Another chilly night looms for resident of Gifford St, the Bemerton estate and the West of the Cally road as a massive power outage hits the area. A high voltage cable has burned out, probably in Cally Road on Friday night and the area to the West of the Cally as far as Gifford St has been without power for up to 36 hours.
EdF (contact details here) has shipped in some big generators which they plug into the sub-stations. But there is a generation game going on as the one they dropped on Pembroke St for Gifford and the North Bemerton ran out of diesel, causing angry scenes on the pavement. It is also doubtful whether they have enough generation capacity. In the meantime Cally road is being dug up to find the cable. I can post this because Rufford St runs off a different substation on Randells Road – which had its high voltage cables replaced recently and York Way dug up for some time.
The police are no doubt looking forward to a night on the estates with no power for door entry/closure systems or TVs……
…
Kings Cross Environment 
The grid power supply was resumed about 4.30pm on Sunday (marked by another disconnection, of course). All together, the neighbourhood was without electricity between 9am and 8pm Friday and again for most of daytime Saturday. The critical point about all this was the immense uncertainty about how long the fault would take to fix and how reliable the temporary generation capacity would be (on Saturday morning the emergency power plant failed and the larger replacement unit would not start. The first unit was brought back and powered-up with the emergency crew saying they just hoped it would be sufficient!.
The frustrating thing is that EDF is an almost completely impenetrable organisation. Emergency workers had a rough idea of what was going on but absolutely no-one was available by ‘phone nor was anything posted online to explain (mind you, online wasn’t much use during the powered-off hours). Word trickled out that the main problem was a cable under Caledonian Road (outside Pentonville Prison) that burned-out and was eventually repaired Sunday afternoon.
It seems that two systems failed by Friday morning – the first one went late on Thursday night with a short break that caused lights to dim and computers to reboot (Grrrr). So, I’m not completely re-assured that a reliable supply has actually been restored. I have now written to EDF’s corporate affairs asking for a full explanation and a commitment that the supply west of Caledonian Road is now fully reliable.
If anyone finds out how to (a) complain (particularly for those of us affected by the failure of the generator) and (b) how to apply for compensation (lost work, spoiled freezer food etc) please can they pass it on? I wrote to the email address on the little leaflet the poor guys on the street were handing out–customer.relations@edfenergy.com–on Monday asking how to do both these things but have had nowt back and it’s Thursday. Since many of us on the Bemerton & in Gifford St not only suffered the 9.30-8pm outage on Friday but the wholly unnecessary outage from 7am to 7pm on Saturday, 23 hours without juice seems excessive. Yes, the guys fixing the mains under the Ferodo bridge said there’d been a burn out there, and had identified a further one to fix when we spoke to them on Saturday afternoon. Entirely separate from that, of course, was the failure to refuel the generator at the sub-station on Pembroke St, the installation of another which immediately broke down, its removal, the reinstallation of the previous generator, and then the long wait for a man to come in a car from Maidstone to drain and refuel it. You might have thought that it would be possible to find someone in one of the greatest cities of the world who could do this job, rather than getting a man to trail up the M2 on a Saturday afternoon, but that, as the guys waiting on the street were very aware, seems to be the price of outsourcing essential services. Still, I asked them to try and get it back on in time for Dr Who, and they did.
the energy watch web site has a handy page on the issues surrounding power loss and compensation
go here
http://www.energywatch.org.uk/your_questions/index.asp
and type ‘power cut compensation’ into the search box
it throws up some handy links but the text is as follows
>>The main rules are that you will generally qualify for compensation if your electricity goes off for:
*
more than 18 hours, or
*
more than 4 times in one year, for at least 3 hours each time.
The amount you might get for an unexpected power cut would be £50 for the first 18 hours, with £25 for each further 12 hours without power. There are exemptions to this and your distributor (DNO) shall advise if these apply.
To claim compensation, you should write to your electricity distribution company within 3 months of getting your power back on.
As well as this, energy companies can always consider individual cases – so if you feel you have suffered hardship as a result of the power cut, however long you were without electricity – you should contact your company.
If you are told a payment will not be made to you, but you still feel you are entitled to compensation, you can ask energywatch to investigate for you and may choose to seek a formal Determination by the Regulator, Ofgem. Ofgem will then decide whether or not you are entitled to a payment under the Guaranteed Standards. Contact us if you would like more information.
Your electricity supply company and your distributor do not guarantee a supply 100% of the time. They will not normally pay for damage to equipment, loss of frozen food etc. You will need to check your household insurance policy to see if you can make a claim.
The rules are contained in The Electricity (Standards of Performance) Regulations 2005 (Note: this link goes to the Office of Public Sector Information website, http://www.opsi.gov.uk).