O/T When power goes out. | Forums

[MWolfe1963]

We've had some moderate thunderstorms each causing our power to go off. Last night it went off at 7PM and now noon..no power. Three days ago it took them 23 hours. Years ago Duke use to fix powerlines themselves, but now they sub most of it out and it takes forever to get lines fixed.

Thankfully I have a small generator to run the frig and a few items, but dang...the last week the suns been out 90% of the time and no power.
They say it could be 11 AM tomorrow before power is restored. Many years ago except bad ice storms seems they were out in mass and power was on in a few hours.

Doe's it take 24 plus hours for you guys to get your power back on after a storm...

Am I complaining, yes, and where else would I go to complain.

Sure is hot....

[Celeon999]

I cant make much of a comment here as all the powerlines that supply me run underground and thus, storms are completely irrelevant.

Also, the last power outage ive witnessed was a around a year ago , lasted only 2 hours and was the first one in over 20 years. And it was caused by human error.

Total destruction in a world war has one advantage : You dont need to renew or extend a old fashioned and aging power distribution net.

You just build a whole new one from scratch, avoid all the errors and inefficiency of the original one and construct it with the newest technology available and knowledge gained from all the lessons learned at that point, right from the first line onwards.


P.S : I also found out that its a smart thing to have a old telephone with classic cable connection somewhere as the fact that the telephone line still works is of absolutely no use when your wireless phone base stations fail without power.

[WernherVonTrapp]

I know just how you feel ol' buddy. When I lived in Sussex, it was the same story for me too. Waiting on Jersey Central Power & Light during an outage was like waiting for hell to freeze over. I'm a bit better off in my current location but it still (sometimes) takes hours for power to come back on after an outage.

Now, I base it all on how many hiccups the electrical power grid suffers when calculating how long it'll take to get fixed. If my power goes off & on three times immediately prior to an outage, that usually means it'll take some time before power is restored.
There's nothing more frustrating, especially when you're in the middle of a game.

I remember a fatal accident up in Sussex, years ago. Minivan struck a pole that had 3 transformers on it. The pole came down and took another two down with it. Power company wasn't even allowed near the scene until police were done investigating. It took about 60 hours before electrical power was restored. Wish I had a 5000 watt portable generator back then. Sometimes the storms appear so quickly around here that I don't even have time to shut down B4 the power goes out.

[Wolferz]

No power problems here where I live. The power company does a great job of getting the juice back on after an outage. Most of our outages are of the short lived variety. Usually just a flicker until the automated switching equipment kicks in a different substation.
Right you are, Cel. The old fashioned hardwired telephone system requires only 40 volts DC to operate. Batteries in the Central Office back up this power more often than not, but one must have the old style phones that derive their power from the line to operate. My current cordless system can do that at its wired base unit. Many of the new fangled cordless units require 120 volts AC converted to DC through an AC to DC transformer and not the phone line itself. So they cease to function during a power outage. Ma Bell used to produce durable phones that withstood the test of time and never failed due to lack of power. Even at the central office.
Sometimes technological advances aren't all they're cracked up to be.

[paulhager]

We've had several outages during the Spring storms. One small tornado hit the western outskirts of the town and left people over there without power for most of a day. On the whole the crews did a good job of getting things up and running again.

The thing to look out for would be another Carrington Event - a massive Coronal Mass Ejection (CME). Supposedly such an event might knock out so many transformers in the US that it could take a year to recover because stocks of replacement transformers would be quickly depleted and new transformers would have to be built and installed.

The likelihood that the Sun may be transitioning into a long period of relative quiescence (perhaps even a Maunder minimum - sorry Global Warming zealots) is no assurance that a big CME couldn't occur. The Carrington Event happened during a period of low Solar output.

[swamprat69er]

Originally posted by WernherVonTrapp:
Waiting on Jersey Central Power & Light during an outage was like waiting for hell to freeze over. I'm a bit better off in my current location but it still (sometimes) takes hours for power to come back on after an outage.

I could just change Wernhers' post to read Ontario Hydro and you would have my hydro/power problems. The farther north you go the more unreliable hydro is.

I have 14 Kilowatts of generators split between two and 50 gallons of gas for them. When the one runs low on gas, we cut in the second one and shut down the first. Let it cool off a little and refuel it. (I NEVER fuel a hot motor.)
The gensets run the fridge, freezers, a lamp or two, the sump pump and in winter the blowers for the wood stoves. In summer the furnace fan is my air conditioning.
I have a BBQ for cooking on.

I have a APU battery backup for each of the computers, (power spikes have fried too many motherboards), so if I am in the middle of a game, I can still save and shut down safely.

[fireftr18]

The main line that feeds our and several other subdivisions doesn't follow along a road. Instead, it follows a cross country path with poor access and few access points. A couple years ago, an ice storm knocked out the power. The streets were cleared, electric was on every where else, everyone was coming and going normal, but there was no electric for several days. We also found out that the lines was broken in several different spots. I have gained a great deal of respect for power line workers over the years. They work hard and do an excellent job.

[Blowtanks]

For Pete sake this is 2011, what self respecting planet still has power lines outside on a pole. It's embarrassing what with all these aliens flying around pointing their fingers at us and laughing.

There must be a better way. What happen to those new super conductors I heard about a few years back?

[MWolfe1963]

Lines on a pole dumbest idea ever, cept places in the woods. My yard backs up to the large city lake that has thousands of acres of woods and power lines on poles beside every road just for all the pines to fall on. Went out again yesterday for two hours, mild storm, seems any wind blows a pine over.

[WernherVonTrapp]

Originally posted by MWolfe1963:
Went out again yesterday for two hours, mild storm, seems any wind blows a pine over.

Pines seem to particularly enjoy snapping off at mid length, leaving a tall branchless stump in remembrance.