On Wed, 27 Jun 2012 19:41:27 +0100, ARWadsworth wrote:

Is there any online resource which carries immediate reports of
power outages and causes?

Try your local DNO's web site. Ours, ENW, has a page with major(*) outages on
it but I think it's a manual update rather than a link from the automatic
monitoring.

Given that a substantial minority of the public now have a smart
phone which can access web sites, then t'Internet is a valid route
for a query. Unless of course the cellular masts and the local
telephone exchange are down, in which case a phone number isn't much
use either.

The mobile networks fail as the power goes or very quickly afterwards, very
few cells have anything more than "safe shutdown" backup power arrangements.
BT telephone exchanges are all equipped with large lead acid batteries and
even the garden sheds out in rural areas also have gensets.

If the line reset very quickly for sure no one went to find a fault,
so they will know which line tripped but the cause may remain a
mystery, lightning strike, bird strike, who knows ?

Sometimes turned off to make a new connection or repair a known fault
according to the bods that visit the substation in my garden.

If it was off for only a second or two that would have been an autorecloser
tripping and resetting due to a bird strike or wet branch getting blown up.

Long enough to find a torch or think "is it going to come back" is more
likely to be switching to route supplies around a fault or possibly switching
feeds to the local 33kV substation. When they switch between the 33kV main
feed and 11kV backup to the local substation here it takes a couple of
minutes.

When the power goes off here I sort out torches and shutdown computers on the
UPS then call the DNO. It's about 50:50 if they have had a call or been
automatically alerted already but they can normally look it up on the system
and say "oh, yes we do have a high voltage fault".

(*) Major being something that affects more than 50 to 100 customers or has
been on going for a long time.

--
Cheers
Dave.