On 27/02/2014 09:36, Brian Gaff wrote:
Well in a wy it is, but its also lack of inspection.

NEDL are not too bad up here in North Yorkshire and replaced our aging
once insulated copper three phase with the insulation all hanging off
arcing and sparking in the rain with new aluminium hauser based cable
about a decade ago. Very impressive stuff it is too.

Many years ago people used to walk the lines and get trees pruned that
might hit the cables and look for overheating transformers etc, but I have
the feeling that they now plan on a given life for hardware, and do not look
so often at long low runs of cable near trees.

They seem to come around about very five years and give close trees a
haircut or sooner if the parish council points out a problem to them.

Some of it is based on smarter risk management in that regions with no
trees require a lot less inspection. It doesn't always work but you can
pretty much predict where the most likely damage hotspots will be.

I've also heard via some comments from people that Ofcom are getting more
reports of interference from insulators than used to be the case, so I'd
suggest less inspection is definitely going on, or not if you get my drift.
ask a person who lives in Norfolk, they have similar issues.
Brian

When you live in a rural backwater you have to accept that you are
pretty much last in line when it comes to restoring power. If one team
of engineers can reconnect 100,000 people in a nearby city or go off and
do 1000 people in a difficult to reach village the choice is clear!

--
Regards,
Martin Brown