Power cut

Bastards. At least they could've had the decency to give the customers something to complain about. Good to hear when things go right.

If of course you were on a virgin phone like mine you would never get that call as the line seems to just be powered by the local mains in the street so goes off when the power does. Brian

If you have virgin cable it is cheaper to use voip. That can also be set up to go to your mobile to avoid problems if virgin goes down. Of course I don't know how the mobile companies power their transmitters.

Luckily it seems that I have the phone base unit connected to the UPS. Although the ordinary phone in the bedroom would have rung anyway.

And very few cell sites backup power that'll last more than 30 mins, if that. Of course the cell site is likely to be further away than the cable/FTTC box so might be on an unaffected bit of the mains distribution.

If you desire reliable voice telecoms in the event of a power outage the good 'ole analoge POTS line and wired phone is very hard to beat.

So you got a call. It is a pity that their text service does not automatically send out power cut status messages. To get the messages you have to register during each power cut.

I wouldn't want them anyway. Our mobiles are off 99% of the time.

In article , Brian Gaff scribeth thus

They do some cabinets have largish back up batteries and I have seem them beside the road with a vehicle mounted gennie powering up their system....

We've used VM here for around 20 years and the number of outages have been very small indeed.

Yes used VoIPfone now for around 3 years works fine and very cheap..

I use VoIP for all incoming calls now. Outgoing is via the POTS line unless it's down. In that case, it uses VoIP, with the broadband faling back to 3G automatically.

I think all BT's VDSL cabinets have backup power but it's more for bridging auto recloser blip(s) or a few minutes of manual switching gap rather than a power cut of hours/days duration.

And how many such sets do they have? Our small (1200 odd subs) exchange has 7 VDSL cabinets. Exchanges in urban areas have tens of cabinets. Soon adds up to a large number...

How many power outages have you had lasting longer than say 3 hours?

Yes. Draytek 2860.

This is or was Virgin Media i was talking about Dave wouldn't give BT house room;!...

The only significant one was a few months back they had a major hiatus but other than that very few and a few of the few caused by Pádraig being too enthusiastic with his 'diggin apparatus;!...

Had about 10 hours last year, we'd had a couple of long brownouts a day or two earlier, then sometime after midnight power to a section of the street went, I knew I had several hours of UPS capacity and a fully charged laptop and fancied some sleep rather than road-drills for the next few hours, so I delayed phoning it in until the morning, nobody else reported it either (possibly they didn't notice until the morning). The regional supplier replaced a few feet of the main cable in the pavement in quite short order once they got here, and a brief outage later in the day while they did some final work on it.

No, but we are currently situated about 1000 miles away :)

Around 4pm GMT

Near simultaneous (3 min) loss of generation in this order

48.8Hz lowest frequency

About 100MW less total loss of generation than Longannet Sizewell in 2008 Very similar lowest frequency But possible lightning strikes to complicate things

The level of loss of generation and its timing is all within planning guidelines.

At the time the loss of load probability was zero, the derated margin was circa

Someone better have a very good explanation.

My hunch? The lack of low frequency response due to solar, wind and loss of conventional system inertia was predicted for around 2022, it may have arrived three years early.

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Forgot to mention that solar inverters meeting the Engineering Recommendation G83 (as required by all DNO's) will always disconnect at 47.5Hz but will also instantaneously disconnect on a rate of change of frequency of 0.2Hz per second

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Yes, I'm in boundary of Nottm City and we lost electricity at 1655 just as our evening meail was in preparation. The rice, in it's rice cooker, had to be transferred to a gas hob which had to be lit with matches.

Power resumed about 1725 so could use the electric kettle for a post meal coffee.

There's about 150 properties in our "block" but as we had next to no mobile either the outage must have been more widespread.

A contact in North Notts didn't know anything about it.

