It's Power Outage Season Again!

[JDoors]

Yeah! Warmer weather equals power outages at least once a week but sometimes daily! Yeah! It's from a combination of extreme winds, construction, and an electric company (Commonwealth Edison) that pretends to care but does not.

So, let's keep a running total:

Tuesday 4/15: Momentary (1)

Wednesday 4/16: Slightly more than an hour (1)

[TheTerrorist_75]

Now that the blizzards and high winds are done here we get a reprieve from outages until the summer T-showers. The last one was a few weeks ago during the night. We had no power for about 4 hours and the temps were in the low teens.

[Pete_C]

Yeah! Warmer weather equals power outages at least once a week but sometimes daily! Yeah! It's from a combination of extreme winds, construction, and an electric company (Commonwealth Edison) that pretends to care but does not.

So, let's keep a running total:

Tuesday 4/15: Momentary (1)

Wednesday 4/16: Slightly more than an hour (1)

Yep , here in Texas the spring rains bring rapid leafing out and fresh growth so tree limbs are heavy and spring is thunderstorm season and that means high winds which break branches. Not to mention the tornadoes and hail storms.

Whether it is broken poles or just tree limbs falling on the lines or shorting them storms tend to bring outages.

Big problem is all the morons who try to keep the electic company from trimming trees which threaten the lines (especially during the rest of the year when they have time to do so) saying that they mutilate the trees and should not trim so much off ....

then they whine and moan when they are out of power for a while.

[JDoors]

I can understand, to some extent, people's reluctance to let the power company trim trees. The power company has, or had, no concern whatsoever for esthetics. There are some darn ugly results from such trimming. In some case I don't see that there's any choice but to trim out the entire middle section of a tree. The only other option would be to remove the offending tree entirely and I imagine those same people would scream about that, too.

One of the things I liked about my town is all newer construction has underground utilities (newer being from back when the town began expanding back in the '70's and '80's). What I didn't realize at the time is the wires have to come out of the ground at SOME point, and at that point is just as vulnerable as ever, worse even as it supplies the power to a larger portion of the community. So when it goes out, EVERYBODY loses power at once. Then there's the "construction problem." Underground utilities HAVE to be interrupted every time there's major construction. Or even minor. You might be able to work around utility poles, since you're working under them, or easily bypass the power since you can string up an alternate route, but if you're working around an underground utility it has to be cut off until you're done. Bypassing is far less of an option (takes longer, more expensive, etc.).

In all these twenty plus years it's never been more than an annoyance but boy, during this part of the season, WHAT an annoyance!

[JDoors]

... So, let's keep a running total:

Tuesday 4/15: Momentary (1)

Wednesday 4/16: Slightly more than an hour (1)

Tuesday 5/7: One hour (1) (Didn't make it one month ... )

[JSKY]

Lets see.. Thursday and Friday.....

Big spring blizzard. Power on and off all night and day. Sometimes on/off minutes apart. And it took power out just north of me for all this week. Some still with no power.

Now to plan that spring reinstall to clean everything up. How about inbetween that big storm on Thursday and the one Friday they are telling us to expect.... It never seems to fail that one will hit when I try to do a big system cleanup....

[Pete_C]

We had rain earlier this week but all the severe weather missed us.

Then when the rain ended Wednesday we had a "dry line " move in with very high wind gusts.

I was out on the front porch enjoying the breeze and watching the sky clear when I heard the bzzapppppp of a tree limb coming to close to a 3600V high line. I watched the blue sheet race down the back alley a block over and just new right away that power was out .

Double checked and then waited for neighbors to start coming out to see what was up. A couple went in to call the power company, but I knew that we have the new meters which are monitored by "Internet over Power Line" and there are nodes and monitors on several poles on our block. Sure enough, everyone who called was informed that they were aware of the outage and had crews enroute. Five minutes later there was a series of pops as they sent a test voltage, then the truck arrived, cleared the line and power was back on in under fiftten minutes.

Technology, gotta love it.

[JDoors]

... So, let's keep a running total:

Tuesday 4/15: Momentary (1)

Wednesday 4/16: Slightly more than an hour (1)

Tuesday 5/7: One hour (1) (Didn't make it one month ... )

Sometime after midnight on Saturday 6/28: A few minutes (I reckon, as I wasn't home).

Made it over a month!

[JDoors]

... So, let's keep a running total:

Tuesday 4/15: Momentary (1)

Wednesday 4/16: Slightly more than an hour (1)

Tuesday 5/7: One hour (1) (Didn't make it one month ... )

Sometime after midnight on Saturday 6/28: A few minutes (I reckon, as I wasn't home).

