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We've had several power outages in our area recently, most of them JUST long enough that the food in our fridge was deemed unsafe and we had to toss some of it

We've had several power outages in our area recently, most of them JUST long enough that the food in our fridge was deemed unsafe and we had to toss some of it out. This sort of thing really makes me think about the large scale deployment of rooftop solar and batteries. If we had a battery system in our house, we could have used it to intermittently cool the fridge/freezer and potentially save the food and avoid the waste. It seems to make more sense to have everyone have their own power generation capabilities than for all of us to rely solely on a broad network stretched thin. I know very little about this subject, but the primary reason we haven't done it is that there aren't many subsidies around where we are. In addition, I often wonder about the future proofing on these systems. Our old house had coax run to every room because they just assumed you would be using cable tv instead of wireless streaming.

beejiu 2y ago
The reliability of the UK grid was 99.999998% in the past year.
- Neil44 2y ago
  Exactly, the reliability of home brew battery systems is likely to be quite a bit less.
- arethuza 2y ago
  The last time I can recall any long electricity cuts was during the 3 day week in the early 1970s... Which perhaps explains some of the reasons why coal power (or at least the people who produced the coal) were seen as a political threat: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Day_Week https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Day_Week NB I wasn't very old at the time and rather enjoyed the experience!
- cameronh90 2y ago
  I'm in London, and I've only experienced two power outages in the last decade, each lasting less than a minute. We have our problems, but electrical grid reliability is definitely not one of them.
  - weego 2y ago
    I live in rural Scotland. Every power outage in the last 10 years has been caused by land developers not reading the local utilities plans and accidentally cutting through cables.
    - cameronh90 2y ago
      To be fair, the UK's "dial before you dig"-type services are next to useless. I've tried to get plans for my house before digging, and UK Power Networks refused my request as I'm not authorised to see the plans apparently. National Grid sent me a blank page with an empty square on it. SGN were the only one that actually sent me a sensible map with what appeared to be accurate contents (insofar as they match where I thought they would be), but even they had a disclaimer on the document they sent me saying they can't be held liable for errors on the map and all digging should be performed by hand to confirm whether a pipe exists. A lot of the major underground infrastructure owners (including Thames Water, BT, Sky, Virgin) just aren't signed up to the asset search services and you have to contact them manually to even find out if they have assets in your area. Of those, only Thames Water actually replied to my email, and they said I'd either have to sling them several hundred pounds or drive down to their office in Reading and look at the archives in person. I did the latter, and the plans were just entirely wrong. Ground Penetrating Radar isn't even an option in my area due to the soil composition. Seems like you just make your best guess and then hope for the best.
  - mattlondon 2y ago
    FWIW I am in London too and have had several more than that, some for more than a few hours. There was one just the other day where the RAF museum in London was partially shut because the power was still out from the night before, much to my kids' annoyance. These have usually been down to a local substation going bang/being hit by a bus/curious-but-now-crispy-cat etc though, rather than the whole city going down. These sort of blackouts affect smaller areas, like 1000 houses at once or whatever, and not the entire city or region
- prennert 2y ago
  That does not mean that day long power outages are impossible. Especially not locally. For example, storm Arwen in 2022 left lots of communities without power for many days https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/publications/storm-arwen-report https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/publications/storm-arwen-report . Admittedly not because of power generation, but because of transmission lines being cut by falling trees.
  - WeylandYutani 2y ago
    In my country the power company gives out compensation for a power outage that lasts more than a few hours. This only happened to me once.
lars_francke 2y ago
A battery alone is not enough. You also need an inverter that's capable of powering your house. Most are not. They need to e.g. provide the proper frequency on their own and entirely/physically decouple from the grid etc. They are available but just rooftop solar and a battery is not enough.
- Mistletoe 2y ago
  It depends on how much you want to run. Just keeping the fridge working and powering an internet router and a tv would go a long way and wouldn’t take much.
- bArray 2y ago
  I think the easiest solution here would be one of many readily available UPS's. If the fridge/freezer is kept shut, it should just sip at the power.
  - thepuppet33r 2y ago
    Honestly hadn't considered that. It was bizarre here when the power last went out because it sounded like everyone was out mowing their lawns. Realized after a walk that it was all neighbors with gas generators. I have a small UPS for my network stack and NAS. Hadn't considered one for my fridge, too.
- outofmyshed 2y ago
  Commodity hybrid PV inverters are now very capable of offgrid/island mode - I have one. If the grid goes down (which it does - I live rurally) I can flip a changeover switch and power my whole house from PV or battery up to a limit of 5kW, which is plenty to keep everything necessary running. It’s not a mainstream feature and there’s a high setup cost but the tech is readily available and the price/kWh of home batteries is going down steadily.
blitzar 2y ago
> they just assumed you would be using cable tv I think you mean - they just assumed you would be connecting to the antenna on the roof to get the 4 glorious full colour channels.
magicalhippo 2y ago
Just need a BEV with inverter, which many modern cars have, and a long extension cord.
- therealdrag0 2y ago
  This. Seeing a lot of great stories of EVs being very useful in the aftermath of hurricane Helen in US. The Ioniq 5 can power a house for 5 days for example. And is more cost effective (since you also use it as a car) than installing batteries at home. (Disclaimer not all EVs support V2L)
Symbiote 2y ago
"In our area recently" — at least state the country! You are commenting as if your experience is relevant to this news from Britain, but weasel out of even the roughest location. Your phrasing and choice of words is generally American.
- thepuppet33r 2y ago
  Guilty as charged! American, unfortunately located in the southeast. To be clear, this wasn't intended as a comment against or argument against the UK's accomplishment. I am EXTREMELY glad to hear they're moving away from coal.
00deadbeef 2y ago
Where? I'm in the UK. One of my network switches has 595 days of uptime so I haven't had power issues in at least that long, but it seems like more than 3 years since the last disruption when something blew at the substation round the corner and was fixed within minutes.

beejiu 2y ago

The reliability of the UK grid was 99.999998% in the past year.

