Elsewhere I came across a link to this report, "Living without Electricity, One city's experience of coping with loss of power". From the foreword :
In December 2015, life for more than 100,000 people in Lancaster reverted to a pre-electronics era. A flood at an electricity substation resulted in a blackout over the entire city that lasted for more than 24 hours. Suddenly people realised that, without electricity, there is no internet, no mobile phones, no contactless payment, no lifts and no petrol pumps. Although these dependencies were not difficult to see, few had thought through the implications of losing so many aspects of modern life at once.
Three months after the event, Lancaster University brought together representatives from local organisations with policy makers and power system specialists. The conclusions of the workshop are summarised in this report. The failure of the power supply in Lancaster was an important reminder that things will occasionally go wrong and we must learn the lessons from such events.
Basically, for historical reasons, all 3 132kV feeds for the city go into one substation down by the river, with Storm Desmond in Dec 2015 the river level rose higher than the improved flood protection for the substation, and the city got blacked out. From the sound of things, Electricity Northwest (ENWL, the DNO) did an amazing job of getting supplies back up.
Makes very interesting and sobering reading. I think a lot of us will have thought about the dependence of things like the internet and mobiles on electricity. But the majority of people probably just assume that they "will always be there" - especially with a belief that "mobiles don't need power"
In December 2015, life for more than 100,000 people in Lancaster reverted to a pre-electronics era. A flood at an electricity substation resulted in a blackout over the entire city that lasted for more than 24 hours. Suddenly people realised that, without electricity, there is no internet, no mobile phones, no contactless payment, no lifts and no petrol pumps. Although these dependencies were not difficult to see, few had thought through the implications of losing so many aspects of modern life at once.
Three months after the event, Lancaster University brought together representatives from local organisations with policy makers and power system specialists. The conclusions of the workshop are summarised in this report. The failure of the power supply in Lancaster was an important reminder that things will occasionally go wrong and we must learn the lessons from such events.
Basically, for historical reasons, all 3 132kV feeds for the city go into one substation down by the river, with Storm Desmond in Dec 2015 the river level rose higher than the improved flood protection for the substation, and the city got blacked out. From the sound of things, Electricity Northwest (ENWL, the DNO) did an amazing job of getting supplies back up.
Makes very interesting and sobering reading. I think a lot of us will have thought about the dependence of things like the internet and mobiles on electricity. But the majority of people probably just assume that they "will always be there" - especially with a belief that "mobiles don't need power"
