National Grid warns of possible blackouts

[Dai Corner]

Yes, without doubt. The bandwidth requirement is very, very low.

Why are Openreach busy replacing copper with fibre then?

 

[Bletchleyite]

Why are Openreach busy replacing copper with fibre then?

For streaming movies and the likes, not for saving Word docs and reading emails which could be done on a 28K modem with bandwidth to spare.

It's like we didn't just have a pandemic where loads of people worked from home, isn't it?

 

[Dai Corner]

For streaming movies and the likes, not for saving Word docs and reading emails which could be done on a 28K modem with bandwidth to spare.

It's like we didn't just have a pandemic where loads of people worked from home, isn't it?

You know schoolteachers show videos to their classes and office workers have video conferences?

 

[najaB]

For streaming movies and the likes, not for saving Word docs and reading emails which could be done on a 28K modem with bandwidth to spare.

Have you actually ever seen the size of files created by modern desktop productivity software? I just saved a completely blank Word document and it's 12KiB.

 

[birchesgreen]

Have you actually ever seen the size of files created by modern desktop productivity software? I just saved a completely blank Word document and it's 12KiB.

Ha yeah i was sent 6 Words docs yesterday, all text and nothing else (well visible anyway). 1.2GB

They contained a lot of old data which Word keeps in the document unless you purge it, after i did this one document went from 720K to 86K

 

[Bletchleyite]

You know schoolteachers show videos to their classes and office workers have video conferences?

The proposal is such that it would affect about an hour and a half of the working day. Is planning to do those things in the morning beyond the wit of some people?

You can do a teleconference without video, this is much lower on bandwidth.

Have you actually ever seen the size of files created by modern desktop productivity software? I just saved a completely blank Word document and it's 12KiB.

Ha yeah i was sent 6 Words docs yesterday, all text and nothing else (well visible anyway). 1.2GB

They contained a lot of old data which Word keeps in the document unless you purge it, after i did this one document went from 720K to 86K

I was being a bit facetious about modems, to be fair, though in the early 2000s I did do some home working via one and it was fine (teleconferences were done by dialling into bridge lines via a mobile phone). But my point stands - the broadband system is totally able to cope with this, as it DID cope with this for nearly a year in 2020-2021 and has been further upgraded since then. Was it perfect? No, of course not, but we are essentially at war when it comes to energy issues. Things in wars are never ideal, and it's on the population to get on with it as best they can.

 

[JamesT]

Oh I'll be loving life my friend, Vehicle 2 Home technology means while you're cuddled around candles, I'll be unaffected, and there'll be plenty of time for the car to charge when the mains comes back on.

I can also ensure my elderly neighbours have somewhere warm to be as well.

Presumably you've got things set up so you can cut yourself off from the grid when required? Otherwise if the mains is off, so is your house.

 

[AM9]

Presumably you've got things set up so you can cut yourself off from the grid when required? Otherwise if the mains is off, so is your house.

That's mandated by the DNO and it must isolate withjin 5 seconds. There's no alternative as connecting to the grid, even when the outage is very local will mean that everybody on the same circuit (including the substation secondary and any poor soul working in a manhole trying to restore power) would be fed from the one installation, - the local feed to the consumer unit and failing that the company fuse would blow almost immediatwely) anyway!

 

[najaB]

There's no alternative as connecting to the grid, even when the outage is very local will mean that everybody on the same circuit (including the substation secondary and any poor soul working in a manhole trying to restore power) would be fed from the one installation, - the local feed to the consumer unit and failing that the company fuse would blow almost immediatwely) anyway!

And transformers work in both directions, so if you happen to be close to a distribution substation anyone on the other side might be on the receiving end of 11kV!

 

[JamesT]

That's mandated by the DNO and it must isolate withjin 5 seconds. There's no alternative as connecting to the grid, even when the outage is very local will mean that everybody on the same circuit (including the substation secondary and any poor soul working in a manhole trying to restore power) would be fed from the one installation, - the local feed to the consumer unit and failing that the company fuse would blow almost immediatwely) anyway!

