Power cuts in rural Scotland

[Corporatepreggolady]

Hello! We're staying on the isle of mull and following Storm Amy, had a power cut that lasted three days. It's a cottage with electric heating and boiler so this left us without heat, hot water or any ability to cook as well as the lights being out. I grew up in a house that would have regular power cuts but we had gas heating and hot water, and never went out for this long, so this level of being off grid seems mad to me. It impacted many others locally. Being on an island in poor weather and very far from home, we couldn't simply leave.

It all just got me wondering how usual this is, and whether remote island communities get a fair deal with electricity. If this was say, Cambridge, without power for days, it would be national news. People seem to get on with it here but it is exceptionally difficult to live in a normal way

I guess you make sure you’re more prepared if you live there. Open fires, charged power banks all the time, open fires. Guess i’d have a shower at work!

Ok great, but that doesn't answer the major part of my post which is: what do you do when the grid goes down because of a power cut?

Solar or other power banks are fine but they don't last long when you're running literally everything from them, which is a problem if your power cut lasts more than a day. And if the weather is bad you are unlikely to be able to recharge your solar power bank.

A diesel generator is no better for the environment.

Fires and stoves are really the only thing we can have full control over as individuals which we can use to keep going if other options aren't available.

Quite remote location which gets regular autumn/winter power cuts?!
What do you do then to stop yourself from freezing from multiple day power cuts which the last 5 years have been minimum 2-3 between Oct-March?!

You can think what you like about them they are essential for rural locations due to conditions when the grid goes down which it does.

There isn't the luxury of decamping to a hotel when there is only 1 hotel in a 25 mile radius also with no power.

Also you don't burn anything on them it's 2 year minimum seasoned wood as otherwise its pointless and won't give any heat whilst producing a large amount of smoke.

I agree that stoves are an essential of rural life. We are regularly without power for 3-5 days in the winter, that's the only way we have to keep warm. I honestly don't see how we could function without them.

Quite.
I don't think anyone is going to deny that burning solid fuel is bad for the environment but needs must when the devil drives. We have an open fire in one room. We only use it occasionally. We also use a diesel generator that I'm sure is also very environmentally unfriendly. Again, it doesn't come out very often. But I'm not going to freeze/go hungry for days when we lose power, and there isn't really a practical alternative. And let's face it, it's not usually mid Summer when there are prolonged power cuts is it, so you do actually need heating especially if you have young children or elderly people in the house.
I only know one family who are self sufficient with "clean" electricity. They live on a small holding and have a substantial bank of solar panels, a wind turbine and some very big batteries. But we don't all have the land (they have 7 acres) or enough money to fund a project like that so it's hardly a practical solution for most people. And even that is only clean at the end point. There are significant environmental impacts from the production and eventually disposal of all the hardware and of course arguments about land use. When I replace my car I will probably get an EV with vehicle to load capacity which will be a cleaner solution to power outages than we currently have but I'm not kidding myself that it doesn't have an environmental cost too.
I'm old enough to remember what air quality was like in the days when coal fires were the norm. I grew up in a small mining town in the shadow of massive coal powered power station belching out fumes day and night. I don't need reminding of the environmental impact of solid fuel. I do try my best to be environmentally conscious and if new and better technology comes along I'm all for it. But in the meanwhile I'm not going to be beating myself up too badly over the few days a year we light a fire or drag the generator out because we have no power.

North Sea oil went to oil terminals in Shetland and Orkney before being transported south.

Orkney already has the highest rate of EV ownership in Scotland.