Same as last time, but with LED torches.
Being 'all electric' I always have a torch handy. Have not needed it much but I know where it is.
Other things that are useful are battery clocks (just noticed one on wall is slow so time for new battery). Most mobile phones have an alarm feature.
Back in the 60's and early 70's all the power cuts where scheduled, not sure if it was because my mother was practical or what, but seems to remember it was not that bad.
Be interetsing to see how it deals with my E7 heating though. Will I have to pay a premium to heat the house or will concessions be made,

This has been predicted for about 8 to 10 years now, plenty of time to build some new gas plants, or even get some decent sized wind farms though planning

I suppose I was thinking of us eco minded individuals. As a nation we appear to have lost the ability to act for the common good, not enough New homes being built or power stations!!

Posted By: SteamyTeaSame as last time, but with LED torches.
Being 'all electric' I always have a torch handy.

If you have a smart phone then most (all?) have an app available to turn the led flash for the camera into a flashlamp, they do tend to run the battery down quite quickly but handy to find your way to the torch that is around here somewhere! lol.

Posted By: SteveZKeep a plug-in land-line phone as a spare, as the digital wireless ones don't work when the power goes off

We have no landline in the house at all, our landline number is on VoIP via 4G wireless broadband so entirely dependent on electricity but a helluva lot cheaper than PSTN.

Posted By: TriassicI suppose I was thinking of us eco minded individuals.

Well, there's little we can do to prevent it. You can try to reduce your own demand at times when you think the grid will be maxed out (dark cold winter evenings) but the net effect will be pretty small unless everyone else is joining you.

Apart from that, prepare an emergency kit for blackouts. If you're feeling up to a project, switch some essential loads over to a low-voltage DC system and put them on a battery.

Personally I'm not too worried. Forecast is that the available generation will be sufficient, albeit with a very slim margin of 2% extra capacity. If we have a mild winter or no big faults we won't have any problems. I wouldn't expect severe disruption unless we're very unlucky.

I think it very unlikely that there will be widespread power cuts for the general population. As far as I can tell cuts are likely to be targeted at industrial users who in some cases get cheap electricity in return for being first to be kicked off the grid in a crisis.

I once worked on a chemical works that used enough power for the city of Birmingham and during problem periods we had to do some serious load shedding, to the point we had to do emergency shutdowns of most of the large power users.

Posted By: jms452Easy practical things to avoid powercuts (albeit requiring mass action) would be vampire hunting, LED bulbs and a small LCD TV!

...and not putting the kettle on for a brew during the ad break in corrie!

Posted By: Chris P Bacon...and not putting the kettle on for a brew during the ad break in corrie!

We used to run a 30Mw gas turbine generator set (from cold start to 'on load' in less than 10 minutes) during Corrie (and other mass market trashy soaps) and earned a fortune peak lopping.

And we could also up the power on all of the FIT paymet 500kW turbines that could generate around the 900kW mark. That just seems wrong to me and that comes from a wind power lover.

And a combined wind up torch and mobile phone charger while you are at it...

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Dynamo-Wind-Up-Torch-Mobile-Phone-Charger-Nokia-Ericsson-Samsung-Mini-Micro-USB-/231058687468

My oil boiler system takes around 250W to run (figure from manufacturer). I was thinking about having a small solid state inverter running just the heating from a car battery during the longer cold weather power cuts. Usually, the cuts aren't frequent enough to go to the trouble. Most of our cuts last only seconds - very annoying, through to a few minutes - just long enough for me to call Western Power to see what is going on, to several hours - which is really annoying. When they are long enough to keep the fridge and freezer closed just in case... that's when I resurrect the inverter idea. The big drawback is disconnecting the boiler from the mains during the power cut - I could make it a plug-in, then just unplug from the mains and into the inverter circuit on its own socket. It should work, unless I have missed something.

Hi Ed - it does sound a lot and you might be right about the starting load, but in addition to the circulating pump there is also a high pressure oil pump involved, so it will take more than a gas boiler. My mate has a canal narrow boat and he uses that sort of inverter to run his mains stuff on board. Unless the situation gets really bad, I can't imagine that I'll try it, but it is there as a possible answer

The trouble with UPSs is that they take a bit of power all the time when they're on standby. For CH instant switch over seems a bit of a luxury which doesn't justify that IMHO. In fact, in most circumstances you might welcome the CH going off for a while to conserve your battery at the cost of slightly lower house temperature. UPSs can be a relatively cheap form of higher power inverter, though.

Happens here so frequently it wont make a blind bit of difference. Remember two years ago we where one of the few people in the village who had a Christmas dinner as the power was off till 10 pm. Heating, Cooking taken care of by wood range and stoves. 15 kw diesel generator for electric even the snug has 4 candles per light fitting (16 in total)

Well we got the chance to test our preparedness last week when the power went off for 2 days (about 36 hours) to allow an upgrade to the local overhead cable electrical distribution system. (Should have been one day but 'things went wrong').

Gas cooker worked fine.
Lots of tea lights and candles used, its surprising how dark the house was on a winters daylight.
LED torch and head torch both worked fine, did have spare batteries for one but not the head torch (3volt press stud type) so have now replaced it with one using 'standard' AA batteries. We also keep a stock of AA batteries.
The gas central heating went off for the whole period, so after a day or so, the house was starting to get cool. Extra clothes and duvet used on the bed at night.
Wood burning stove worked fine and kept the living room toasty. If the power went off for an very long period (days/weeks) I can imagine we would just use the one room for sitting, eating and sleeping. We do have about a months supply of wood in stock.
Mobile phones also went off as the power supply to the local transmitter was affected by the work, so had to walk down the street to get a signal. Batteries flat on all mobile phones after about 24 hours.
Land line phone worked fine but we struggled to find the old good fashioned plug in hand set. The line line went dead on the second day as the overhead cable was damaged during the electric cable work and took a further 4 days to find the fault and fix.
No broadband, so not internet access. We tend to use the internet like a phone book, so when we needed to contact people/companies by phone we struggled at time to find the number, resorting to going through old bills and note books for phone numbers.
Pub continued to operate (hand pumped ale), open fires, warmth, no hot food served, no free WiFi. Lots of locals in attendance so a bit of a community spirit going on.
DIY restricted to hand tools only.
Struggled to manually open insulated double 'up and over' garage door (no power to electric opener).