Exactly. Hence having a separate power source such as Vehicle 2 Home, a solar panel, or even battery storage won't help you during an outage unless you can disconnect. This isn't a standard feature.

 

[AM9]

And transformers work in both directions, so if you happen to be close to a distribution substation anyone on the other side might be on the receiving end of 11kV!

I was considering the situation where a local feed was interrupted which would probably be via breakers on the 11kV side of the substation, however this measly 4kW wouldn't get very far anyway as a 1MW substation transformer could swallow that in iron losses.

 

[najaB]

Exactly. Hence having a separate power source such as Vehicle 2 Home, a solar panel, or even battery storage won't help you during an outage unless you can disconnect. This isn't a standard feature.

I agree that not all solar systems include a transfer switch, but I'm yet to see a battery storage system that doesn't.

 

[AM9]

Exactly. Hence having a separate power source such as Vehicle 2 Home, a solar panel, or even battery storage won't help you during an outage unless you can disconnect. This isn't a standard feature.

It requires separate certification above the basic MCS that is usually installer raised. We might see more non-grid tied installations if power cuts become more frequent though.

 

[jumble]

I think the idea with the gas it’s because they can’t turn it back on safely in case someone’s left a hob turned on. After an emergency disconnection, eg a fire, they have to visit every nearby property to check they’re safe to go back on.

Modern gas hobs /ovens will not suffer from this as a problem as they have flame detection devices

There are still boilers around with pilot lights and some can be a real pain to relight

 

[chris11256]

Replying to this with my school IT Manager hat on. We're a sixth form with 480 students, so budgets aren't enormous. At my last rundown test the UPS lasted 50 minutes before it then triggered the low battery warning which shuts things down. In our case that keeps servers, network infrastructure and ISP fibre termination and router working. Plus phones & wireless access points which get power via POE.

Would have a huge interruptions to school activities though, all classrooms/offices have desktop computers. Plus the fact that we'd then loose the building ventilation system as well as hot water & the cold water pumps.

 

[AM9]

Modern gas hobs /ovens will not suffer from this as a problem as they have flame detection devices

There are still boilers around with pilot lights and some can be a real pain to relight

I would imagine that mains gas will be long gone before they can be confident that there are no appliances without flame failure protection.

 

[jumble]

Do you think the mobile network (even if it's equipped with UPSs) could deliver the bandwidth required?

No
We bought a 5G Gigacube with unlimited data for exactly this purpose
I tried it in our office and ran real world offsite backups to see what would happen
Within a few hours Vodafone started serious traffic shaping so our upload went from 2mb to 200kb very quickly and stayed there consistently
If there are powercuts I suspect that much of the bandwidth will be prioritised to the emergency services in any event

I would imagine that mains gas will be long gone before they can be confident that there are no appliances without flame failure protection.

Quite
Hobs did not need FFD before 2010 so plenty will still be in use ( We recently decommissioned a 30 year old Miele gas hob) and pass CP12 landlord certs under grandfather rights

 

[swt_passenger]

Modern gas hobs /ovens will not suffer from this as a problem as they have flame detection devices

There are still boilers around with pilot lights and some can be a real pain to relight

I wonder why flame failure devices as standard on domestic hobs are relatively recent, seems they’ve been around for many years…

 

[Noddy]

Exactly. Hence having a separate power source such as Vehicle 2 Home, a solar panel, or even battery storage won't help you during an outage unless you can disconnect. This isn't a standard feature.

It is a standard feature with a Tesla powerwall (I mentioned earlier). You don’t even get a flicker in the lights if the mains go out.

Watch this video from about 3 min in:

 

[Baxenden Bank]

The proposal is such that it would affect about an hour and a half of the working day. Is planning to do those things in the morning beyond the wit of some people?

Yes.

Basic thought process seems to be:
I normally leave my house at 0800 and get to work at 0830, there is snow falling before I go to bed so I will get up as normal, leave the house at exactly the same time, and expect to get to work at exactly the same time. Having been an hour late getting to work I will go onto twitfaceappsnappagewhatsbookchatter and blame everyone else. Then the local media will pick up my sorry tale and make it this day's front page whinge to trigger the keyboard warriors and score lots of lovely clicks to support advertising income.

