Power Cuts - Coverup?

Forum for general discussion of Peak Oil / Oil depletion; also covering related subjects

Moderator: Peak Moderation

Post Reply
Rooks
Posts: 5
Joined: 24 Nov 2005, 11:09

Power Cuts - Coverup?

Post by Rooks »

Last weekend I had a power cut. It was quite annoying because it happened during Doctor Who :(

I rang Npower who told me that someone was looking into the problem. So far, so normal...

The power came back on 2 hours later (almost to the minute) and I thought nothing more of it. When I went into work on Monday I found out that ours was not the only region to have a cut and at least 4 other regions went down, all at differing times of day and none of them went down at the same time as another station.

This struck me as odd. I guess it's possible that a single failure put pressure on other stations which caused failures, but that wouldn't explain the powercuts happening at different times for different regions.

I wondered the following... is it possible that nPower simply didn't have enough energy to supply the city so shut down whole area's at a time to help keep up with the demand? What do you think, is this possible?
snow hope
Posts: 4101
Joined: 24 Nov 2005, 11:09
Location: outside Belfast, N Ireland

Post by snow hope »

What were the regions involved Rooks? Certainly sounds possible that different areas might have been shut-down on an area by area basis. It seems suspect to me to have regions being "cycled" like that. Were there any thunderstorms in the regions at that time by any chance as they can play havoc with the distribution system?
Real money is gold and silver
Rooks
Posts: 5
Joined: 24 Nov 2005, 11:09

Post by Rooks »

It was in the Birmingham-area. The weather was glorious, too glorious perhaps? It was the second day of the week-long mini-heatwave we had in the UK. I know air-conditioners use a lot of power, perhaps that caused a demand?

Glad I'm not thinking beyond the realms of possibility though :D
peaky

Post by peaky »

Always remember; Truth is stranger than fiction :)
Post Reply