Arwen

[Peter Cobbold]

Our power went down 1 am Sat, back on 10pm Monday. Storm Arwen hit this part of Wales hard. We had some warmth from the coal fire, cooked on a cmaping stove and made toast and baked potatoes on the fire. Candles nearly ran out, but a joblot of 20 torches with 60 AAA batteries (£20 !) saved the day. The landline was useful. But we lose our water supply , a borehole, so put a pipe in the stream to fill buckets. Scottish Power delivred a 100 bottles of Radnor Water, so cant complain too much, but would prefer they replace rotting power poles  befroe the gales knock them over.

Now to investigate cost of installing a diesel genset big enough to power the borehole pump, and the c/heating, freezers etc -though not all at once.

Peter

[Ian Vincent]

To be fair, storm Arwen brought winds from a totally different direction to normal. That’s what caused a lot of the problems -and it was something like a 1 : 100 yr event.

Rgds Ian

[Malcolm Tatton]

We weren't that bad Peter, but ours went off at 4am Saturday and stayed off until 2.30am Monday, so 46.5 hours. Camping stove and small woodburner in the kitchen but the rest of the house was very very cold! Also had large Eucalyptus tree blown down in the garden, but I've been looking for an excuse to get rid of it for a while.

Good when it comes back on though

 

[Peter Cobbold]

56 minutes ago, Ian Vincent said:

To be fair, storm Arwen brought winds from a totally different direction to normal. That’s what caused a lot of the problems -and it was something like a 1 : 100 yr event.

Rgds Ian

I've had a 3-day outage before, about 10 yrs ago. So more like a 1 in 10 year event here. The wooden poles rot, so weather stats wont necessarily predict outage frequency, pole rotting rate might.

Peter

[Peter Cobbold]

30 minutes ago, Malcolm Tatton said:

We weren't that bad Peter, but ours went off at 4am Saturday and stayed off until 2.30am Monday, so 46.5 hours. Camping stove and small woodburner in the kitchen but the rest of the house was very very cold! Also had large Eucalyptus tree blown down in the garden, but I've been looking for an excuse to get rid of it for a while.

Good when it comes back on though

 

We  were lucky it was +1 to +4C outside and the fire kept a ca 12 C difference. In the Beast from the East some houses that lost power had thier plumbing freeze solid. It is that scenario I particularly want to avoid, hence the genset plan. Peter

[Charlie D]

18 minutes ago, Peter Cobbold said:

The wooden poles rot, so weather stats wont necessarily predict outage frequency, pole rotting rate might.

It’s a little known fact but telegraph poles and the like rot because of dogs cocking their legs up against them.

I’m sure that you don’t believe this, but I was taught it during my GPO apprenticeship, so it must be true.
Walk around the older, yet to be developed, parts of many towns and cities and you can see metal poles rotted away to the hollow core for the same reason.

Cats, of course, are far more sensible and just do their business in other people’s gardens.

Charlie.

[ianc]

Peter - Scottish Power delivering bottled water to Wales!  Can that be eco-friendly?

Don't let the Sturgeon know.

Ian Cornish

[ntc]

Peter 

I always have three large leisure batteries on Maintenance charge and a good inverter they run the heating and internet and lasts for a good time 

[barkerwilliams]

Peter,

Have you thought of a Tesla power wall?

Basically a set of batteries that take over when the power is off. They can also be set to charge on cheaper overnight electric and are then used during the day when electric is more expensive so recovering  some of the costs everyday of the year. In an extended power cut could be recharged with a smaller generator over a long period whilst taking the spike load of freezers and kettles etc which is hard to have a generator capable of.

Alan

 

[Bleednipple]

1 hour ago, barkerwilliams said:

Peter,

Have you thought of a Tesla power wall?

Basically a set of batteries that take over when the power is off. They can also be set to charge on cheaper overnight electric and are then used during the day when electric is more expensive so recovering  some of the costs everyday of the year. In an extended power cut could be recharged with a smaller generator over a long period whilst taking the spike load of freezers and kettles etc which is hard to have a generator capable of.

Alan

 

They would be a good solution although expensive at I believe around £10k installed. Then you would have about 13 kWh of storage which would be plenty enough to run an average house for about 1.5 days (not heating, obviously). And if you kept usage low - basic lighting and appliances plus maybe a quick shower off the immersion heater (about 2 kWh a go) - you could get by for several days even if not topped up by a gennie as Alan suggests or/an solar PV.

However... if you do have solar PV in combo with a Powerwall, you won't be wanting to utilise the full 13 kWh capacity of the Powerwall for emergency use, because then you'll have no "working storage" for the PV to feed into when the sun shines. If you allocate say 50% to reserve capacity, sods law says the storm Son-of-Arwen will come either first thing in the morning after a long winter night, and/or after several days of wintry weather (go figure!) when the PVs won't have been filling up "their half" of the battery.

A 12v leisure battery of the type used in a motorhome or boat is around 115 Ah capacity which, when boosted to mains voltage through an inverter and assuming you don't fully discharge the battery which is likely to damage it, will give you around 1 kWh. So a bank of three will keep your basics - lights, fridge-freezer, some cups of tea etc - going for a few hours at least. A lot cheaper than a Powerwall although you've got to also put in some reliable circuitry to ensure the batteries are kept charged/conditioned. But, it's unlikely to be safe/practical to connect the inverter supply directly into your house lighting and ring main circuits - therefore you're going to have to run cables all round the house from your battery bank when a power cut happens or maybe have pre-installed cabling to your key appliances. 

Not living in the savage beauty of the Celtic Fringe, I'm not going to bother with any of that. If we had a really lengthy power cut we'd decamp to our camper van which has a fridge for survival rations (beer), USB charging points, 240v inverter and diesel-powered space heating. The leisure batts will last a couple of days in that mode and then I'd just take it for a drive to recharge them and if the home power is still off go and find the nearest pub with leccie and park up outside for the duration. Simples!

Nigel

Edited December 1, 2021 by Bleednipple

[Peter Cobbold]

Tks Neil, Alan and Nigel,

I have not discarded battery-hybrid options. If I can live without powering the borehole pump then batteries look good with a diesel or petrol generator to recharge in emergencies. I have to find the running and surge currents on that pump which pumps water up 140 feet into a pressurised tank: the starting surge flickers the lights. The tank holds about 30 gall when full, enough for drinking and cooking. It should be possible to rig up a stream-fed water tank to refill the toilet cistern by gravity, so eliminating the borehole pump from the kW equation.  Cooking on calor gas would take a lot off the kW, leaving two freezers and fridges, lights, satellite TV and wifi, and central heating to power. It looks do-able at reasonalbe cost, but needs to be done safely so shall consult an electrian friend. I think he knows a local source of used fork-lift batteries....

Peter

[Peter Cobbold]

21 hours ago, ianc said:

Peter - Scottish Power delivering bottled water to Wales!  Can that be eco-friendly?

Don't let the Sturgeon know.

Ian Cornish

Ian, I gather there's also a cheque in the post from SP as we were unable to take up offers of three meals a day and a night in a hotel. They are good at public relations but replacing rotting poles would be preferable. I imagine PR is cheaper, doesn't impact profits as much as infrastructure hardening. Thers a logic in Scottish power covering Wales: large rural networks with above-ground cabling.But when the two nations are hit in the same storm the field engineers are stretched beyond capacity.

Peter