Power Cuts after Storm - a week on

[skwdenyer]

Apologies if I’ve missed a thread on this, but it seems fairly extraordinary to me that we still have tens of thousands of people without power - my aged parents amongst them - a week down the line.

Does this demonstrate a fundamental failure of preparedness and resilience, or was last week’s storm truly exceptional?

Edited by skwdenyer on Thursday 2nd December 13:01

[Bannock]

It demonstrates privatised utilities cost cutting by failing to have enough staff available when these events (inevitably) happen.

Public utilities should be nationally owned and not run for profit.

[skwdenyer]

Bannock said:

It demonstrates privatised utilities cost cutting by failing to have enough staff available when these events (inevitably) happen.

Public utilities should be nationally owned and not run for profit.

I don’t necessarily disagree with you. But equally we are supposed to have a competent regulator who would - one assumes - set basic minima for preparedness. Or am I hopelessly optimistic?

[Bannock]

skwdenyer said:

Bannock said:

It demonstrates privatised utilities cost cutting by failing to have enough staff available when these events (inevitably) happen.

Public utilities should be nationally owned and not run for profit.

I don’t necessarily disagree with you. But equally we are supposed to have a competent regulator who would - one assumes - set basic minima for preparedness. Or am I hopelessly optimistic?

You are hopelessly optimistic.

[skwdenyer]

Bannock said:

skwdenyer said:

Bannock said:

It demonstrates privatised utilities cost cutting by failing to have enough staff available when these events (inevitably) happen.

Public utilities should be nationally owned and not run for profit.

I don’t necessarily disagree with you. But equally we are supposed to have a competent regulator who would - one assumes - set basic minima for preparedness. Or am I hopelessly optimistic?

You are hopelessly optimistic.

Fair enough. My only related experience is that I used to work for Shell’s Pipelines group many years ago. We were involved in managing the U.K. strategic fuel pipelines for HMG. We very definitely had high standards of preparedness and resilience we had to demonstrate - but that was (heaven help me) 30 years ago.

[LimaDelta]

It's like the 'empty hospital beds' situation. How much spare capacity should a system have built in? Should you have enough staff for the necessary repairs from a once-in-decade storm? What about a once-in-a-century storm? What should these people be doing during a normal winter season? How should all the additional equipment be funded? Should the end user (i.e us) pay to keep repair teams on standby, just so services can be restored that little bit quicker during these rare(ish) extreme weather events?

[Vanden Saab]

Cheaper to pay the 'compensation' for a relatively small number of people compared to paying loads of people to fix the problems straight away...

[Bannock]

And that's it. The main motive is profit and shareholder value, not service. So we end up like this.

[ARHarh]

It really doesn't matter, if you have people sitting round waiting for a storm so they can rush to repair a fallen cable, you will pay for them. If they are government run it will come from taxes, if privately owned it will be added to your bill, the only difference is the big cats will not earn the big bonuses, they will still be paid a lot as this has to happen to get someone to do the job.

I would just accept it and make sure you claim compensation https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/consumer/energy/...

Our local supplier are refusing to answer the phones so you can't claim (apparently). The more who claim the more they will think about how to man it under these circumstances.

[Biggy Stardust]

Bannock said:

And that's it. The main motive is profit and shareholder value, not service. So we end up like this.

Have you considered founding your own utility company with your vaues? People of a similar mindset will flock to your banner & be your customers.
Good luck with your new venture- let us know how it goes.

[Bannock]

Biggy Stardust said:

Bannock said:

And that's it. The main motive is profit and shareholder value, not service. So we end up like this.

Have you considered founding your own utility company with your vaues? People of a similar mindset will flock to your banner & be your customers.
Good luck with your new venture- let us know how it goes.

Well no I haven't, for the quite obvious reason that I don't believe utilities should be private companies, because they shouldn't be driven by profit.

[BckFlash]

Up in Aberdeenshire, there have been workers from Wales and Ireland dotting about to assist the usual SSE workers with it being announced today that the Army are also being drafted in to help.

To make matters worse, a lot of areas also lost water and some lost gas too.

Catering vans have been set up in some of the worst affected areas (arranged by SSE) and hotels / town halls etc opened to allow folks hot water / drinks / food / phone charging etc.

The winds were certainly up there with the worst I have seen (onshore) in my life and have caused unprecedented levels of damage to the infrastructure but bad storms aren't uncommon so I'm surprised at the response from the authorities in the delays etc. Community spirit has been good though!

