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Green Building Bible, Fourth Edition
Green Building Bible, fourth edition (both books)
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    • CommentAuthorTriassic
    • CommentTimeOct 17th 2013
     
    The Royal Academy of Engineering said the closure of older power plants and the slow progress in building news ones was likely to stretch the system "close to its limits".

    Supply is expected to be most under strain during the winter of 2014-15.

    Last week the National Grid warned of a higher risk of blackouts this winter.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24560196

    So what should we be doing to protect ourselves from this threat?
    •  
      CommentAuthorSteamyTea
    • CommentTimeOct 17th 2013 edited
     
    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 :devil:
    • CommentAuthorSeret
    • CommentTimeOct 17th 2013
     
    Posted By: Triassic
    So what should we be doing to protect ourselves from this threat?


    We as individuals, or we as a nation?
    • CommentAuthorTriassic
    • CommentTimeOct 17th 2013
     
    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!!
    • CommentAuthorSteveZ
    • CommentTimeOct 17th 2013
     
    Keep a plug-in land-line phone as a spare, as the digital wireless ones don't work when the power goes off
  1.  
    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.
    • CommentAuthormarktime
    • CommentTimeOct 17th 2013
     
    Having experienced rolling blackouts the basics that worked were the following.

    2.75 kg butane gas cylinder (Camping gas)
    Stove top
    Gas light
    LED camping light
    Torches (Note plural)
    Spare batteries
    Candles

    Add basic emergency kit such as a battery radio and bottled water while your at it.

    And take the landline-telephone advice from Stevez.
    • CommentAuthorSeret
    • CommentTimeOct 17th 2013
     
    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.
    •  
      CommentAuthorfostertom
    • CommentTimeOct 17th 2013
     
    Posted By: TriassicSo what should we be doing to protect ourselves from this threat?
    http://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/forum114/comments.php?DiscussionID=11273&page=1#Item_27 - my post of 17 Oct 2013.
    • CommentAuthorCWatters
    • CommentTimeOct 17th 2013
     
    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.
  2.  
    Or you could Google "Doomsday preppers" and get advice on being really prepared! :shocked:
    • CommentAuthorTriassic
    • CommentTimeOct 17th 2013
     
    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.
    • CommentAuthorjms452
    • CommentTimeOct 17th 2013
     
    I agree its (very) unlikely given ofgem's report.

    That said any blackouts would be on freezing winter evenings - i.e. most boilers wouldn't work so a wood burner is reassuring.


    Easy practical things to avoid powercuts (albeit requiring mass action) would be vampire hunting, LED bulbs and a small LCD TV!
  3.  
    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!
    •  
      CommentAuthorfostertom
    • CommentTimeOct 17th 2013
     
    or not watching corrie, or anything - keep the winter woolies mending up to date instead! Like I do - not.
    • CommentAuthorTriassic
    • CommentTimeOct 17th 2013 edited
     
    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.
    •  
      CommentAuthorSteamyTea
    • CommentTimeOct 17th 2013
     
    I don't think that putting a few kettles on during ad breaks is the problem. Those problems are well understood and managed.

    The problem is lack of generation capacity. But then it is not surprising as no one wants any national infrastructure near them, and in the case of wind and tidal, not at all, it seems BANANA
  4.  
    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.:confused:
    • CommentAuthorskyewright
    • CommentTimeOct 17th 2013 edited
     
    Posted By: marktimeHaving experienced rolling blackouts the basics that worked were the following.
    [SNIP]
    Torches (Note plural)
    Spare batteries

    & / or wind up torch(es).

    Some are so small that it's no bother just to carry one around in a pocket (e.g.
    http://www.maplin.co.uk/wind-up-micro-keyring-torch-353499).
  5.  
    •  
      CommentAuthorSteamyTea
    • CommentTimeOct 17th 2013
     
    Starting to remind me of the Max Headroom film. Society was collapsing (the future was never going to end well in the past) and the homeless sat around a fire with their TV's plugged into old car batteries.

    Many of the scheduled outages will be during daylight hours as the loads are higher then.
    • CommentAuthorSteveZ
    • CommentTimeOct 17th 2013
     
    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.
    • CommentAuthorEd Davies
    • CommentTimeOct 17th 2013 edited
     
    250 W sounds quite a lot. It could be the peak when the boiler is starting or something.

    The gas boiler in my old house took negligible electricity (watts). The CH circulating pump took about 80 W when running - don't remember the starting peak.

    I'd be a bit nervous of running a circulating pump or other inductive loads (e.g., fridge) off a “modified sine wave” (i.e., lumpy near-square wave) inverter. Probably be OK but could end in tears.

    If it's really 250 W then that's about 20 amps out of a 12 V battery. You wouldn't want to make a habit out of taking more than an hour's worth out of a typical 80 Ah car battery if you want to use it more than a few times.
    • CommentAuthorSteveZ
    • CommentTimeOct 17th 2013
     
    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
  6.  
    SteveZ you might think of getting computer UPS box (UPS= uninterrupted power supply) These typically have a 12v battery in them and its not difficult to unofficially add a larger battery from the outside. They are dirty square wave however rather than sine wave but I have run a CH pump and boiler fan without problems. (the motors seemed a bit nosier tho) you just need to make sure you get one large enough to take your load + a bit. one advantage with them is a no break switch over, they supply mains (sine wave) in normal mode and when the power fails they switch to battery power when the mains fail. when mains returns they switch back and charge the battery, which is normally on trickle charge anyway.
    • CommentAuthorEd Davies
    • CommentTimeOct 17th 2013
     
    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.
    • CommentAuthoratomicbisf
    • CommentTimeOct 17th 2013
     
    This happened in South Africa a few years ago for similar reasons, the government prevented the state-owned electricity company ESKOM from building any new power stations even though there was rising demand, in order to prepare for private sector generation which never materialised.

    They had to introduce load-shedding and power was cut off to different areas according to a pre-announced timetable. Eventually ESKOM was allowed to build the power stations and the problem was solved.

    I would expect that if there is really a serious power shortage there will be load-shedding at set times rather than unplanned power cuts.
  7.  
    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)
    • CommentAuthorskyewright
    • CommentTimeOct 17th 2013
     
    Posted By: Peter_in_HungarySteveZ you might think of getting computer UPS box (UPS= uninterrupted power supply)

    Some of the newer APC models will only run for 2 hours max. This is apparently hard wired/code? I have several APC Back-UPS 650's. The older ones will run a low demand load for hours & hours, but the newest quits at spot on 2hrs even though the configuration is just the same.
    • CommentAuthorTriassic
    • CommentTimeDec 11th 2013
     
    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).
   
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