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Heads up – effectively offline for now

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Re: Heads up – effectively offline for now

#51

Post by pgt »

madeofpalk wrote: post #18

I cannot imagine losing power for an hour, let alone a week. I grew up in rural Australia and it's completely unfathomable to me that anywhere in the first world could go without power for so long.

Here in South Africa we have had rolling blackouts every day for the last 18 years. Of course it has been rebranded as "loadshedding" by the government.

The power is off for 2-9 hours every day, even in densely populated areas. Everyone who can afford it, has their own battery and inverter setup to keep lights, Internet, freezers and security systems running.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_energy_crisis

Re: Heads up – effectively offline for now

#52

Post by harshreality »

madeofpalk wrote: post #18

I cannot imagine losing power for an hour, let alone a week. I grew up in rural Australia and it's completely unfathomable to me that anywhere in the first world could go without power for so long.

A lot of people have trees growing over, or very close to, power lines; during storms, high winds or ice accumulation cause many branches to break. Around here, utility crews periodically prune trees back from the wires, but a significant storm will still see hundreds of thousands without power. After a day or two they get it down to tens of thousands; fixing all of those can take many days. One downed power line can be repaired in an hour, but 1000s take a while. Some of the tail-end of repairs are more complicated, too.

Hurricanes, long-track tornadoes, and earthquakes are even worse.

It's not that technology is lacking, it's that the cost of making infrastructure resilient to very bad weather (worse than Australia sees) is too high. Most people who want to do something about it buy a generator, which solves most of their problem even though in aggregate it's terribly inefficient.

Re: Heads up – effectively offline for now

#53

Post by dukeyukey »

raesene9 wrote: post #31
madeofpalk wrote: post #18

I cannot imagine losing power for an hour, let alone a week. I grew up in rural Australia and it's completely unfathomable to me that anywhere in the first world could go without power for so long.

Really not that uncommon in rural areas. I'm in the Scottish highlands (only an hour from Glasgow) and when the winter storms come in, we can be out of power for some hours, there's been a couple of instances in the last year, so not common, but not unheard of either. That's not a major surprise as the power company often has to fix lines in pretty stormy conditions in thinly populated areas. Our solution to it has b…

I'll say though, I grew up in rural West Wales, and I don't think we ever had a power cut lasting longer than an hour or two, and even that only happened a few times a decade. It's not an area known for nasty weather though.

Re: Heads up – effectively offline for now

#54

Post by jl6 »

pgt wrote: post #51
madeofpalk wrote: post #18

I cannot imagine losing power for an hour, let alone a week. I grew up in rural Australia and it's completely unfathomable to me that anywhere in the first world could go without power for so long.

Here in South Africa we have had rolling blackouts every day for the last 18 years. Of course it has been rebranded as "loadshedding" by the government. The power is off for 2-9 hours every day, even in densely populated areas. Everyone who can afford it, has their own battery and inverter setup to keep lights, Internet, freezers and security systems running. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_energy_crisis

Is there a market for private "local" power plants, like maybe a small out of town solar farm?

Re: Heads up – effectively offline for now

#55

Post by HumanOstrich »

cactusplant7374 wrote: post #15
Zandikar wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It uses power like everything else.

Torvalds can't afford a battery? An M process can probably last for several days with an external battery.

You think he does Linux builds on a Mac?

Re: Heads up – effectively offline for now

#56

Post by BiteCode_dev »

madeofpalk wrote: post #18

I cannot imagine losing power for an hour, let alone a week. I grew up in rural Australia and it's completely unfathomable to me that anywhere in the first world could go without power for so long.

Then you should practice. The chances you never experience it are low, and better learn when you don't have to.

Besides, it will give you a better appreciation of human achivements once you don't take hot water for granted.

Re: Heads up – effectively offline for now

#57

Post by wkipling »

stetrain wrote: post #43
madeofpalk wrote: post #18

I cannot imagine losing power for an hour, let alone a week. I grew up in rural Australia and it's completely unfathomable to me that anywhere in the first world could go without power for so long.

Rural Australia has its own extremes, but does it get much severe weather? I think blizzards, ice storms, tornados, and hurricanes are more common in North America and it's pretty tough to secure infrastructure against those with 100% uptime.

Bushfires, cyclones, floods, extreme heat and the biggest thunderstorms you'll ever see. Yeah I'd say that's severe weather.

Re: Heads up – effectively offline for now

#58

Post by paganel »

Nullabillity wrote: post #48
paganel wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "oh but everybody has outages on the countryside". Everybody definitely still has outages in the Romanian countryside now, my parents (who live in the countryside somewhere in South-Eastern Romania) did have one for two or three days when there was that freakish snow-storm around last November - beginning of December. Not to mention the constant light flickering, I'm wondering how come all the electrical appliances…

I didn't read the comment as "and this never happens anywhere", but "and when this happens, it's due to shit infrastructure, and you can and should demand better". If you're in an environment that has strong enough winds to cause issues for power poles... you bury the fucking cables .

And then it becomes very tedious to service them. Or some guy digs a hole in front of his house and suddenly half of the county is without power, with that guy in intensive care. To say nothing of the fact than in 20 or 30 years' time everyone will have forgotten which cables are buried where, because that happens all the time, almost everywhere.

Re: Heads up – effectively offline for now

#59

Post by chmod775 »

jl6 wrote: post #54
pgt wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in South Africa we have had rolling blackouts every day for the last 18 years. Of course it has been rebranded as "loadshedding" by the government. The power is off for 2-9 hours every day, even in densely populated areas. Everyone who can afford it, has their own battery and inverter setup to keep lights, Internet, freezers and security systems running. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_energy_crisis

Is there a market for private "local" power plants, like maybe a small out of town solar farm?

Yes, but the corrupt people running that shitshow try to prevent anyone from doing such things because it makes them look bad and might cut into the profits they're extracting from the lifeless body of South Africa's infrastructure.

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2023-04-06-frankfort...

In that instance or another owners of a solar farm even provided their excess power to the town free of charge.

Re: Heads up – effectively offline for now

#60

Post by sontek »

I've been living in Puerto Rico for 5 years now where power outages are so common (monthly at a minimum) that I decided to go fully off grid and its been an eye opening experience.

I think if I moved back to the mainland, I'd still bring some of the preparations I do here like:

  * Having a transfer switch for a generator that powers small parts of the house
  * Solar panels -- They are too cheap not to.  It at least gives you power for five or six hours a day even if you don't have batteries or a generator.
  * Cistern for water.  Having a few hundred gallons of water storage is a game changer when there is a power outage and the water can't get to your house.
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