[Lotobear]

A bit of both I think

I live in the sticks, in the NW, and we get a lot of wind - we were off for 48 hours over the weekend and do get the odd power cut during winter but it's usually no more than a few hours

Last Friday was windy but to be honest I've experienecd it windier and not had any interurptions. The wind direction was unsual this time - strong, protracted rather than gusty, and from the north not the usual SW. I think this 'discovered' some vulnerabilities in rural poles and lines not previously tested. Most of our local cuts, and there were many separate incidents, were due to trees felling lines - perhaps they need to extend buffer zones near to distribution lines and fell out more trees.

I'm no apologist BTW and think that public services should be in public onwership

[Sway]

Bannock said:

And that's it. The main motive is profit and shareholder value, not service. So we end up like this.

How does that square with the immense loss of revenue due to no one using their services as they can't be supplied?

Power consumption for the average household more than doubles in winter compared to summer - so it's likely they're losing something in the region of 4-5% of the full year revenues and profits for that whole area...

Shareholders will be screaming at that loss.

[Bannock]

Sway said:

Bannock said:

And that's it. The main motive is profit and shareholder value, not service. So we end up like this.

How does that square with the immense loss of revenue due to no one using their services as they can't be supplied?

Power consumption for the average household more than doubles in winter compared to summer - so it's likely they're losing something in the region of 4-5% of the full year revenues and profits for that whole area...

Shareholders will be screaming at that loss.

Well I would expect unusual events like this to be accounted for in their financial projections, and to be costed in a risk register, and a decision has been made on the basis of that, that it's more profitable to accept the risk than stand up the resources needed to mitigate it should it happen.

[dukeboy749r]

Public ownership with private motivation - i.e. you are allowed to improve service/make a profit, some of which can then go to staff in the form of bonuses, etc.

However, above a certain threshold, national utilities then contribute to a UK fund for insurance/training/resilience provision.

If the initial benefits of privatisation were some additional or needed investment, then offer the same benefit to those who invest to help with raising some needed funds with a slug of interest or a bond repayment.

It went from public ownership which in some cases was dire (British Rail - at times) to private ownership for which we are now seeing the failings of underinvestment.

You cannot solve a problem with the same level of thinking that helped create the problem in the first place (or words to that effect, courtesy of Albert Einstein).

[Biggy Stardust]

Bannock said:

Biggy Stardust said:

Bannock said:

And that's it. The main motive is profit and shareholder value, not service. So we end up like this.

Have you considered founding your own utility company with your vaues? People of a similar mindset will flock to your banner & be your customers.
Good luck with your new venture- let us know how it goes.

Well no I haven't, for the quite obvious reason that I don't believe utilities should be private companies, because they shouldn't be driven by profit.

As we don't have such things there could be a niche for your NFP organisation. You know it's important & can see the need. Do the right thing & become a folk hero.
Alternatively don't complain about how others do it.

[Sway]

Bannock said:

Sway said:

Bannock said:

And that's it. The main motive is profit and shareholder value, not service. So we end up like this.

How does that square with the immense loss of revenue due to no one using their services as they can't be supplied?

Power consumption for the average household more than doubles in winter compared to summer - so it's likely they're losing something in the region of 4-5% of the full year revenues and profits for that whole area...

Shareholders will be screaming at that loss.

Well I would expect unusual events like this to be accounted for in their financial projections, and to be costed in a risk register, and a decision has been made on the basis of that, that it's more profitable to accept the risk than stand up the resources needed to mitigate it should it happen.

In other words, it's not good value for money to have those resources lying around for an average of a couple of weeks work every few years...

So you believe the taxpayer should pay for that inefficient use of resources?

Of course, it's not as simple as just 'standing up resources' - there's access to be cleared and made safe, there's materials and equipment that need to get to site. There's testing and checks post work to confirm safety and appropriate reconnection for the Grid.

These things take time. Throwing bodies at them doesn't mean reductions in overall lead time.

We also as a nation don't help ourselves. In plenty of developed world countries, it's quite normal to have a household UPS/backup generator. Indeed, I've just bought one as I'm installing a large marine aquarium that'll wholly die (costing thousands, let alone the loss of livestock) within two hours of no power...

Of course, the beauty is that we've got directly comparable examples of both private sector provision and public sector.

Do you really believe that multiday power interruptions didn't occur under public sector provision?

[Biggy Stardust]

Sway said:

These things take time. Throwing bodies at them doesn't mean reductions in overall lead time.

It takes a woman 9 months to have a baby. You can't do it in 1 month by impregnating 9 women.

[Camoradi]

When utilities were under the public sector back in the 1970s the power outages were due to industrial action rather than weather events... I remember evenings spent with the house lit with candles and eating cheese sandwiches because we couldn't cook dinner.

I quite miss it really