"fred" wrote in message ...
In article o.uk, Dave
Liquorice writes
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.

A favourite recollection of a failure of such a backup was a repeated one
at a major BT installation where starting the backup generator produced a
puff of smoke which was drawn in through an air intake to a smoke
detector, causing the fire alarm to trigger and forcing the generator to
be shut down.

Why didn't that happen during routine testing?
Important sites have more than one generator as one just isn't reliable
enough.
Maybe it was just offices?