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Comment by tomcam | Hacker News Reader

Not great for people hooked up to home medical equipment

PSA: If you really are unusually vulnerable to power outages, for example due to using medical equipment or needing to keep medicines in the fridge, see if you qualify for the Priority Services Register:

https://www.ukpowernetworks.co.uk/power-cut/priority-service...

Sometimes there are things the utility companies can do to help those who legitimately need to be prioritised, but only if they know who those people are.

You would hope that they have uninteruptable power supplies for anything like that.

Yes, but the grid in Europe is generally so reliable (especially when not living in a rural area), that such stability might be taken for granted.

Luxury. I grew up in a banana republic (California) where one simply cannot expect that kind of reliability.

I remember when I used a CPAP, I didn't have a UPS. Where I lived, the power was so reliable I just didn't think of it.

After a blackout, I went looking for a UPS. The problem was the alarm. For all the models in the store, I wasn't sure if I could keep the alarm silent, or if the model had an alarm at all.

I never bought a UPS. (I had surgery about 18 months later, and turned in my CPAP.)

Won't medical equipment have back up batteries? (I'm not saying it's a good thing, just not a crisis moment.)

Not in my experience dealing with an oxygen concentrator. The backup was a couple of tanks of O2, which can be used up pretty quick. And the O2 cannister supply chain isn't geared to meet widespread need, as we saw during the first wave of Covid.

Power outages can happen for various reasons (storm, accident,...). I would expect the equipment has batteries, no?

Perhaps, but I can only remember personally experiencing a total of three power failures in the UK before I moved out in my mid 30s (and that includes the one time in the converted stables in the middle of nowhere, Wales).

Certainly not by default. And try getting insurance coverage for it.

nm I dumb

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