypse that the news would have to believe, but i get it, people could not access their mobile phones or the internet, so the end of the world was nigh. lol

Edit: didn't intentionally single out WibbleBaaa, I posted before I saw chris1973's post, to the first part of which this is also relevant.

I mean, sure, those were two effects (which by the way are a major part of life nowadays, almost by default - and not always for what you would deem as frivolous things, have you any idea how many people rely on health monitoring apps or other assistive tech* to keep them safe for instance?) but also rather more immediately inconvenient things like being stranded on underground trains or lifts mid-journey, water pumps not working, those sorts of things that could be mitigated and planned for if the power cut is known about in advance.  Plus people being stranded away from home with pets needing food and care, dependents at home, medication at home the stranded person needs to take, things like that.  All things that again, could be mitigated but only with advance notice in order to plan, because usual backup plans presume it's an individual or localised emergency rather than a nationwide event.

I don't know whether to bother mentioning people with powered wheelchairs that don't have enough battery life to last a day's powercut and how awful it is to literally be unable to mobilise oneself, not even to the toilet (and by the way a lot of disabled people rely on powered bidets to clean themselves as they're physically unable to in conventional ways) … oh it looks like I just did.  I mean I guess if you know your battery's low you can gather food and water and camp out next to the toilet, but it's not very nice and certainly not something most nondisabled people would have to think about.  The list goes on, of things we use with limited battery life, that may not be a literal issue of life or death but very much are critical to staying safe and well.  

*I'm not explicitly including ventilators as those people may have generators for that so as not to deplete the backup battery (although sadly of those who've died, for the family of three the current thinking is the cause was a malfunctioning generator that was powering the husband's ventilator).

The reality is that people have vastly different lives, so the way it would affect you is in no way reflective of how it would necessarily affect other people.