Saw frequency dips at 16:52/16:53, voltage dipped then overshot, presumably as loads were shed. Certainly sounds like over-sensitivity to loss of load - silicon has less mass than iron!

fixed-width font pls:

Manchester #1

-vlt- -frq- Aug 9 16:48:05 vm20 apcupsd[814]: 237.6,244.8,244.8,27.40,50.00,44.8,30.1,000.0,000.0,244.8,100.0,0 Aug 9 16:49:05 vm20 apcupsd[814]: 237.6,244.8,243.3,27.40,50.00,44.8,30.1,000.0,000.0,243.3,100.0,1 Aug 9 16:50:05 vm20 apcupsd[814]: 236.1,246.2,244.8,27.40,50.00,44.8,30.1,000.0,000.0,244.8,100.0,0 Aug 9 16:51:05 vm20 apcupsd[814]: 237.6,244.8,244.8,27.40,50.00,44.8,30.1,000.0,000.0,244.8,100.0,1 Aug 9 16:52:05 vm20 apcupsd[814]: 236.1,244.8,243.3,27.40,50.00,44.8,30.1,000.0,000.0,243.3,100.0,0 Aug 9 16:53:05 vm20 apcupsd[814]: 231.8,244.8,240.4,27.40,49.20,44.8,30.1,000.0,000.0,240.4,100.0,1 Aug 9 16:54:05 vm20 apcupsd[814]: 231.8,241.9,240.4,27.40,49.00,44.8,30.1,000.0,000.0,240.4,100.0,0 Aug 9 16:55:05 vm20 apcupsd[814]: 234.7,247.6,247.6,27.40,49.50,44.8,30.1,000.0,000.0,247.6,100.0,1 Aug 9 16:56:05 vm20 apcupsd[814]: 240.4,247.6,247.6,27.40,50.00,45.5,30.1,000.0,000.0,247.6,100.0,0 Aug 9 16:57:05 vm20 apcupsd[814]: 240.4,249.1,247.6,27.40,50.00,46.1,30.1,000.0,000.0,247.6,100.0,1 Aug 9 16:58:05 vm20 apcupsd[814]: 240.4,249.1,249.1,27.40,50.20,44.8,30.1,000.0,000.0,249.1,100.0,0 Aug 9 16:59:05 vm20 apcupsd[814]: 241.9,249.1,249.1,27.40,50.20,49.4,30.1,000.0,000.0,249.1,100.0,1 Aug 9 17:00:05 vm20 apcupsd[814]: 239.0,249.1,246.2,27.40,50.20,50.0,30.1,000.0,000.0,246.2,100.0,0

Manchester #2

-vlt- -frq- Aug 9 16:48:01 vm20 apcupsd[812]: 244.4,248.3,245.7,27.60,50.00,07.8,38.7,000.0,000.0,244.4,100.0,1 Aug 9 16:49:01 vm20 apcupsd[812]: 243.1,247.0,244.4,27.60,50.00,07.8,38.7,000.0,000.0,244.4,100.0,0 Aug 9 16:50:01 vm20 apcupsd[812]: 243.1,248.3,245.7,27.60,50.00,07.8,38.7,000.0,000.0,245.7,100.0,1 Aug 9 16:51:01 vm20 apcupsd[812]: 244.4,248.3,244.4,27.60,50.00,07.8,38.7,000.0,000.0,244.4,100.0,0 Aug 9 16:52:01 vm20 apcupsd[812]: 243.1,248.3,245.7,27.60,50.00,07.8,39.1,000.0,000.0,245.7,100.0,1 Aug 9 16:53:01 vm20 apcupsd[812]: 239.2,248.3,240.5,27.60,49.00,07.8,38.7,000.0,000.0,241.8,100.0,0 Aug 9 16:54:02 vm20 apcupsd[812]: 237.9,244.4,241.8,27.60,48.80,07.8,38.7,000.0,000.0,241.8,100.0,1 Aug 9 16:55:02 vm20 apcupsd[812]: 237.9,244.4,241.8,27.60,48.80,07.8,38.7,000.0,000.0,241.8,100.0,0 Aug 9 16:56:02 vm20 apcupsd[812]: 240.5,250.9,248.3,27.60,49.50,07.8,38.7,000.0,000.0,248.3,100.0,1 Aug 9 16:57:02 vm20 apcupsd[812]: 247.0,250.9,248.3,27.60,49.80,07.8,38.7,000.0,000.0,248.3,100.0,0 Aug 9 16:58:02 vm20 apcupsd[812]: 247.0,250.9,248.3,27.60,50.00,07.8,38.7,000.0,000.0,248.3,100.0,1 Aug 9 16:59:02 vm20 apcupsd[812]: 248.3,253.5,249.6,27.60,50.00,07.8,38.7,000.0,000.0,249.6,100.0,0 Aug 9 17:00:02 vm20 apcupsd[812]: 249.6,253.5,249.6,27.60,50.00,07.8,38.7,000.0,000.0,249.6,100.0,1

