On Thu, 27 Feb 2014 08:15:41 -0000, Dave Baker wrote:

Since moving to the middle of feckin nowhere in Aberdeenshire it's been
about a dozen times in 18 months.

Well if you don't like it move back to crowded, boring, dirty,
smelly, suburbia...

How long does the power have to be off for you to call it a "power
cut"?

... but finally I phoned up the power company yesterday when the phone
started working again ...

The phone didn't work? You don't have a line powered phone plugged in
to the line? Bit daft, DECT things won't work without mains... If the
power goes here, after finding a tourch or two and reducing the load
on the UPS to minimum I'm straight on the phone to the DNO. Normally
first to report the outage, more often than not beating the automatic
reporting as well, that might come through during the call.

... and it had knocked out the power to 352 houses over a several mile
area ...

Well in a rural area a single 11 kV line can easily be feeding that
number of houses and being rural thats almost certainly going to be a
large area. Also 352 house is no great load; base load of a house 1
kW, 352 houses, 352 kW @ 11 kV is only 32 A.

The wires may look thin from the ground but there is a peculiar law
that says things that look big up in the air are small at ground
level but things that look small up in the air are big at ground
level. Round here the 11 kV lines are "wires" about 1 cm dia, that's
80 mm^2. Even several miles isn't going to have a great volt drop,
and they can compensate for that to some extent by using different
tappings on the transformers.

... and was reported in as "an explosion at the top of a power pole in
someone's garden".

That's been the fault here for the last couple of times.

So I'm happy it isn't just my house or its supply but surprised it
happens so often. Is this just a "living in the sticks" sort of thing we
have to get used to?

12 outages in 18 months is a bit high, we get about 1 a year that
requires the backup systems to be brought into action and maybe 2 or
3 interuptions a year that only last a second or two as something
trips the auto recloser and it puts the power back.

If all those outage are of the order of 10's of minutes or longer ie
no "off for a second or two" it might be that your supply is not via
an auto-recloser so if something trips the protection a man has to
come out a reset it. Badger the DNO to put one in...

The longest was 36 hours the other year after an ice storm that
brought down the lines in many places and snapped half a dozen poles.


Power cuts happen. Even in suburbia, I'd still have handy backups
maybe not the generator or the two ring & grill camping stove or the
portable gas fire but the gas lanterns and a simple gas camping stove
for certain. Gas lanterns are by far the best light source, flat out
they chuck out more light than a 60 W tungsten bulb, have run times
measured in many hours and a "recharge" is just a cyclinder swap.

--
Cheers
Dave.