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A few months back I read the popular Electric Universe by David Bodanis. I was quite taken with his description of the breakdown of society as we know it, should electricity suddenly vanish from our homes, streets and workplaces.
It’s been a few years since we lost power in our village but I suspect the very sudden cold snap caused a break in the underground cable running up our road – cable that we were told when we first moved here and suffered the first power loss, was laid in the 1930’s and is somewhat fragile.
We awoke to something like 2 degrees centigrade outside, although with the bedroom window open it was pretty cold inside as well. The dishwasher having stopped mid-cycle pinpointed the time of loss at around 2 in the morning. And that’s when you hit the first problem. How in hell was I going to get a cup of tea? Tea to me is like fuel. I don’t want to converse until I’ve had a mug or two yet alone work out the problem of how to use the shower which needs to have the waste pumped away. At least I don’t eat breakfast so that was one problem that didn’t need facing.
So – no heat – oil fired boiler needs electricity to work as well as pump the water around. No tea – electric kettle only and no gas. No shower. Last thing last night I put my razor on to charge so no shave. No internet connection to check up on the morning email. No phone if you’ve got one like ours and did I charge up my mobile? The list goes on and on…
I am, like I suspect most people are, completely dependent upon the continued flow of the electric current. Take that away – even for just a few hours – and I am lost in a world where nothing works as it should and I have no backup plan. And when the power came back at around 3 this afternoon the first reaction is relief and the second is to almost pretend it didn’t happen and all thoughts of constructing a wind turbine in the garden and dressing up the roof with solar panels vanish like snow on water. Deep down there is that belief that PowerGen or whoever will always be there.
One rather amusing side-note came when I spoke to my neighbour later in the day who apologised for the early morning noise – which I hadn’t heard. Seems that desperate for his toast he had fired up his diesel generator…
I didn’t quite think about it in america… well, REALLY think about it. Then when I moved to Pakistan i realized how important electricity is.. we have about 4 hours of outages a day.
And that’s why i got my very own huge diesel generator to spew out enough power to run the house
And they do make a lot of noise–and pollution!
Here’s to hoping that the lights never go down in the UK!
I lose power occasionally during storms, but usually only for a few hours. During a hurricane (I think it was Isabelle), our transformer blew up, and since it was just our street affected, we were about LAST on the priority list! There were so many trees down that about 1/2 the region was without power. Luckily for me, the next street over HAD power & I knew a lot of those people (from years of walking the dog over there…) I took my frozen food to a neighbor’s freezer, then lived for 3 days like camping out! It was late summer so warm enough to take a shower (and I have gas hot water heater anyway!) No TV, no computer, went to bed when it got dark… I was VERY glad when the power was back! We’re all WAY too reliant on electricity. (When I build my dream retirement house, it’ll be mostly solar – and I’ll sell the excess BACK to the power grid!!!)
Actually it’s Sue not Kirsty today! I’m in Woodford Green and I’m frozen. It’s not that the electric power has gone, but the central heating has broken down. The thing is, why does everything break just when you need it most? I have been plagued with hot flushes throughout the year, but now I need to generate my own heat, not one !! Years ago the power went down in Debden Broadway and x-hubby dashed to bring candles to customers notice, and of course they sold well. Shop staff were all confident with their mental arithmetic, to cater for times like these when the till wasn’t working .Anyway, it was one of those rare times that the bank manager was due to visit the shop, and chaos was well underway. A borrowed generator was set up at the rear of the shop so customers could still browse around safely. Not only was the machine a noisey and smelly contraption but suddenly it decided to liven up the massive pile of bog rolls which became ‘hot stuff’ just in time for the arrival of the expected visitor. Flames were quickly put out, but I can’t help thinking about the dangers when we try to cope with alternative power sources in emergency. I suppose we should really aim to be proactive and plan for the ‘just in case’ scenario.
Hi Sue
Nice story! But there you go – it’s one way you can keep warm without the boiler – set fire to the house
I’ve just had my boiler replaced two weeks back and the engineer was flooded with callout calls for breakdowns. They sit there all summer and folks don’t get the service done and then expect them to fire right up…
By the way I feel guilty about not being in touch but I’ll do that tomorrow and explain why… and hope you warm up soon.
Solar water heating will save you around 1/3rd of your electric bill every month. Not an exaggeration, do the math
Go Green!