Archive for Power Cut

Lecturing in the Dark

Posted in Biographical, Education, History, Maynooth, Politics with tags , on March 9, 2022 by telescoper

We’ve had several power cuts on Maynooth University campus today.

I had a lecture during one of them. The lecture went ahead with the usual chalk-and-talk, although the room was a bit on the dark side without any electric lights. More seriously I could neither record nor webcast the lecture because there was no internet so I couldn’t connect to Panopto. Ironically, the topic of the lecture was electromagnetism.

After a couple of false starts we finally got power back this afternoon, but the power failure seems to have had a number of fairly drastic consequences. Our office machines which are currently unable to access the internet. Also the data projector in our computer lab seems to be completely bust, but that is less important than the fact that the none of lab computers is working. Fortunately we don’t have a lab session on Wednesday afternoons, but I hope we can get this fixed before tomorrow when we do have a lab session!

By the way this is what our computer lab looks like:

Fortunately, next week is study week (the week containing the St Patrick’s Day holiday) which will give us time to regroup. It can’t come soon enough!

With an energy crisis looming as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine I wouldn’t bet against much worse problems with electricity supply in the near future. I’m old enough to remember the Oil Crisis of 1974, with petrol rationing, regular power cuts and the Three Day Week. I wonder if we will soon be experiencing something similar again?

Update: after yet another power cut I decided to go home earlier than usual. When I got back to my house in Maynooth at 6pm I saw no sign that the power had been off at all!

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Storm Damage

Posted in Biographical, Maynooth with tags , on January 13, 2020 by telescoper

We’ve had an eventful day in Maynooth so far with the arrival of Storm Brendan in Ireland. It was already rather windy when I set out for work about 9.00 this morning and the storm grew in intensity throughout the morning. We’re quite a long way inland, though, and conditions were nowhere near as wild as coastal areas, especially County Cork, where winds reached 140 km/h in places. Other areas badly affected include Galway, Limerick, Kerry and Donegal.

I was just thinking about taking my lunch break at around 12.30 when all the power went off in the Science Building. I had a quick look around inside the Department to check there weren’t any serious issues (e.g. damage to computers) then ventured outside, where I found the entire campus, both South and North, was affected plus the traffic lights on Kilcock Road.

Since it was a widespread power failure I was a bit worried that it might take some time to fix. This, however, wasn’t the case and as I returned from my scouting expedition I saw power had already been restored to some campus buildings. Power outages have happened before at Maynooth and the usual practice is to power up gradually zone by zone, presumably to avoid any surges. Eventually, about an hour after the original interruption to service, everything came back online.

I had just written the end of that paragraph (at about 3.20pm) when the power went off again. That apparently was a scheduled outage in order to fix a `wider network problem’. The electricity supply was only off for about ten minutes this time. Unfortunately, this second power cut seems to have taken out our internet connections so I had to complete this via a wireless connection. Fortunately, WordPress has an autosave facility so I didn’t lose anything. Now let’s see if we can fix the server…

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The Day’s Events

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , , on April 13, 2018 by telescoper

Today has been a very strange day. The strangeness started last night when, without any notice being given to us mere residents, a crew arrived at 8pm to do roadworks (resurfacing). There then followed an excruciating racket right outside my window well into the early hours of the morning.

So, having not had much sleep at all, I wasn’t in a very good mood when I got up. Things went from bad to worse when, just after 8am, all the electricity in my flat went off. I checked the trip switches and saw no problem. I then went outside and saw the traffic lights were off. It turned out that the power supply to all of Maynooth was off (including the entire University), as well as quite a bit of the rest of County Kildare.

With no electricity I couldn’t have a shower or make any coffee or have the bacon sandwich I’d planned to have for breakfast. The prospect of sitting in a cold flat all morning with nothing to do and not even the radio to listen to didn’t appeal so I got dressed and went to the office (which is only 15 minutes walk away). No shops were open on the way. There was no electricity anywhere on campus, so no internet connection, and quite a lot of students sitting around wondering what to do. At least the office was fairly warm and I had plenty of things I could do without a computer.

News eventually started coming through that power was returning gradually to the campus buildings. Ours came back at about 10.30. At that point I finally got a cup of coffee. I still don’t know what caused the fault.

The other major event of the day was that the result came through from the Universities and Colleges Union ballot on whether to accept the Employers’ offer on pensions. A majority of the members voted `yes’, so strike action – which had been planned to resume at Cardiff on Monday 16th April – is now suspended. I wouldn’t bet against a resumption later this year, as the major issues seem to me unresolved. However, I will be leaving Cardiff in July so that’s the end of the matter for me.

Anyway, this now means that I’ll be resuming my teaching in Cardiff on Tuesday next week (17th April). I’d already decided to spend this weekend in Ireland so I’ll be going back on Monday morning, Flybe willing…

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