Has anyone prepared for possible powercuts this winter?
- Thread starter bainbridge
- Start date
Daily politics covered this subject earlier and yet again the Tory spokesman trotted out the party manta that it was all the last administration's fault and chose to gloss over the fact the all parties have failed to invest in the power supply industry for decades. Which is pretty much par for the course in the UK.
Associate
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No - there won't be any.
Soldato
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- West Sussex
One thing I am prepared for this year.
Last Christmas the village I lived in had no power from around 4 pm Christmas Eve, till midday on the 27th.
Effectively Christmas was cancelled for us. We called around Grandparents to get the children somewhere to stay, but for partner and I it was candles and what we could heat up on a camping stove.
Utterly depressing to be honest. Never received a penny compensation from the power companies and there was no aid available.
I put down to work this Christmas day this year.
Last Christmas the village I lived in had no power from around 4 pm Christmas Eve, till midday on the 27th.
Effectively Christmas was cancelled for us. We called around Grandparents to get the children somewhere to stay, but for partner and I it was candles and what we could heat up on a camping stove.
Utterly depressing to be honest. Never received a penny compensation from the power companies and there was no aid available.
I put down to work this Christmas day this year.
Soldato
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- 27 Oct 2005
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- 2,603
No electric for me. But i do have an old working arga. 6 coal fires and 4 tonnes of coal in the outhouse. One good thing about the house. Being built in the 1700s
I was listening to something earlier and they had a Labour energy spokesidiot saying "it's the tories fault for not doing more", and I felt like screaming at the radio.
All parties have failed to build more reliable power stations to replace the ones that are reaching their EOL (it takes a special kind of idiot, or politician to look at an increasing demand for power, look at the planned shut down of powerstations with no replacements being built and not see a problem), but Labour spent something like 15 out of the last 20 years as the problem became more and more obvious to anyone who cared to pay even a little attention to what was happening, ignoring it because it wouldn't be popular.
I'm starting to think the government should just say "sorry it's getting built, there" much more easily when it comes to important infrastructure projects such as power stations, as opposed to 10-20 years of dithering and listening to every single complaint about people who don't want the powerstation next door being replaced*, I suspect the'll be a damned sight more upset when they charge their ipads and watch TV because the power is out.
We should have been building new nuclear plants for the last 10-15 years, instead we're (from memory) only just starting work on one, with another planned, which is great, they'll be operational in about 10 years when even more capacity has been lost due to scheduled shut downs and unscheduled repairs (such as the coal plant that caught fire the other day - if it had been a minor fire in a rubbish bin in a nuke plant's admin office half a mile from the reactors it would still be in all the papers, as it is, it's been forgotten already).
Mind you it's the same with all sorts of things, we need more prison places because the previous government couldn't look at the graph of increasing prisoner numbers vs the graph of decreasing capacity.
Sorry, I get a little annoyed by the fact that governments can't seem to work out issues that are easy to predict, and that nimbies and idiots spend so much time protesting about everything and the politicians would rather listen to them and dither, knowing that they can then blame the next administration, that do the job they're meant to do (IE look after the country, and that includes planning for the future).
I'm probably going to invest in some UPS units for our computers (and possibly to power the boiler electrics), but we've already (fortunately) got a bottled gas heater and stove that use the same bottles, so in the event of a long cut we've got something for heating and food (and I have a load of LED lamps/torches with either staycharged batteries, or spare duracells near them).
*We have had a major substation near us for 30+ years (with the entire bit of land it was on owned by the power company), when they needed to replace it as the town was suffering more outages, it took them ages to get permission mainly because the people who lived nearer it kept complaining (despite the fact they mainly moved in knowing the substation was there - and amusingly the new one actually looks better than the old one, despite being bigger - largely because they've built it as a fully enclosed structure using a mixture of green sheeting to help it blend in a little better)..
All parties have failed to build more reliable power stations to replace the ones that are reaching their EOL (it takes a special kind of idiot, or politician to look at an increasing demand for power, look at the planned shut down of powerstations with no replacements being built and not see a problem), but Labour spent something like 15 out of the last 20 years as the problem became more and more obvious to anyone who cared to pay even a little attention to what was happening, ignoring it because it wouldn't be popular.
I'm starting to think the government should just say "sorry it's getting built, there" much more easily when it comes to important infrastructure projects such as power stations, as opposed to 10-20 years of dithering and listening to every single complaint about people who don't want the powerstation next door being replaced*, I suspect the'll be a damned sight more upset when they charge their ipads and watch TV because the power is out.
We should have been building new nuclear plants for the last 10-15 years, instead we're (from memory) only just starting work on one, with another planned, which is great, they'll be operational in about 10 years when even more capacity has been lost due to scheduled shut downs and unscheduled repairs (such as the coal plant that caught fire the other day - if it had been a minor fire in a rubbish bin in a nuke plant's admin office half a mile from the reactors it would still be in all the papers, as it is, it's been forgotten already).
Mind you it's the same with all sorts of things, we need more prison places because the previous government couldn't look at the graph of increasing prisoner numbers vs the graph of decreasing capacity.
Sorry, I get a little annoyed by the fact that governments can't seem to work out issues that are easy to predict, and that nimbies and idiots spend so much time protesting about everything and the politicians would rather listen to them and dither, knowing that they can then blame the next administration, that do the job they're meant to do (IE look after the country, and that includes planning for the future).
I'm probably going to invest in some UPS units for our computers (and possibly to power the boiler electrics), but we've already (fortunately) got a bottled gas heater and stove that use the same bottles, so in the event of a long cut we've got something for heating and food (and I have a load of LED lamps/torches with either staycharged batteries, or spare duracells near them).
*We have had a major substation near us for 30+ years (with the entire bit of land it was on owned by the power company), when they needed to replace it as the town was suffering more outages, it took them ages to get permission mainly because the people who lived nearer it kept complaining (despite the fact they mainly moved in knowing the substation was there - and amusingly the new one actually looks better than the old one, despite being bigger - largely because they've built it as a fully enclosed structure using a mixture of green sheeting to help it blend in a little better)..
Soldato
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I live on the edge of Stafford, connected on the same grid as the surrounding villages. Therefore I get 'em 3+ times a year. In fact, I had 3 outages last Saturday lol.
But yeah, candles, torches and suchlike. For devices, I have a 10,000mAh Anker battery pack.
But yeah, candles, torches and suchlike. For devices, I have a 10,000mAh Anker battery pack.
I've got 2x 12,000mAh and 1x 20,000mAh Anker packs and 30 watts worth of solar panels to feed into them (not the most useful in the dead of winter mind). Not really bought for this in mind but could be useful if it came to it.
The big issue is that Labour have said that they'll freeze prices if they win at the next election. What's the consequences? None of the energy suppliers will drop their prices now, even though the wholesale price of energy, particularly gas has dropped a fair bit.
I think even if there are cuts it will be sen as so very very urgent to get it fixed that the power is unlikely to be out for long if you're in a city.
Have got candles, torches etc.. anyway. BBQ on balcony I guess as cooker is electrical. Flat well insulated and rarely use much heating as it is.
when we have flooding on the news people seem to be running out of food within a day or two... A short power cut no doubt would be a nightmare for some.
Have got candles, torches etc.. anyway. BBQ on balcony I guess as cooker is electrical. Flat well insulated and rarely use much heating as it is.
when we have flooding on the news people seem to be running out of food within a day or two... A short power cut no doubt would be a nightmare for some.