At 19.44 tonight we had a power cut here.
Looking out the windows front and back over the town everything was off supply - and I only noticed because my house phone beeped and the screen lit up as mains power was removed.
I was on my laptop so the battery took over seamlessly, I was watching video off a USB stick so wouldn't even have noticed the wifi dropping out, and the only light I had on was my rechargable wall lamp.
At 19:51 Electricity North West 'Extra Care' sent a text that said it was cable damage and that 3186 properties were affected, they were sending engineers, and expected power to be restored by 22.44.
At 20.01 ENW also rang my mobile with an automated message saying the same.
10/10 for 'Extra Care' giving information by different methods, but that needs a rethink.
I understand that the voice call is meant to call a landline phone if you don’t have a mobile phone so can’t get a text.
Unfortunately everyone is having to change to ‘Digital Voice’ VOIP phones - which stop working if your landline internet is down because there is no power to your router/hub.
That’s also a concern for making emergency 999 calls during a power cut.
At 20.02 I got another text saying that "A team is on the way to assess the damage", but…
At 20.04 the power came back on and has been on since.
EDIT- At 21.25 I got a further text saying that power had now been restored to all customers and to check all tripswitches, clocks, timers, etc.
However it got me thinking… It isn’t that long ago that a power cut was a mini-disaster with scrabbling about for torches and then for batteries to put in them (or even for candles), no idea of how long the power was likely to be off, and no way to find out.
Nowadays then, like me, you may not even notice it for a while, and when you do then you probably have a smartphone that is still working (unless the masts have run out of battery backup) so can jump on the internet for information and updates.
The situation with everyone changing their landline phones to ‘Digital Voice’ phones that won’t work during a power cut is another problem that currently does not appear to have any practical solution.
The ‘official’ thinking seems to be that it will be OK because everyone has access to a mobile (no they don’t) and the masts have power backups (batteries which will run out if/when the mains is off for more than a few hours).
It’s not just 999 calls that it affects either, medical alert and telephone care systems such as careline rely on landlines which during a power cut will not be working over Digital Voice in a power cut*, just when they are needed.
Automatic ‘call the station’ burglar and fire alarms would work over the old landlines even when mains electricity was off, not over Digital Voice though.
*Unless those alert systems are provided with battery backup like a computers Uninterruptible Power Supply, and at the moment if you want a UPS then you will have to buy one yourself (although after some pushing from welfare organisations there may possibly be free UPS’s available for some vulnerable customers sometime in the future)
