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[Weaver]

There was a landslide on the mainland which knocked an electricity pylon over and wrecked it completely. Took out our power for a while just after nine am Monday morning and in fact took out all of Skye and the Western Isles. We were back in again quite soon, god knows how, and there was a very short outage in the early afternoon, perhaps something to do with repairs.

I really must get something done about my useless UPS. No run time at all. And Stupidly now I havent even got the WAPs on a UPS, so that isn’t very good. The 4G basestation went off instantly as well. I have Maine’s before about this, can’t believe they are not required to have a UPS plus diesel generator. Cheapskates.

I could POE the WAPs and then deliver power to them from the existing UPSs, instead of powering them from nearby mains sockets as currently, but then that would just be abusing the main UPS’ pitiful storage capacity still further. I’m quite interested in those low cost lion dc ups plugs that we were talking about a while ago. Efficient because there’s no wasteful ac-dc conversion on the wrong side of the ups so I would expect a chance of good run time.

Given that the base station went down, UPS’ went flat ridiculously quickly and Janet cannot start the generator now because of her bad hands, not without going to recruit neighbours’ muscle power, this means it’s time for a new generator. At this point I realise that it’s a nuisance not having a working POTS phone as there’s no way to phone for help without mains to get DSL up and running plus VoIP working and don’t have VoIP set up these days anyway.

So have to get my act together.

[chenks]

although if the the outage took the whole island out, i wonder what use a UPS would have in that situation.
even if you managed to get power to your house via generator/ups, you wouldn't have access to anything outside your house as the power to those services would also be down.

[burakkucat]

Link to the report on the BBC web-site.

[Weaver]

Chenks’  observation set me wondering - the exchange would still have power from batteries? Would anything else in the area also be critical to keeping my internet access going? The BRAS ? Mind you, the BRAS is in Falkirk I think, which is about a hundred miles away, and nowhere near the edges of the affected zone.

[chenks]

all the cabinets would require power? and i'd doubt they have battery backup?
one wonders if the exchange would revert to "critical" services only.. ie voice, in such a situation.

[Weaver]

I don’t have an FTTC cab though, no such luck.

Thanks for the link. I didn’t know that the BBC had learned of this. All I know is what Janet told me which was based on reports from other locals via the extremely effective local, internet-based, grapevine.

The electricity company was amazingly quick in finding it and getting it sorted out for us here. People further north had a much longer period of problems from what Janet was saying. Given where the problem was, in Gleann Chuaich on the mainland (horribly mangled in anglicised form as ‘Quoich’ where qu was a strange old Scottish gallda spelling for ‘ch’), and pretty much in the middle of nowhere, they really were on the ball, getting a helicopter out to it. It is absolutely amazing how many locals around here completely rely on electricity for all their heating. Even with no power to turn the Rayburn on, we have woodburning stoves with logs and coal, and calor gas cooking anyway. And a generator, which we would eventually get turned on. But a lot of old folks who are electric heating-only would rapidly be getting cold unless they have portable gas heaters.

Pic I found: http://www.ambaile.org.uk/detail/gd/21494/1/EN21494-king-edward-vii.htm The article mentions the later building of a dam associated with the electricity board, and Janet said the downed pylon was somewhere near there. She showed me a pic of the wrecked pylon that someone had obtained within hours yesterday.

Very approximately around here based on what little I’ve been told.

[Weaver]

That pic shows Queen Victoria’s son. She was supposed to be so fond of the Highlands, and during her whole life sat and did absolutely nothing while the people were being burned out of their houses systematically, left starving and hundreds of thousands forced to emigrate during her Highland Clearances, leaving a depopulated ecological disaster zone behind. Far too late, over a century too late, there was an enquiry into the crime and an associated expedition.

[Weaver]

Found the pic of the pylon, which someone locally posted in Facebook.

See also pics of the landslide down the hillside and the landslide across a minor road.

Appears to be the exact same word as in Glasgow, Modern ScG ‘Glaschu’, presumably earlier *glas-chuach, clipped as they do in the south east to ‘Glaschu’. (It seems to me that in British however as opposed to Gaelic, the usual British-lenition grammatical rule would change the ‘c’ of an identical British ‘*cuach’ in British into a ‘g’ in British ‘*glas gua(ch)’ (/k/ to /g/) while Gaelic-type grammatical lenition would change the ‘c’ a ‘ch’ ie /k/ to /x/ as in ‘loch’, ‘Bach’. But then what do I know. There are examples that seem to suggest to me that perhaps British lenition did not work like that in the Old North or parts of it, such as the example of ‘Penrith’ (not *rid as in `Leatherhead’ (Surrey?) *lēd-rďd in the far south, not **rďth, from earlier British *ritu, ‘a ford’, so ‘grey ford’ iirc. Is this right?)

[Weaver]

Janet dug up this about the electricity supply and its history : https://www.ssen-transmission.co.uk/news-views/articles/2017/3/over-the-hills-to-skye/?fbclid=IwAR2d4jKa0l2RNutEPgp4Hd6IjVNeegH-0Ao3Ava9H12-byN2l6cvOTWIBiI

In the video that they link to, they are playing that annoying ‘Speed Bonny Boat’ song, which of course is quite wrong because it recounts going eastwards to Skye from South Uibhist in the Western Isles, not from the mainland to Skye. Bonny Prince Charlie on the run, hiding in the Western Isles.

I personally know the man interviewed at the end of the video in fact. Eachann says something daft about the most mountainous something in Europe. Never been to the Alps or the Caucasus then presumably. And it avoids all the high mountains of Cinn Tŕile (Cinn t-Sŕile), 3000ft monsters, which are slightly further to the north, being low-lying all the way.

[j0hn]

all the cabinets would require power? and i'd doubt they have battery backup?
one wonders if the exchange would revert to "critical" services only.. ie voice, in such a situation.

Every single OpenReach FTTC cabinet has backup batteries good for about 8 hours. Exact runtime depends on the current capacity of the DSLAM.

Exchanges have generators so make their own power, no batteries.

[Weaver]

I didn’t know that about FTTC cabs. That’s very good. Must be truly massive batteries but then I suppose they have the space. Must be expensive too. Wonder what sort they are?

[burakkucat]

Both the ECI and Huawei equipped cabinets have a set of four series-connected, sealed, lead-acid batteries.

Unfortunately I do not possess a clear photograph of a typical battery set. From the one readable image that I do have (which is too large to attach to this post) I see --

HAZE
www.hazebattery.com
CODE No. HZB12-40FA

C_10hr = 39.1 Ahr

T _TORQUE = 5-7 Nm

CHARGING PARAMETERS

V_CYCLIC = 2.35 - 2.41 VPC

V_FLOAT = 2.27 - 2.30 VPC

T_EMP = 20 - 25 °C

AMPS_MAX = 7.8

[burakkucat]

Exchanges have generators so make their own power, no batteries.

It really depends upon the size of the exchange and the equipment installed therein. The days of the centralised battery of lead-acid cells and heavy duty bus-bars to provide the supply to the equipment is long gone. Typically, each equipment rack will have its own mains supply and a floated set of SLA batteries. A "big" installation, providing a "critical" service, will also have a diesel powered generating set capable of replacing the mains supply for a number of days.

I'm sure that Black Sheep, liquorice or 4C (along with others) could expand upon my above, brief, paragraph.

[4candles]

In my own (ex) patch, all exchanges of whatever size have diesel generators. I assume it's the same throughout the UK.

[burakkucat]

I have been told that EASTW, for example, does not have a diesel powered, backup, generating set.