what power failure ?. Its fine in Sussex

Operative word "instant", no such thing in the real world.

IMHO the grid did get back to normal pretty damn quickly, less than an hour for complete restoration of supplies. Other parts of the infra-structure didn't handle the loss of the public supply at all well. That's not National Grids problem it's those bits of infra-structure problem.

But not on the scale and speed required to command half a million car chargers into "suck" mode and in sync with the (rapidly changing) grid frequency to make up say 1.5 GW of lost capacity.

I've not seen how quickly the load shedding took to happen but I bet it was measured in seconds, not tens of seconds.

Not all that big. IIRC, about 8' or 9' diameter and a similar height.

I couldn't tell you, but there was certainly no chlorine smell.

Yes, purely manufacturer's testing.

The switchgear was incorporated into the generator sets - they were stand-alone, skidded units for inmstallation on a North-sea rig.

I must admit, I miss working there, but the place has long gone - victim of being cheaper to make people redundant there than in France or Norway.

SteveW

Nothing dramatic happens.

Chris

I believe the Javelin trains on South Eastern have some fairly substantial backup. Was talking to a guard recently who'd been on one that was between Stratford and Ebbsfleet going east. All power failed (for quite a while; major disruption) but he said they had enough 'charge' (as he put it) to get as far as Ebbsfleet. That was enough because that's where they change over to the third rail supply. They apparently made it by about 30 seconds (they wouldn't have been anle to limp that far).

It happened on sunday perhaps that's why.

Two taken to hospital, I've a friend in worthing and he's lived there for 4 years and he closed his windows.

I doubt it was seaweed causing sore eyes.

I think quite a few of us have similar leanings couldn't decide if it was to be the mains or BT perhaps;!..

And the same here. I was more interested in electronics, but we did have a visit from school to the local polytechnic (now the University of Brighton) where they showed us a power engineering lab - a whole row of mini generators, etc.

Little did I know that the (one) computer program I wrote using their mainfrme (probably a small ICT but I have been unable to find out) would eventually lead to a career in computing.

Or British Rail APT development :-)

Yes! Now hands up those of you did a bit of train spotting when they were a lad;?...

Course you can do that from home nowadays:)..

Wow!

Or even a mining engineer. Developing the cutting gear and all the associated engineering was a good business to be in the 50's and 60's. Not much demand for those skills now in the UK.

Ditto cigarette packaging machinery. Molins was a good company to work for, and still exists today, but now called Mpac group, but may be part of a large Italian group now ??

Siemens rep was on Today about 06:25, mainly regarding possible loss of HS2 trains order, but the reporter did chuck in a question about why the thameslink trains needed a technician to 'reboot' them ... sounded like the low frequency upset them, shutting down to avoid over-current?