Your Power Setup · stories
Short reads about the tech that keeps your day running: at home, on the road and when the power drops out.
18 stories
FeaturedSSEN reports 8,636 customers still without power and 92% restored in its north Scotland Storm Boelo response at 20:30 GMT on 26 October 2026. Its updated headline also reports more than 100,000 customers restored cumulatively. These are operator figures for its own network, rather than an all-Scotland or Britain-wide total. Full recovery remains unverified.
National Grid Electricity Distribution says all customers affected by Storms Austen and Boelo within its own network are back on supply, according to its bulletin dated 26 October 2026. The statement establishes storm recovery for that operator’s network. It does not establish that supply has returned across every British operator’s network, and the exact restoration time is not given.
City Power says its Hursthill Service Delivery Centre currently has no reported medium voltage outages. The 17:01 SAST statement on 8 October shifts attention to outstanding low voltage service requests. It does not explicitly close the earlier cable fault affecting two load centres, so full restoration of that particular incident remains unconfirmed.
A major power cut affected thousands of homes and businesses across more than 30 London postcode areas on Monday, 5 October 2026. Station displays and lighting were also disrupted. Reports of power being restored followed later that day.
At IFA in September 2026, Jackery showed the Explorer 1000 Plus v2 and European sales started on 14 October 2026. The name sits very close to the existing Explorer 1000 v2, yet the two are built for different needs.
EcoFlow unveiled the RIVER 260 Gen4 and RIVER 520 Gen4 at IFA in Berlin on 4 September 2026, aimed at devices that draw under 100 W.
Meshtastic lets small LoRa radios pass short text messages to each other without a mobile network or internet connection. On 21 September 2026 the project published a guide to measuring how much energy a solar-powered node really uses, and the answer starts with watt-hours rather than a single current reading.
Home Assistant 2026.9, released on 2 September 2026, reworked how the smart-home platform talks to devices over Modbus. For owners of some Fronius and Sofar solar inverters, that means more detail with less manual setup.
Anker's MagGo 2 Pro (model A110R) is a 10,000 mAh magnetic power bank with a built-in fan, shown on Anker's sites from September 2026. A fan sounds odd in something pocket-sized, but it targets the main weakness of fast wireless charging: heat.
BLUETTI unveiled the Pioneer 5000 E-Generator at IFA in Berlin on 4 September 2026, aimed at building sites, events and other mobile work. The term battery generator is catchy, but it hides an important difference: this machine stores energy rather than producing it.
After showing them at IFA Berlin in September, Jackery put the Explorer 1000 Plus v2 and Explorer 2000 Plus v2 on sale in the UK on 14 October 2026. Both are expandable LFP power stations; until 3 November they carry early bird prices.
No bunker, no shopping spree. Light, a charged phone and a way to stay informed: most of it is already somewhere in your home.
A power station next to the router sounds like the answer to a power cut. It helps, as long as you know which boxes need power and what happens outside your home.
A power bank fits in your jacket, a power station needs a handle. Which one you need depends less on the size of the battery than on the plug at the end of the cable.
The Mini fits in a backpack, which makes it tempting to just take it. Five minutes of power checking at home saves a lot of frustration at the campsite.
Friday afternoon, a field, no power points. How do you keep your laptop, lights and speaker going until Sunday without dragging half your house along?
You unfold the panel, the sun is out, and the display shows less than you hoped. Usually it is not the panel, but where and how it lies.