Made it over a month!

Around 5 or 6 pm on 7/2: about 35 minutes (lasted four days this time!).

[bozodog]

Well, let's see. A few weeks ago we were down 24 hours. Then on Wed. the 2nd we went for long enough to prompt me into buying a generator. I'll be danged if I'm gonna lose a couple hundred bucks of food, and this time it ruined our little vacation to the lake. This has been getting worse and worse around here and I blame it on the power company cutting back. The tree maintenence is way behind and the outages are longer and longer. I can count on one hand the times we were down for 24 hours in 30 years. These last three or four have been h#ll. This last one was bad enough that the railroad had generators working their crossing gates and switch.

Go figure, we keep paying and paying and service goes down, down, down.

[JDoors]

It's obviously going to get worse. They gotta maximize their profit so the stock market invests Mo' Money! Heaven forbid they should show as much concern to their customers. I guess it's true of most industry and services due to the MASSIVE focus on the stock market and what it's doing.

Storms are moving through again, the power "winked" at me, giving me advance warning that it's gonna go down sometime soon. Why? Oh, because it's "wet" out?

[bozodog]

Shucks, I just heard there are 3000 homes still without power. That's since Wed. Perhaps part of our payments should go into a 401K type thing, to offset the expense of buying generators and losing freezers full of food?

And yep, we have storms on the way too...

Edited July 7, 2008 by bozodog

[JDoors]

Does your power company have a service where they'll reimburse you for such losses? I'm pretty sure ours does. I never used it because a.) I usually have little or no food stockpiles to lose, and b.) We've not gone more than a day without power (that I can remember) and c.) what little food I do have is either expendable or keeps well enough 'cause I have several ice "bricks" (those plastic bottles with chemicals in it) in the top of my freezer as insurance.

[bozodog]

I'm not sure, but it's just a hassle to think of a hind 1/4 of top grade beef going off. We keep our freezer filled and add water and/or bottles of brine as room is made. It will hold fine for 24 hours, except for ice cream :-( Things are just getting worse, and I sure don't see it getting better. We ALWAYS have storms of some sort here in SW Michigan.

[JDoors]

... So, let's keep a running total:

Tuesday 4/15: Momentary (1)

Wednesday 4/16: Slightly more than an hour (1)

Tuesday 5/7: One hour (1) (Didn't make it one month ... )

Sometime after midnight on Saturday 6/28: A few minutes (I reckon, as I wasn't home).

Made it over a month!

Around 5 or 6 pm on 7/2: about 35 minutes (lasted four days this time!).

Around 5 pm on 7/21: about 8 minutes (two-and-a-half weeks of uninterrupted power!).

[bozodog]

I've heard our power co. is being "investigated" about all the latest outages and the length of time to get folks back on-line.

You know, in summer you can survive with a loss of food and no TV or computer. In winter, folks can die and pipes can freeze. Damn the "profits" give us the service we pay for.

It might not be a bad idea to get rid of the union. It's their paychecks that keep going up while service goes down.

Edited July 22, 2008 by bozodog

[Pete_C]

I've heard our power co. is being "investigated" about all the latest outages and the length of time to get folks back on-line.

You know, in summer you can survive with a loss of food and no TV or computer. In winter, folks can die and pipes can freeze. Damn the "profits" give us the service we pay for.

It might not be a bad idea to get rid of the union. It's their paychecks that keep going up while service goes down.

I saw a roadside thermometer here today which read 104F, the one in the car said it was only 102.

Here folks die in the summer when the power is out . In fact on days like this they ask you to check on elderly neighbors who may have turned off their A/C to save money.

Here the big problem is not so much the electric company failing to maintain lines as the people who let trees grow to near power lines and rabid attorneys who seek to keep the electric company from "butchering" the trees to keep them from endangering the electric lines. My theory is if you do not keep it cut back far enough yourself, you have no right to object when they come in and lop things back far enough that they should not have to be back for a year.

[bozodog]

object when they come in and lop things back far enough that they should not have to be back for a year.

Great theory Pete, but I haven't seen them trim my neighborhood for over 5 years. They don't even do line maintenance or even replace poles anymore. It's all sub-contractors. Our last two outages happened on their easement along open land with no houses nearby. The b4$tard$ are raping us and the shareholders are smiling.

Edited July 23, 2008 by bozodog

[JDoors]

... It's all sub-contractors. ... and the shareholders are smiling.

