Power blackout in Spon End this evening...

[dutchman]

Part of Spon End was without electricity this evening from some time after 8.00pm till just before 11.00pm.

This included the part where I live and so the server on which the message board is hosted was offline for nearly three hours. There were some temporary restorations of power which lasted just a few minutes, I assume so engineers could pinpoint the exact fault? These actually did more harm than good and I was forced to yank the power cord from the server a couple of times to prevent it from starting up and shutting down prematurely with a risk that data would be lost. In the end I waited until the repair van had left before attempting to restart.

Power was restored to some properties around 9.15 but not to neighbouring properties located in the same block!

Some street lights were also affected.

Update: there was another momentary blackout around 11.35pm and further power cuts cannot be ruled out.

[dutchman]

Spon End hit by second night of power cuts...

Yes folks, at 11.20 last night power was once again cut to parts of Spon End. Most, but not all, of the estate east of Windsor Street was blacked out for three hours. Then at 2.20am there was a brief flash of power, a bit like a lightning strike and even more places were blacked out! This was followed by a flurry of activity outside which sounded like holes being dug and water being pumped out but I can't be certain of that.

At around 3.40 there was a brief resumption of power lasting only a few seconds followed shortly afterwards by what seems to be a permanent resumption. Based on previous experience I waited a while before attempting to reconnect to the internet as another interruption could have resulted in data loss.

That wasn't the end of it though. Most of my electrical equipment is protected by safety devices, some isn't though. The control panel for hot water and central heating was completely dead, I managed to reactivate it by turning the power to it off and then on again. (I sound like one of the The IT Crowd now!). A digital set top box in the bedroom had also somehow managed to turn itself on.

The big question now is what time will the next power cut strike and how long will it last?