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The reliability of the UK grid was 99.999998% in the past year.
by beejiu 2y ago
The reliability of the UK grid was 99.999998% in the past year.
- Neil44 2y agoExactly, the reliability of home brew battery systems is likely to be quite a bit less.
- arethuza 2y agoThe 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 agoI'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 agoI 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 agoTo 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 agoFWIW 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 agoThat 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 agoIn 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.