How often do you get power cuts where you live?

[Powercutsaibu]

Out of interest how many power cuts does your area have? I am in a northern village on the outskirts of a large city, I would describe my setting as semi rural, as in we have village vibes, loads of farm land nearby, country pubs and narrow b roads but 20 minutes by car you are in the city centre.

We get a power cut of more than 15 minutes monthly, and a blip where it goes off for a second our so every couple of weeks. It’s not my property it’s whole street or postcode area. Is this the norm now?

I have lived in the same area 15 years and moved three times (within the same start of post code) and it’s only the last couple of years it’s gotten this bad. A couple months ago we was out of power for hours at a time across multiple days.

My recent move, I am just have electric and after yet another 2 hour power cut this morning I am panicking a bit heating in the winter!

Interesting to read how often some people are having power cuts! We are in a scottish town can think of maybe only a handful over the last 10+ years but usually related to bad storms or engineering works.

I suspect some of these infrequent power cut situations is part of the reason some people are more complacent than others. I am reasonably well prepped for any emergency/abnormal scenario. But I live in the Midlands near to a large city and have numerous power cuts every year so I anticipate the worst.

I still have candles and torches, and we have a gas fire.

@MrsPapillon you will be too young to remember the oil crisis in the 1970s when we had frequent power cuts.

I live in a small town and my house (and my half of the estate) basically never gets powercuts because the power lines are underground all the way to the power station. The other half of the estate ( literally just a few doors up the road) is on a different above ground system and gets powercuts every winter due to storms downing power lines, last year was particularly bad and they, and many other areas, were without power for days.

Im gobsmacked. If you're in your 50s you're about the same age as me and we certainly had power cuts in the 70s which were quite memorable and exiting as a child

I've lived in Milton Keynes for just over 10 years and don't remember any power cuts. We have had a couple of water outages/extremely low pressures, when nearby building works accidentally damaged water pipes, but no electricity or gas cuts that I can recall.

Once in the last fifteen years. Kids destroyed a substation.

In 16 years (since I moved out my parents), I csn think of three power cuts.

The first one was four hours. I panicked because it was winter, night time, freezing and I had a formula fed 8 week old and couldn't boil the kettle to make his bottles. Luckily only lived ten mins from my parents so went and camped out there until neighbour text me that all was back on. This was Birmingham.

Second and third times were brief - just ten mins for one, and about an hour for the second. A big housing development was being built across the road and I think they managed to knock the supply. This was in Wales.

Now we live very rurally. We have only been here a few months so I have no idea if the area is prone to it. We do have solar panels so I dont know if that will make a difference and kick in. I don't fall for much of the scaremongering but with all the shite going on at the moment, ive made sure we have plenty of candles and matches just in case over the winter

Your solar panels will only kick in if you have an off grid switch to make this happen. We had one installed this week. It costs a couple of thousand pounds.

@Calasa I was born in the second half of the 70s so the three day week was a little before my time.

I just remembered one time when I experienced a power cut when we were on holiday at Loch Lomond. I was really surprised that the landlord had backup generators because it happened so frequently.

I have absolutely no idea so need to have a look! New build property but everything seems to be pretty top spec so fingers crossed.

If, like ours, your solar panels are set up to send any excess power to the grid then they (and the battery) will automatically disconnect if it loses grid power. This is to stop potentially sending live electricity to a cable someone is working on.

Same situation here, rural village, 20 minutes from small city. Every month we have a power cut lasting a minute or so, and others just for a couple of seconds. Then we had a ten hour one a few winters ago. And they wonder why inhabitants of the countryside cling to their woodburners. Electricity is no linger reliable enough.

Yorkshire village also. Far too bloody often. Only seems to be our end of the village, though; the other end seems more stable. Traffic lights go out each time so it causes chaos on the road.

There's a new housing estate each end and we definitely have more cuts since they were built, but it may be coincidence that the lack of infrastructure investment and maintenance by the privatised power companies is coming home to roost. Time for all utilities to be nationalised again?

Used to be very frequent and could last for hours. It has got a lot better in recent years. We still get them once a fortnight or so but it’s usually off and then straight back on. Just enough to upset the clocks in the appliances.

You could have described where I live!

There is a newish, large estate rather other end of the village that has been getting power cuts with increasing frequency over the last year or so, ramping up in the last few months. Out end (not an estate, fewer houses) has been largely ok. The power supply folk held a public meeting about it a few weeks ago - I don’t know what the outcome was. I’m wondering if it’s anything to do with the demand on the network from electric cars, about 30% of that estate must have one.

If they came with the property I'd be surprised since it's generally an upgrade which isn't worth it for most people. Some systems will have one socket so that you can plug in say a wifi router which will then work if your panels are still generating. But a whole house off grid changeover switch needs batteries otherwise it is pointless and is a proportionately fairly expensive add on so it doesn't tend to be fitted unless specifically requested.

Once in the ten years I have lived here and that was because some dumb ass builders drilled through an underground cable (inner London).

I grew up on a farm in Kent and we used to get several throughout the winter - usually due to overhead cables being downed by storms and sometimes in the summer when a thunderstorm would impact the cables.

The longest power cut I have known was after the 1987 storm when we didn't have power for two weeks (they sent engineers down from Scotland and we all came out to cheer!) quite fun for a small child, but must have been a nightmare for my parents as our village was off the gas grid as well.

Normally several times over winter that tend to last ant least 24hrs and occasional random ones outside of that, live in an exposed rural area of northern Scotland, when the weather is really windy we tend to have issues.
i have a solar lights, portable chargers, a huge power bank etc to try and keep life as normal as possible during them.