The same applies to any kind of 'preparedness' - bad weather, power cuts, disruption to supplies. Remember the fuel tankers strike early 2000's?

In reality those people who are prepared to some extent (the large majority) will quietly get on with it and manage to varying levels. Family plays Monopoly by rechargeable camping light, eating spam sandwiches and hot soup from a flask doesn't seem to make the news! But you do need to think ahead and have those items in the house.

Those who are 'excessively' prepared, aka 'preppers' do make the news because a picture of a bloke with 48 tins of baked beans and the rest is also newsworthy for the same reasons - to generate clicks whilst having a laugh at them.

That's mandated by the DNO and it must isolate withjin 5 seconds. There's no alternative as connecting to the grid, even when the outage is very local will mean that everybody on the same circuit (including the substation secondary and any poor soul working in a manhole trying to restore power) would be fed from the one installation, - the local feed to the consumer unit and failing that the company fuse would blow almost immediatwely) anyway!

Is this the same type of arrangement as required for portable diesel (or petrol?) generators?

After I previously mentioned the 'gypsy and traveller community' and their use of portable generators (upthread I assume) I looked on-line at small generators. The supplier website was quite clear that you had to have a sparky in if you were going to connect to the main household supply. Something to do with earth connections and not trying to run the whole neighbourhood from your generator. As I don't (yet) intend to do anything of the kind I only briefly looked so no need to worry about my personal / household safety!

 

[AM9]

It is a standard feature with a Tesla powerwall (I mentioned earlier). You don’t even get a flicker in the lights if the mains go out.

Watch this video from about 3 min in:

No, what Robert Llewellyn is demonstrating is the ability of the Tesla battery to maintain power to the home (assuming it is sufficiently charged) in the event of a power cut. He triggered that response by turning off the house's connection to the grid. That meant that he manually performed the isolation function so there was no path for locally generated power to pass onto the grid.
However, it is a legal requirement on an installation to prevent any power passing back in the event of a power cut. In that case, Robert is very unlikely to be standing next to his main isolator ready to turn it off, so the function has to be automatic by means of a circuit breaker that is triggered by a loss of power on its grid side contacts. That is separate to any battery that may be installed and subject to very specific verification. In a normal solar-only installation, the inverter will perform this function by shutting down when its 50Hz sample is lost.

 

[najaB]

That is separate to any battery that may be installed and subject to very specific verification.

Though, it's usually not necessary to perform site-specific verification as long as all the equipment used complies with a relevant standard, eg. VDE-AR-N 4105.

 

[Noddy]

No, what Robert Llewellyn is demonstrating is the ability of the Tesla battery to maintain power to the home (assuming it is sufficiently charged) in the event of a power cut. He triggered that response by turning off the house's connection to the grid. That meant that he manually performed the isolation function so there was no path for locally generated power to pass onto the grid.
However, it is a legal requirement on an installation to prevent any power passing back in the event of a power cut. In that case, Robert is very unlikely to be standing next to his main isolator ready to turn it off, so the function has to be automatic by means of a circuit breaker that is triggered by a loss of power on its grid side contacts. That is separate to any battery that may be installed and subject to very specific verification. In a normal solar-only installation, the inverter will perform this function by shutting down when its 50Hz sample is lost.

Did you read what was posted?

Exactly. Hence having a separate power source such as Vehicle 2 Home, a solar panel, or even battery storage won't help you during an outage unless you can disconnect. This isn't a standard feature.

I simply responded that this is a standard feature of the powerwall which will help you in a power cut. If you watch the video you will also have seen that he had a circa 30 second power cut recorded by the system the same day that he didn’t know about, because that’s how the Tesla system works.

