In article , The Wanderer
writes

Thanks for the various replies across the thread.


On Fri, 15 Jun 2007 22:15:20 +0100, Adrian Simpson wrote:

I suspect that I shall be disappointed, but here goes.


The power supply around here is not the most reliable in the world.
Today it has gone off three times (off for ~3 hours so far),

Three times in one day? Are you in a part of the UK that's been affected by
the recent very heavy rainfall? Are outages a common occurence?


In the end it was four times, it went off again after I posted :-(

The weather around here last Friday was not unusual, a bit of wind, but
not more than "moderate", some rain, but nothing approaching an
excessive amount. All in all, not the best of days weather wise, but
nothing even approaching excessive.

The schedule ran something like :

0510 (by cooker clock) power off (according to Central Networks it went
off at 0630)
0815 Power comes back on

0915 Power off, not for long (I went out, for 25 minutes and it was on
when I got back)

During the day it was on, but the kettle was slow to boil, and bulbs
were flashing and fluorescent tubes won't start.

1845 The power went off again for about 3 minutes.

2235 Off again for about 3 minutes.


During the day, the problem was supposedly an overhead HV fault at a
local sub station. The last one a problem at a different substation.
When I phoned in to find out what was happening I was told that the
fault would take 4 hours to fix.

That is on top of a 6 hr outage back in March and 16 hours last back
end, with others of shorter intervals.

If you are getting power outages on a regular basis, you should be taking
it up with your local distribution company, but you'll need to gather some
evidence, like a record of date and times over a period of at least a few
weeks, to back up your complaint.


Sort of. I've been here for 6 and a half years and I've had more
outages than at anytime since the three day week.

I do mention the outages to them at a regular basis, the reason I
started this thread was to see if there was a simple way I could
automate the monitoring.

I take it you have actually tried 'phoning them to ask if they've problems
in your area.......


I do, and they don't really seem interested. The first sub-station they
claimed to have problems with always seems to be the source of the
troubles.


Is there a cheap way of monitoring the quality
of the power supply (keeping a record) ?

No. Data loggers cost money.


I had a nasty feeling that might be the case.



Adrian
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