Knowing when the power might go off

As you will no doubt have heard over and over again, there is the potential for there to be planned power outages in the coming weeks/months due to energy supplies across Europe being under extreme pressure.

There is a look-up table (sadly too large to post here) that will tell you when your planned slots are and it depends on a letter that is secreted somewhere on your bill - here is a sample of my bill that shows what you are looking for, but essentially it is a capital letter in a box, most likely on the header of the bill.




(PS - you are welcome to the full bill if you would like to pay it! )


There are 18 severity levels, with 1 being the least and 18 being complete blackout of the entire country.

Using my bill as the example, level 1 would see me without power:
Friday 1530-1830
Saturday 0630-0930 and 2130-0030

Although each block of outage is for three hours, due to the vagaries of switching of the grid, it can take a further hour for power to be restored.

Be aware that just because you are of a certain letter (connection block) that DOES NOT mean that your neighbours share the same block, so it is entirely possible for you to be without power and a neighbour will still have power; it is reasonable to expect that it will be groups of houses (same side of the street perhaps, or a row of houses maybe) but there is no guarantee of how you and those around you will be affected.

If you want a clue as to when you may be affected (lets say for levels 1-3 at the moment, and hope that it doesn't get worse than that), please pop your letter in a post tagging me and I will endeavour to tell you as soon as I can. As the thread develops, please take a look to see if your letter is already featured somewhere.

 

That is it for level 1, yes - use that in correlation with the prior grid and you've got it

 

T:
Level 1:

Friday 4: 0930-1230
Saturday 1: 0030-0330

Level 2:
Thursday 8: 2130-0030
Friday 2 & 4: 0330-0630 & 0930-1230
Saturday 1 & 5: 0030-0330 & 1230-1530
Sunday 6: 1530-1830

Level 3:
Monday 7: 1830 - 2130
Thursday 8: 2130 - 0030
Friday 2, 4 & 6: 0330-0630, 0930-1230 & 1530-1830
Saturday 1, 3 & 5:0030-0330, 0630-0930 & 1230-1530
Sunday 6: 1530-1830

I think we've all got to hope it doesn't really go above 3 at absolute worst

 

Sorry @Balc, I worked backwards up this thread and literally have puppy dog eyes looking at me to go to bed. I will reply tomorrow with your info.

 

The severity level will be announced, most likely by National Grid and that will be distributed via TV/radio/online media. The good news is that the mild start to the winter has allowed two things to happen - stocks of gas to be built up and the price of gas on the wholesale markets to drop (not that the latter will be passed on to us!)

For R the info is:

Level 1:
Thursday 6: 1530-1830
Friday 3 & 8: 0630-0930 & 2130-0030

Level 2:
Thursday 4 & 6: 0930-1230 & 1530-1830
Friday 1, 3 & 8: 0030-0330, 0630-0930 & 2130-0030

Level 3:
Wednesday 7: 1830-2130
Thursday 2, 4 & 6: 0330-0630, 0930-1230 & 1530-1830
Friday 1, 3, 5 & 8: 0030-0330, 0630-0930, 1230-1530 & 2130-0030
Sunday 5 & 7: 1230-1530 & 1830-2130

 

It will depend on your supplier, but my understanding is that this letter legally must be shown somewhere - there may be a way to download bills/statements in your online account manager maybe or if not, you could pop your supplier a message and ask them what your "Rota Load Block Identifier" is.

 

I should add here that any premises that is on supply load block V will see no outages as they are protected premises (police stations, hospitals, fire stations etc)