The last large major power cuts we had were in the "Great Storm" of '87. I think we were out for three or four days. It was October so it wasn't cold, and we have coal heating here anyway. (There's a good story by a local police officer here about the events of that night). Some people were out for longer, most were out for about the same time. All the damage was from trees which haven't seen winds like that for a hundred years (15 million trees were blown down that night!)

In our local area we used get several short cuts every year - usally during a thunderstorm. A few years back they spent a lot of money replacing all the copper power lines with plastic coated aluminium ones and upgraded some equipment which was *supposed* to improve reliability. It did, for a while, but in the past few years we've had a *lot* for no particular reason. We were off for four hours last week after a storm, and it's probably the fourth cut this year.

Gareth