West Midlands

-vlt- -frq- Aug 9 16:48:38 vm20 apcupsd[817]: 230.4,236.1,236.1,27.50,50.00,40.3,27.4,000.0,000.0,236.1,100.0,1 Aug 9 16:49:40 vm20 apcupsd[817]: 230.4,236.1,236.1,27.50,50.00,40.3,27.4,000.0,000.0,236.1,100.0,0 Aug 9 16:50:41 vm20 apcupsd[817]: 230.4,236.1,236.1,27.50,50.00,39.6,27.4,000.0,000.0,236.1,100.0,1 Aug 9 16:51:42 vm20 apcupsd[817]: 230.4,236.1,236.1,27.50,50.00,40.3,27.4,000.0,000.0,236.1,100.0,0 Aug 9 16:52:44 vm20 apcupsd[817]: 226.0,237.6,234.7,27.50,49.30,40.3,27.4,000.0,000.0,234.7,100.0,1 Aug 9 16:53:45 vm20 apcupsd[817]: 226.0,234.7,231.8,27.50,49.00,42.9,27.4,000.0,000.0,231.8,100.0,0 Aug 9 16:54:47 vm20 apcupsd[817]: 226.0,234.7,234.7,27.50,49.50,40.3,27.4,000.0,000.0,234.7,100.0,1 Aug 9 16:55:48 vm20 apcupsd[817]: 228.9,236.1,236.1,27.50,49.80,40.9,27.4,000.0,000.0,236.1,100.0,0 Aug 9 16:56:50 vm20 apcupsd[817]: 230.4,239.0,239.0,27.50,50.00,28.6,27.4,000.0,000.0,237.6,100.0,1 Aug 9 16:57:51 vm20 apcupsd[817]: 231.8,239.0,239.0,27.50,50.30,29.2,27.4,000.0,000.0,239.0,100.0,0 Aug 9 16:58:53 vm20 apcupsd[817]: 231.8,240.4,240.4,27.50,50.30,29.9,27.4,000.0,000.0,240.4,100.0,1 Aug 9 16:59:54 vm20 apcupsd[817]: 231.8,240.4,240.4,27.50,50.30,27.9,27.4,000.0,000.0,240.4,100.0,0 Aug 9 17:00:56 vm20 apcupsd[817]: 231.8,240.4,240.4,27.50,50.30,28.6,27.4,000.0,000.0,240.4,100.0,1

About a 15 / 20 min cut.

We get cuts from time to time, maybe every couple of years. Sometimes due to the overhead power lines in our road. Only a short section - the road is under half a mile long and is fed by overhead cables, even though the surrounding roads are all fed underground. Usually a tree etc.

I rang the power company. While on hold, there was an update to say it was a fuse in a substation, an engineer had been dispatched, and no time estimate was available.

Just as well, Senior Management was just preparing to bake a cake as daughters are visiting this weekend.