Maybe I'm not old enough to remember (that's hard to believe some times) but were power outages less frequent when utilities didn't utilize sub-contractors? I imagine sub-contractors are less expensive for the utilities than maintaining a work force large enough for every contingency, and I also imagine sub-contractors "save money" (as they would have to do to win contracts) by not being as diligent as in-house workers might be (and that's kind of a joke as utility workers were/are famous for NOT working hard -- whether that's a deserved reputation or not).

Guess I AM old enough to be cranky.

[Pete_C]

Here it is all done by sub contractors too; in fact even putting in poles and running new lines tends to be contracted out; just the emergency response is "in house".

I can see the logic , why keep a bunch of specialized trucks, cutting equipment etc that they will only need half the time? Better to hire a contractor who has so much of the equipment themselves and specializes in it that they can do the job in half the time and spend the rest of the time working for someone else.

Of course we are in the city; in rural areas it is harder to justify constant pruning since an outage affects fewer customers and thus the cost per customer for preventative action is often prohibitive.

The worst part is that this time of year, with hurricanes all the subcontractors (and often even half of the in house equipment and employees) head off to be poised to respond to the storm when it hits; leaving things woefully under staffed if there is a storm here. It happened a couple years back, they sent everyone off to florida or georgia for an impending storm only to have a wave of thunderstorms here knock down trees and lines everywhere and there was neither equipment nor personell to deal with the problem promptly.

They had to have crews from Oklahoma city drive down to fix the lines in Dallas.

[JDoors]

... They had to have crews from Oklahoma city drive down to fix the lines in Dallas.

A form of Musical Chairs? When the storms cease, everybody stay put!

[Pete_C]

... They had to have crews from Oklahoma city drive down to fix the lines in Dallas.

A form of Musical Chairs? When the storms cease, everybody stay put!

I hadn't thought of it that way; that they are coordinating and just shifting resources in the direction of problems so that they do not have to have crews travel 1500 miles from where they are free to where they are needed, they can just shift a bunch of crews 150 miles each and get the same result.

Overall, I am pleased with my service. Ever since they got the new smart meters which use internet over power line to communicate with the electric company headquarters they have had amazing response for any outage (compared to what it was and to what people with old style meters have to endure), I guess by querying meters and transformers etc they can pinpoint a break or short from headquarters and dispatch the nearest emergency crew to the correct location first time rather than their having to go out and search up and down the street to find the cause of an outage.

I hear they are planning on offering a "digital monitor" you can connect indoors which will display realtime monitoring of your electrical usage and its cost so you can better tailor your usage (as well as the upgrading the meters to not just track the amount of power used, but when so you can get a lower rate at night and low usage times versus peak times when they have to rely on Natural Gas plants to boost the capacity to meet needs.)

[JDoors]

We've had our sewer and water service hooked up to the phone line for, oh, I don't know, a decade or so, sure wouldn't mind if they'd upgrade the electric to do the same. Especially if they do the whole "demand pricing" thing. I work nights so my electric useage during the day consists of making sure the alarm clock is plugged in (plus all the background stuff you can't really turn off). I've always felt slighted when I'd read about demand pricing. HEY! I don't USE much electricity during the day, give me that pricing break, will ya?

I have to assume ComEd will take their sweet time getting around to that though, so for now it doesn't matter WHEN I run the dishwasher (it's got a "delayed wash" setting I don't need to use just yet), do the laundry (though the hot water and dryer are natural gas, so that wouldn't make much of a dent anyway), etc. Come to think of it, where WILL I get any savings from demand pricing?

[JDoors]

... So, let's keep a running total:

Tuesday 4/15: Momentary (1)

Wednesday 4/16: Slightly more than an hour (1)

Tuesday 5/7: One hour (1) (Didn't make it one month ... )

Sometime after midnight on Saturday 6/28: A few minutes (I reckon, as I wasn't home).

Made it over a month!

Around 5 or 6 pm on 7/2: about 35 minutes (lasted four days this time!).

Around 5 pm on 7/21: about 8 minutes (two-and-a-half weeks of uninterrupted power!).

Two weeks of continuous electricity!

Around 5pm (I see a pattern) on 9/12: about ten minutes.

Today, 9/15, one momentary and one just long enough to screw everything up.

Edited September 15, 2008 by JDoors

[TheTerrorist_75]

Ike made an appearance after midnight. It combined with a cold front off the lake. 50-60 m.p.h. winds with lake effect rain. My apple tree now lays on it's side against the back of the house.

Momentary outages in my area early this morning. Almost 90,000 customers were without any power. National Greed says it may take several days to get power back for everyone.