How do I know if it's my house or a network outage?

Look outside. If neighbouring houses and street lights are also dark, it's the network, not you — check your electricity distributor's outage map or call them, not an electrician. If it's just your place, that's worth a call to us.

Should I unplug everything during an outage?

Sensitive electronics and anything with a compressor (fridge, freezer) are worth switching off at the wall, mainly to avoid a power-surge issue when supply comes back suddenly. You don't need to unplug the whole house.

Is it safe to use candles during an outage?

Safer than nothing, but a torch or battery lantern is genuinely safer — open flame and a dark, unfamiliar-feeling house is a bad combination. Worth keeping a couple of torches somewhere you can actually find them in the dark.

What to Do During a Power Outage

Power outages have a way of happening at the least convenient time, and most of the advice out there is either too obvious to be useful or written for a different country's power system entirely. Here's the practical version.

First: Work Out Whose Problem It Is

Before anything else, look out the window. Streetlights off, neighbours' houses dark — that's a network outage, and it's your electricity distributor's job to fix, not an electrician's. Check their outage map or give them a call. If it's genuinely isolated to your property while everyone else has power, that's the one worth calling us about.

While You Wait

Switch off or unplug sensitive electronics — computers, TVs, anything with a compressor like the fridge or freezer. The risk isn't the outage itself, it's a power surge when supply comes back on, which can happen without warning.
Leave one light switched on so you know the moment power returns, without having to check every room.
Keep the fridge and freezer shut. An unopened fridge holds temperature for several hours; a freezer longer again. Opening it "just to check" is the thing that actually spoils the food.
Have a torch or battery lantern somewhere you can find in the dark — a phone flashlight works but drains the one device you might actually need charged.

If It's a Storm

Storm-related outages come with an extra rule: stay well clear of any fallen power lines, assume every downed line is live regardless of how it looks, and report it to your distributor immediately rather than trying to move it yourself or drive around it closely.

When It's Actually an Electrician's Job

If the power's out at your place specifically — not the street, not the network — and it's not coming back after checking your own safety switch and switchboard, that's a genuine callout, not something to wait out overnight. Sparking, a burning smell, or a safety switch that won't reset are all reasons to treat it as urgent rather than hoping it resolves itself.

Our Emergency Electrical page covers what we handle and how fast, or if it's happening right now, just call us directly rather than reading the rest of the internet's advice on it.