Ask Hackaday: Is Our Power Grid Smart Enough to Know When There’s No Power?

Ask Hackaday: Is Our Power Grid Smart Enough to Know When There’s No Power?

Just to intensify the feeling of impending zombie apocalypse of the COVID-19 lockdown in the British countryside where I live, we had a power cut. It’s not an uncommon occurrence here at the end of a long rural power distribution network, and being prepared for a power outage is something I wrote about a few years ago. But this one was a bit larger than normal and took out much more than just our village. I feel very sorry for whichever farmer in another village managed to collide with an 11kV distribution pole.


What pops to mind for today’s article is the topic of outage monitoring. When plunged into darkness we all wonder if the power company knows about it. The most common reaction must be: “of course the power company knows the power is out, they’re the ones making it!”. But this can’t be the case as for decades, public service announcements have urge us to report power cuts right away.


In our very modern age, will the grid become smart enough to know when, and perhaps more importantly where, there are power cuts? Let’s check some background before throwing the question to you in the comments below.

A Power Cut On A Sunny Afternoon


In the aftermath I was discussing it among my neighbours, and a difference of opinion emerged over whether our electricity provider has automatic monitoring of their network or whether we need to call a fault in.



We really have reached the end of the line.

It seems the power company operators had issued the advice that there was no monitoring, bu ..

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