Dawlish News
Power Outage
An early riser, I yet again found myself in the darkness gazing enviously into town, across to the Bartons, Coronation and Oaklands, all ablaze with electric light. Yet again, the north of the town has been plunged into pre-industrial, electricity-free blankness. Last year it was the snow; last night it was the wind, no doubt. This is something we expect at least once a year as our supply on this side comes from overhead cables. A few years ago in the small hours of a quiet night we were treated to a spectacular sound and light display as the connection at a pylon in the field opposite shorted, sparked and eventually killed our supply.
We have also come to expect at any time the multiple “mini” outages of a few seconds or minutes. All this comes at the price of disrupted clocks, alarms, modems, PVR recorders, washing machines etc: The full gamut of modern electrical appliances. Infuriatingly there might be multiple mini outages in a row leaving you wondering if it’s alright to reset the appliances yet.
Although Western Power Distribution usually deal with the outages efficiently, it’s not really the point. The infrastructure is not fit for purpose and as extreme weather events occur more frequently with climate change, it can only get worse.
PS. This should have gone into general discussion but the system won't let me change it!!
I’m in the same area & our electricity used to come via overhead cables & was fairly reliable but about 5 years ago we were transferred on the grounds of “safety” to an underground cable which was fed by the sub-station located on the new-ish estate of houses at Upper Longlands. Since then, we seem to have had power cut after power cut & have often suffered the annoyance of our neighbours having lights & power whilst we were plunged into darkness & often when we notified Western Power they had no idea we were off. I think that the problem lies with the infrastructure, which has not been upgraded sufficiently to be able to cope with additional loads, a common story these days, it seems.