Weird Power Failure
I had a power failure tonight around 6:50pm. The lights didn’t work. But then I noticed the pilot light on the dvd player was still on! The one on the TV was off. A pilot light on a laptop charger was on. All the electric clocks in the house were off. A second laptop was showing in the tray that it was running on DC, not battery. Huh? At first I deduced that the house had multiple electric circuits randomly wired, and that only one breaker had gone. So I went out to the fusebox but it all checked out ok.
Back inside I flipped a switch again, and noticed that the light did come on, but very faintly. Most of the lights in the house were like this, and they tended to fade in and out, from almost nothing to about one quarter of the normal level. And the power level was only enough to sustain pilot lights on appliances, not the actual appliances themselves. So it’s probable that my laptop was not receiving power correctly anyway, despite the AC indicator. I shut it down in case it got damaged.
I headed out onto the street and found a couple of neighbours. I soon discovered that every second house was experiencing the same thing, while the alternating houses were still on full power. Someone said this setup was because of Flinders Hospital. Thinking about it, it makes sense - having two sources of supply to the area, with alternating houses, and the hospital on both.
I immediately classified this as a critical top-level emergency and allowed myself a quick trip to Hungry Jack’s for dinner. Coming back I saw an ETSA truck driving around the area. Eventually the power returned while I was reading by candlelight in the bath… too much information? ok yeah, let me try again. Eventually the power returned at around 9pm.