Powering a Hub5

[John Mc]

With the threat of power cuts over the winter I am looking at maintaining WiFi for my mobile (the O2 service is pants). The PSU says 12V @ 3amp regulated.

Is it possible to run it off a battery?

[Halcyon]

As long as you get the exact voltage correct I can't see why this wouldnt work.

[Jaymoss]

If you use a portable power generator it has a standard mains outlet and should keep the router going in theory. I dunno how it works though I imagine there is power running to the cab? would a grid power cut hit that as well ?

[heero_yuy]

AFAIK the street cabs use the local electricity supply so would go down during a power outage so you would loose connectivity anyway even if the house WiFi was still operating.

[spiderplant]

The cabinets have battery backup for old-school phone, but not broadband or TV (so VOIP will go off too - vulnerable customers with VOIP get a mobile-based backup unit)

[Taf]

Originally Posted by spiderplant

The cabinets have battery backup for old-school phone)

It's worth having an old (wired handset) telephone to plug in if the power goes off, as modern DECT phones won't operate without mains power (the base station goes off).

Originally Posted by Taf

It's worth having an old (wired handset) telephone to plug in if the power goes off, as modern DECT phones won't operate without mains power (the base station goes off).

Incidentally, BT Full Fibre no longer has a phone line at all - the phone service is delivered via the fibre and the handset they supply connects to the Wi-Fi. You can buy a battery backup for the router if you want it (they supply it free to vulnerable users).

From this I surmise that the Openreach fibre network is run on battery backup at the exchange if need be, though even if it isn’t, BT’s Hybrid Connect service will switch to the EE 4G service if the fibre goes dark. That still requires mains power though.

Given that rota power cuts are the worst case scenario I am not about to run out and splash a load of cash on a home power bank just yet. I don’t do nearly enough of the outdoor living they’re primarily aimed at so I might never use it. At our old house, power cuts were a fact of life and a winter storm could leave us off mains for days at a time. So we can cope with 3 hours no problem.

[Mr K]

I think a few weeks without the interweb would help society tbh. However some would actually have to go out of their house to shop and wouldn't know where to begin..... Take a bag is my advice, they are very pricey these days

[pip08456]

Originally Posted by Chris

Incidentally, BT Full Fibre no longer has a phone line at all - the phone service is delivered via the fibre and the handset they supply connects to the Wi-Fi. You can buy a battery backup for the router if you want it (they supply it free to vulnerable users).

From this I surmise that the Openreach fibre network is run on battery backup at the exchange if need be, though even if it isn’t, BT’s Hybrid Connect service will switch to the EE 4G service if the fibre goes dark. That still requires mains power though.

Given that rota power cuts are the worst case scenario I am not about to run out and splash a load of cash on a home power bank just yet. I don’t do nearly enough of the outdoor living they’re primarily aimed at so I might never use it. At our old house, power cuts were a fact of life and a winter storm could leave us off mains for days at a time. So we can cope with 3 hours no problem.

Yes the Openreach FTTP network has battery backup at the exchange, the FTTC network has barrery backup at the cabinets. I've seen many reports of FTTC cabs being set up again after an RTA being run on batteries until the power company can fix the mains supply. Engineers would regularly change out the batteries until the supply was fixed.

[nffc]

So there probably isn't likely to be any blackouts really. I think that if there are likely to be issues they will tell people to work from home again so the businesses can use less energy (lights, heating off, probably only powering comms cabinets and the like etc) in offices, and they'll suggest people turn off things which aren't essential, maybe we'd see stuff like traffic lights and street lights on reduced too (maybe 1 in 2 or something on the latter) but realistically society has changed since the last time they did do this and we have much more that's dependent on being kept on as do places which store things which are temperature controlled.


It does make me smile when they say about keeping your phones charged and stuff when a phone still needs to connect to a mast which still needs power, what happens if the mast is affected by the blackout?



I have key stuff like PCs, switches, servers, and the hub on a UPS, You can get them with a conventional socket, it lasts about 15-30 mins depending on what you have plugged in (so maybe just something like a superhub on its own might be longer than having computers on there as well) but whether you could get one lasting 3 hours or whether this wouldn't just be affected by any downstream outage as well, who knows.


Despite the fact some people will rightly dismiss it being reported on as scaremongering, I do think it's right they plan for the situation. After all, they did get a bit of a bad press for being unprepared for the pandemic.

[Taf]

I'm not looking forward to watching the tele by candlelight.

[memememe]

I will make good with the time and vacuum the house by candlelight.

[John Mc]

Originally Posted by Taf

I'm not looking forward to watching the tele by candlelight.

We were having our house rewired and I had coupled up a portable TV to a 12V battery for the kids. The expression on the engineers face was a better picture than the TV!