Power blips/brownouts

mejinks

mejinks

mejinks

Soldato
Joined
28 Oct 2002
Posts
5,029
Location
Port Toilet
I was on a training course yesterday and the trainer was working from home and had a series of brownouts where the lights flicker but power doesn't go off completely. This happened a few times and other people from other areas of the country said the same thing was happening to them at different times. It made me think as recently we had a series of three, followed by another series of three on the same night.

Anyone else had this?
Is it aliens?
Do I need a tin foil hat?
 
I had an 18 hour power cut on Saturday... Luckily we go shopping on a Sunday so there were only a few things in the fridge to chuck.

They haven't resolved the issue yet. Requires A1 lane shut and gas board in attendance before anything is done, so our street is currently on a big generator.

Fun times.
 
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Yaayuh! said:
I had an 18 hour power cut on Saturday... Luckily we go shopping on a Sunday so there were only a few things in the fridge to chuck.

They haven't resolved the issue yet. Requires A1 lane shut and gas board in attendance before anything is done, so our street is currently on a big generator.

Fun times.
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18 hours shouldn't wreck anything in your fridge to be honest. As long as you don't keep opening it to check :D
 
mejinks said:
I was on a training course yesterday and the trainer was working from home and had a series of brownouts where the lights flicker but power doesn't go off completely. This happened a few times and other people from other areas of the country said the same thing was happening to them at different times. It made me think as recently we had a series of three, followed by another series of three on the same night.

Anyone else had this?
Is it aliens?
Do I need a tin foil hat?
Click to expand...

I notice they happen in my area when power companies have "special hours".

We had a special day on Sunday. Octopus free electricity for two hours, and during the first five minutes where were several of the worst brownouts I have ever seen. One was so bad that it caused one of my PC's to power up by itself (it's set to power up on power restore).

I suppose what causes them is sudden demand. The power company has to ramp up supply, but that takes a little while. Depending on the scale of things, dictates on how bad the brownout will be.
 
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mejinks said:
I was on a training course yesterday and the trainer was working from home and had a series of brownouts where the lights flicker but power doesn't go off completely. This happened a few times and other people from other areas of the country said the same thing was happening to them at different times. It made me think as recently we had a series of three, followed by another series of three on the same night.

Anyone else had this?
Is it aliens?
Do I need a tin foil hat?
Click to expand...
They were probably switching operations, the local or national grid may have been swapping the phases supplying the local grid.
 
Can't believe they'd do that on camera, let alone three times. Must have been training for something interesting ;)

Used to get a few when I lived in the country, in London think I've maybe had one in a decade. Power cut only once for an hour and I think that was more of a building breaker rather than actual power cut.
 
I expect these brownouts were related to the bad weather recently. But my brother works in the power industry and says the UK barely has enough capacity to meet demand on busy days. With coal stations being taken offline, plans to ban gas fired boilers and the migration to all electric vehicles we probably won't have enough capacity in the future. We should have been building more gas and nuclear power sooner.
 
Hades said:
I expect these brownouts were related to the bad weather recently. But my brother works in the power industry and says the UK barely has enough capacity to meet demand on busy days. With coal stations being taken offline, plans to ban gas fired boilers and the migration to all electric vehicles we probably won't have enough capacity in the future. We should have been building more gas and nuclear power sooner.
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In the best case the NESO expects peak demand to double by 2050.
 
SpellowHouse said:
I notice they happen in my area when power companies have "special hours".

We had a special day on Sunday. Octopus free electricity for two hours, and during the first five minutes where were several of the worst brownouts I have ever seen. One was so bad that it caused one of my PC's to power up by itself (it's set to power up on power restore).

I suppose what causes them is sudden demand. The power company has to ramp up supply, but that takes a little while. Depending on the scale of things, dictates on how bad the brownout will be.
Click to expand...

I cannot think of anything more ridiculous, encouraging people to binge on power use and all at the same time.
 
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