Power cuts (or power outages) can be caused by many things including severe weather, which can lead to damaged infrastructure, or system faults.
Most power cuts are short-lived and occur locally, but more widespread and longer outages can happen. These could potentially last several days with regional or, although unlikely, national impacts.
Gas boilers and hobs, heat pumps and your home internet won’t work without power.
Your mobile phone might stop working if your local mast is in the affected area.
Mains water supply to your home could also be disrupted.
You will not know when a power cut is coming, however there are actions you can take to lessen the impact they have on you, your family and your home.
How to prepare for power cuts
-
- Keep a battery or wind-up torch (and spare batteries) at home. It is not advised to use candles or any other naked flames to provide light, as these could pose a fire hazard.
- Consider keeping some bottled water and non-perishable food that doesn’t need cooking such as ready-to-eat tinned meat, fruit or vegetables and a tin opener.
- If you have young children or pets, you should also include ready-made baby formula and jars, pouches or packet baby food and pet food.
- Find out your power/load block letter. In the unlikely event of a national energy shortage, emergency power cuts could be scheduled on a rotating area-by-area basis. Each area in Great Britian is assigned a ‘load block letter’ and would be scheduled to disconnect from the electricity grid for around three hours at a time. You can find which load block letter you are in by entering your postcode at powercut105.com. Some energy suppliers include it on electricity bills.
- If you’re eligible, sign up to your energy supplier’s Priority Service Register to let them know that you need additional support during a power cut.
- You would lose internet connection and possibly mobile signal during a power cut. To prepare for this:
- Write down the phone number to report a power cut – this is 105 in England. Save the number in your mobile phone.
- Keep a battery or wind-up radio (and spare batteries) at home. There might be updates communicated by radio during a power cut. A car radio can be used, however in severe weather it might be safer to stay inside. Write down on paper the frequencies of any local or national radio stations you use for news updates. You could add these to your household emergency plan
- If you have a personal alarm or other connected equipment monitoring your health (such as diabetes sensors), speak to your device provider/manufacturer to understand how they will function during a power cut.
- Download or print out offline versions of maps in case you do not have access to live map-based mobile applications. To provide location services, your mobile smart phone uses a GPS signal. This means your mobile may still be able to provide your location when not connected to the network. However, map-based mobile applications rely on internet connectivity to download the maps.