Neil44 2y ago
Exactly, the reliability of home brew battery systems is likely to be quite a bit less.
arethuza 2y ago
The last time I can recall any long electricity cuts was during the 3 day week in the early 1970s... Which perhaps explains some of the reasons why coal power (or at least the people who produced the coal) were seen as a political threat: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Day_Week https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Day_Week NB I wasn't very old at the time and rather enjoyed the experience!
cameronh90 2y ago
I'm in London, and I've only experienced two power outages in the last decade, each lasting less than a minute. We have our problems, but electrical grid reliability is definitely not one of them.
- weego 2y ago
  I live in rural Scotland. Every power outage in the last 10 years has been caused by land developers not reading the local utilities plans and accidentally cutting through cables.
  - cameronh90 2y ago
    To be fair, the UK's "dial before you dig"-type services are next to useless. I've tried to get plans for my house before digging, and UK Power Networks refused my request as I'm not authorised to see the plans apparently. National Grid sent me a blank page with an empty square on it. SGN were the only one that actually sent me a sensible map with what appeared to be accurate contents (insofar as they match where I thought they would be), but even they had a disclaimer on the document they sent me saying they can't be held liable for errors on the map and all digging should be performed by hand to confirm whether a pipe exists. A lot of the major underground infrastructure owners (including Thames Water, BT, Sky, Virgin) just aren't signed up to the asset search services and you have to contact them manually to even find out if they have assets in your area. Of those, only Thames Water actually replied to my email, and they said I'd either have to sling them several hundred pounds or drive down to their office in Reading and look at the archives in person. I did the latter, and the plans were just entirely wrong. Ground Penetrating Radar isn't even an option in my area due to the soil composition. Seems like you just make your best guess and then hope for the best.
- mattlondon 2y ago
  FWIW I am in London too and have had several more than that, some for more than a few hours. There was one just the other day where the RAF museum in London was partially shut because the power was still out from the night before, much to my kids' annoyance. These have usually been down to a local substation going bang/being hit by a bus/curious-but-now-crispy-cat etc though, rather than the whole city going down. These sort of blackouts affect smaller areas, like 1000 houses at once or whatever, and not the entire city or region
prennert 2y ago
That does not mean that day long power outages are impossible. Especially not locally. For example, storm Arwen in 2022 left lots of communities without power for many days https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/publications/storm-arwen-report https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/publications/storm-arwen-report . Admittedly not because of power generation, but because of transmission lines being cut by falling trees.
- WeylandYutani 2y ago
  In my country the power company gives out compensation for a power outage that lasts more than a few hours. This only happened to me once.

lars_francke 2y ago

A battery alone is not enough. You also need an inverter that's capable of powering your house. Most are not. They need to e.g. provide the proper frequency on their own and entirely/physically decouple from the grid etc. They are available but just rooftop solar and a battery is not enough.

Mistletoe 2y ago
It depends on how much you want to run. Just keeping the fridge working and powering an internet router and a tv would go a long way and wouldn’t take much.
bArray 2y ago
I think the easiest solution here would be one of many readily available UPS's. If the fridge/freezer is kept shut, it should just sip at the power.
- thepuppet33r 2y ago
  Honestly hadn't considered that. It was bizarre here when the power last went out because it sounded like everyone was out mowing their lawns. Realized after a walk that it was all neighbors with gas generators. I have a small UPS for my network stack and NAS. Hadn't considered one for my fridge, too.
outofmyshed 2y ago
Commodity hybrid PV inverters are now very capable of offgrid/island mode - I have one. If the grid goes down (which it does - I live rurally) I can flip a changeover switch and power my whole house from PV or battery up to a limit of 5kW, which is plenty to keep everything necessary running. It’s not a mainstream feature and there’s a high setup cost but the tech is readily available and the price/kWh of home batteries is going down steadily.

blitzar 2y ago

> they just assumed you would be using cable tv I think you mean - they just assumed you would be connecting to the antenna on the roof to get the 4 glorious full colour channels.

magicalhippo 2y ago

Just need a BEV with inverter, which many modern cars have, and a long extension cord.

therealdrag0 2y ago
This. Seeing a lot of great stories of EVs being very useful in the aftermath of hurricane Helen in US. The Ioniq 5 can power a house for 5 days for example. And is more cost effective (since you also use it as a car) than installing batteries at home. (Disclaimer not all EVs support V2L)

Symbiote 2y ago

"In our area recently" — at least state the country! You are commenting as if your experience is relevant to this news from Britain, but weasel out of even the roughest location. Your phrasing and choice of words is generally American.

thepuppet33r 2y ago
Guilty as charged! American, unfortunately located in the southeast. To be clear, this wasn't intended as a comment against or argument against the UK's accomplishment. I am EXTREMELY glad to hear they're moving away from coal.

00deadbeef 2y ago

Where? I'm in the UK. One of my network switches has 595 days of uptime so I haven't had power issues in at least that long, but it seems like more than 3 years since the last disruption when something blew at the substation round the corner and was fixed within minutes.