Re: Grand Apagon - Electricity (not) in Spain

On 05/05/2025 17:35, Liz Tuddenham wrote:

john larkin <jl@glen--canyon.com> wrote:
 [...]

A few days without
power won't kill many people.

 It will in the UK if all the 'phones need mains power (either at the
subscribers' premises or at the masts).  Nobody will be able to call out

Rural phone masts last about 24 hours without power before they go dark. IDK if it is the same in cities. More of a problem is that the removal of POTS copper circuits in favour of FTTC VDSL or fibre means that without electricity even a fixed line phone is dead in the water. DECT ones obviously don't work at all and neither does care on call.
Mobile phones need to be put into airplane mode to avoid them doing ET phone home until their battery runs out when there is no mobile signal.
POTS phones on direct copper continued to work using power from emergency batteries and/or generators at the exchange. That is no longer true for modern telecoms kit which requires mains power for FTTC box.
Amazingly fibre to premises can still work OK in a power cut since that is actually powered off the reserve supply back at the main exchange.
Advantages of having a UPS at home.

the emergency services.  How many deaths per day will that be if  nobody
can contact the police, fire brigade or ambulance service?

Not that many if our region is characteristic.
We were off power for 48 hours in storm Arwen. Places nearby were off grid for one or two weeks. They had "saved" money by cutting back on preventative maintenance so that when a pole failed in the wind it went over with enough force to make its equally feeble neighbours fall like dominoes. Took a lot of hard work to re-establish supply.
It was very a serious MFU. But it happened in the north so that's OK.
--
Martin Brown