stop using gas ? ...

[Tim Lamb]

Hmm.. awful lot of .com results from a search.

Tractor PTO standard is 540/1000. Not sure your Kubota has both.

[ARW]

No

[Roger Mills]

No, I did the same - in effect. My genny has 2 x 13A sockets, so one socket just has a plug (no cable) with neutral and earth connected internally, and the other has an extension lead to the CH system - which is fed from a 13A plug rather than an FCU. The genny end of the extension lead has an RCD plug. The genny's earth terminal is connected to an earth spike.

Everything connected to the genny has first to be unplugged from the house system, so there's no danger of feeding anything back into the mains.

[Michael Chare]

The erroneous Michael Fish forecast was in 1987. We lost electrical power for about 5 days and no telephone for more like 5 weeks.

[Tim Streater]

1963 temps below zero from Boxing Day to sometime in March. 1952 Lynmouth floods, also floods in IIRC East Anglia in 1947.

None of these events are new or particularly surprising. We hear more about them than we would have done 50 years ago, is all.

[williamwright]

Do you mean RPM? Could you explain why it matters?

Bill

[williamwright]

Thank you Adam.

Bill

[williamwright]

All this makes me wonder if I should replace the UPS for the CCTV with a ginormpus one (well one with a ginormous battery) and power the boiler from it as well as the CCTV and the TV system. Then I could run the UPS from the genny when I got round to it.

Bill

[NY]

A 12V -> 240 V inverter is a very useful piece of kit. I bought one ages ago and it lives in my car under one of the seats. I've used it a few times during long power cuts to power the router and my laptop so I had internet access - to look at the scale of the problem - and to charge up my phone (*). I did try running a desktop PC and LCD monitor: although the PC sounded as if it was booting up OK (based on the sounds of the hard disk) turning the monitor on blew the 16 A fuse in the inverter's 12 V supply plug. When the mains eventually came back, I proved that the PC booted OK from the inverter when driving a mains-fed monitor. Has anyone else come across a monitor with a trivial power consumption (according to its rating plate) which makes an inverter blow its input fuse? I wonder if the stepped, non-sinusoidal AC did funny things to the monitor's PSU, making it draw far more current than normal which in turn drew too much 12V current.

I once kept the phone system at work alive using the inverter when a JCB driver cut through a high-voltage cable in the area: it meant that the firm could make and receive phone calls via its VOIP system (driving a corded analogue phone) but they couldn't boot up the server to get access to the customer database to see which customers we'd booked to visit.

(*) I didn't have a 12V PSU for the phone, but I did have a mains PSU so I changed 12V DC to 240V AC to 3 V or 5 V DC. That was a very old Nokia phone which used a cylindrical, non-USB plug and maybe not even 5 V.

[Tim Lamb]

Somebody will give details but if you want 50Hz out of a 4 pole generator I think you need 1500RPM at the input shaft.

[Steve Walker]

Yes, the same as with child abductions, abuse, rapes and murders. Probably less prevalent than 50 years ago, but covered by papers, 24 hour news, internet, etc.

The same as road deaths - halved, but we hear about them constantly.

[Jim GM4DHJ ...]

clam down now bill

[Jim GM4DHJ ...]

black lives don't matter ...

[Jim GM4DHJ ...]

greta wouldn't want you to use that generator

[Jim GM4DHJ ...]

unless they are electric cars

[Jim GM4DHJ ...]

If greta etc gets their way we will all be shivering soonwith no affordable transport...get used to it

[Brian Gaff (Sofa]

I do think they seriously need to review their trees near a supply line policy in this country. You used to see tree loppers all the time when rural and even some not so rural feeds were the only way folk got electricity. The major numbers of multiple failures are trees coming down and trashing the cables.

Brian

[Harry Bloomfield, Esq.]

You did of course mean simple gas fire...

[Harry Bloomfield, Esq.]

Andrew formulated on Thursday :

Area power cuts, may well mean no power for water pumps, so no water either once the water tower empties.

[Harry Bloomfield, Esq.]

williamwright formulated on Thursday :

...and by the time you have read and done that lot, the power is back on:-)