Important information Preparing for a power cut.

[ericmark]

Personally, to my mine, the answer to power shortage is to return to the old idea of a lighting and power supply to homes, maybe not so well-defined, but a smart meter with two outputs, one primary for lights, central heating etc, and one cheaper supply for EV's, cookers, sockets etc which the supplier is allowed to turn off without notice.

The problem is people cheating of course, this happened with the lighting and power supply, which was why maybe it was discontinued.

But with the amount of solar power take up, to turn off sections of the grid would require a massive amount of power to turn it back on again, as all the solar arrays will have locked out.

My grid use yesterday

shows my solar was 2 kWh in excess of my consumption, and I have used the grid as a battery, drawing overnight at off-peak, and exporting during the day. It is not worth it for me to get more batteries with a limited life to become self-sufficient.

 

[JohnW2]

No, I don't - I do mean lithium-iron. Lithium-iron disulphide to be precise. There are other, better, lithium primary cell technologies, but the attraction of Li-FeS₂ is that the cells are 1.5V, so they just drop straight into anything designed to use alkaline cells.

Primary lithium batteries

www.microbattery.com

Thanks. Very interesting, and I'm sorry to have 'doubted you'.

I didn't really know much about these battery technologies, so took at face value (i.e. assumed to be correct) what flameport wrote to me , in his usual very 'assertive' style....

..... That Energizer battery is a non-rechargeable lithium item, of the type which contains a non-trivial amount of actual lithium metal. More of a firestarter than any kind of fire detection equipment.

... followed by ....

Primary lithium (non-rechargeable) contain lithium metal, rechargeable 'lithium' do not contain any metallic lithium at all, it's all lithium salts, as in lithium-ion.

Maybe he would benefit a little from reading the article to which you linked?

 

[morqthana]

Presented with 2 emergency lights from my wife. View attachment 395247I charged it and then tried it, yes it does what it says on the packet. But not really what I wanted, I want something which auto lights in a power cut so I can find it.

Google Search

 

[mikehammer69]

Google Search

There is actual a little trick there when it suits

Replace regular light with a Pir/Emergency light and key switch .No wiring needed.

So for example, your regular hallway pendant that could be replaced with a round pir fitting with emergency backup

 

[Koolpc]

Prepare for a power cut
Here are some things you can do to prepare for a power cut:
Oh, come on, do they really need to tell people to keep a torch and batteries, etc? But it did prompt me to make a lead so I can use a 12 volt battery to run lights, but how often do we get power cuts? So the web link here now the web does tell you to check it has not tripped in the house. But the leaflet through the door does not even say to do that.

So what do you do to prepare?

I have fire flies that i have in a jar in my kennel...

 

[SUNRAY]

Actually they're not - it's the analogue phone service which used to run over them which is rapidly going away.

Actually they are being phased out - any 'ordinary' phone line on a copper pair will eventually originate at a street cabinet and derived from the fibre optic network. As is the case for my home phoneline and as we found out recently my suspicions that there is no battery back-up in the cabinet was confirmed.

Copper pairs 'back to the exchange' will only be available for specialist services.

 

[SUNRAY]

Car usb socket for phone charging

SIM card for a different network as mine often goes with power

Spds and voltage protection relay , haven’t got to fitting yet .

The 2 phone base stations I have access to have no battery back-up for any of the services on site.

 

[ericmark]

The 2 phone base stations I have access to have no battery back-up for any of the services on site.

Bring back RAYNET all is forgiven? Well I think it is still running here, but the mobile phone, and the PMR466 handy resulted in RAYNET in many areas disbanding, as the events which allowed them to practice and get a little money to keep them running dried up. Not enough income to pay for the insurance, so disbanded.

I used to have a ruck sack with all the gear in, so I could respond fast. I did not start until after the Prestatyn floods, where the railway embankment breached, and the telephone exchange flooded, together with a lot of other things, but it left the emergency services without any commutation to know what was going on. Lucky RAYNET was able to step in.

Likely in my close-knit community, the local railway would be able to step in, they have PMR466 radios and a repeater with other radios so they could link to town 8 miles away. Seems odd, when it was the railway which first brought phones to the UK.

But it relies on people knowing whose door to knock on for help.