Britain set to lose nearly half its electricity in 6 years

[Pip Tiddlepip]

I work for a small insurance company supporting about 12 servers and 250 client machines. Outside in the car park, there's an enormous generator. Every time the power fails (and it fails monotonously often, since the local power company seem to drill through cables with alarming regularity), the generator kicks in. For about five minutes. And then it stops.

The company are starting to panic, as the generator's load-bearing tests are due, but whoever's doing them keeps putting us off.
Wonder if they're horrendously busy due to every other company suddenly thinking "It's about time we got that dodgy generator fixed"?

[Mitch]

Or maybe your genset is underated - they KNOW it will stop after 5 minutes due to overload, and don't fancy trying to answer awkward questions. Better to just not do the "load test" in the first place!

[IanG]

In Italy the enel meters have a blue switch on the front which trips when the load drawn goes over a certain threshold. The home owner then has to go to the meter to reset the power.

This threshold can be changed remotely and in theory can be changed for different times/draw.

The UK Smart metering projects are currently bogged down in a mire of government indecision and big 6 duplicity.

As an outsider to the energy industry who's spent the last 2+yrs meeting with the protagonists, I have to say the industry has *missed* a golden opportunity to get a technology in place that could actually make a difference.

Current status is, after 2 years of government interference, delay etc, the next announcement is due in November, my money is on the government '... leaving it to the market to decide....'

[adam2]

Wonder if they're horrendously busy due to every other company suddenly thinking "It's about time we got that dodgy generator fixed"?

Yes, generator service companies are very busy attending to dodgy generators, A friend who works for such a firm states that unlimited overtime is available.

The powercuts of a few weeks ago concentrated the minds of bussiness leaders somwhat.