Best Practices During Power Cuts | Tesla Support United Kingdom

Powerwall brings you energy independence and security, so life in your home can carry on uninterrupted when the grid goes down. Learn more about how Powerwall functions during extended power cuts.

www.tesla.com

(Note the GB site)

 

[Class 317]

Oh I'll be loving life my friend, Vehicle 2 Home technology means while you're cuddled around candles, I'll be unaffected, and there'll be plenty of time for the car to charge when the mains comes back on.

I can also ensure my elderly neighbours have somewhere warm to be as well.

I also have an EV with Vehicle 2 grid tech set up to also allow Vehicle to home. It will be able to power my electric infrared heating, lights etc for much longer than 3 hours!
Great idea to offer your heat and light to the elderly. I'm going to do the same.

 

[headshot119]

Exactly. Hence having a separate power source such as Vehicle 2 Home, a solar panel, or even battery storage won't help you during an outage unless you can disconnect. This isn't a standard feature.

Yes the system will automatically isolate itself from the grid if the grid feed is lost, for exactly the reasons outlined. I didn't realise it wasn't a standard feature for solar panels and "normal" battery storage (I mean not using your EV as the battery in this context) setups. All the systems on offer for V2H seemed to have it as standard, presumably as it's a big plus point to keep your house powered during a power cut.

 

[Freightmaster]

Basic thought process seems to be:
I normally leave my house at 0800 and get to work at 0830, there is snow falling before I go to bed so I will get up as normal, leave the house at exactly the same time, and expect to get to work at exactly the same time. Having been an hour late getting to work I will go onto twitfaceappsnappagewhatsbookchatter and blame everyone else. Then the local media will pick up my sorry tale and make it this day's front page whinge to trigger the keyboard warriors and score lots of lovely clicks to support advertising income.

The same applies to any kind of 'preparedness' - bad weather, power cuts, disruption to supplies...

Although interestingly, Covid had the opposite effect with people needlessly hoarding six months' worth of toilet paper, etc!





MARK

 

[david1212]

I would imagine that mains gas will be long gone before they can be confident that there are no appliances without flame failure protection.

...
Hobs did not need FFD before 2010 so plenty will still be in use ( We recently decommissioned a 30 year old Miele gas hob) and pass CP12 landlord certs under grandfather rights

I wonder why flame failure devices as standard on domestic hobs are relatively recent, seems they’ve been around for many years…

I have never thought about this until now. My 100% gas cooker was with the house when bought so approaching 40 years old. The only feature is that closing the lid over the rigs cuts the gas supply. Otherwise flame fail detection is the MK1 human nose. Very occasionally shutting the oven door too fast has killed the flame. The other error is been turning grill, oven or rings control to minium so flame goes out but gas not totally off.

I can not recall the last time I saw / used an Ascot type instant gas water heater, it could have been my grandmothers house so early 1980's.

The heating boiler installed when this house was built was a pilot light type but that went over 20 years ago. The lighting involved holding the button in for a while but whether interlocked as flame failure I could not say.

 

[dgl]

Concerning gas powered instant water heaters with no need for electricity, some caravans at work have them where central heating is not fitted, they use a pilot light (with piezo ignition) or have batteries to power an electronic ignition system. Morco and Bosch make/made them although Morco say their's are discontinued and I can't find any Bosch ones. We certainly have some new/newish caravans with them.

 

[Bald Rick]

Back to Grid matters.

The wholesale price of electricity appears to have dropped markedly. For the last month it has been less than half what it was in August, and for the last week back under £100 / MWh. It hasn’t been there for a long time. I wonder if this I because it’s warmer than expected for this time of year (across the whole of Northern Europe), or if some other more structural issue with supply has improved?

If the situation has seen a genuine improvement, then that will ease the Government spend on the price cap. If it stays as low as it has this week for the NR t few months (unlikely, but you never know…) there will even be downward pressure on energy bills.

 

[D6968]

How many pubs now rely on electric pumps to get the beer? Real ale on handpull should be OK, it might even come at a decent temperature if the cellar coolers for the l*g*r are out.

How do you think that beer’s kept cool? Just out of interest how many cellars and cold rooms have you had to look after? Because it’s really not as simple as you make out.