I have had many previous power cuts in North Acton, but none Thursday. Several recent power cuts were overnight without warning and explained as cuts while searching for a high voltage fault.This area used to be almost fault free until someone set fire to the local transformer. That was replaced by a smaller transformer, but it survived until a series of cable faults. A short between phases was hidden for over a year by moving one of the connections until the transformer itself failed and they were forced to fix both cable and transformer, but that was followed by several other cable faults, all in the same small area.The cables are old and overloaded. There are about 100 houses with many converted from single family to multiple occupancy rented as single rooms, a small business estate, several large illuminated advertising boards, almost all the local street lights over about 500M of Park Royal Road and about 250M of Western Avenue plus the Gypsy Corner traffic lights all running on the same cable which I was told is rated at 400 amps per phase. Each house was fitted with a 100 amp main fuse, so in theory just 12 houses could fully load the cable.
Chris Bell ● 5642d