I suppose it did but I'm struggling to recall it happening other than rare instances like someone crashing into a pole. Even during heavy snows I remember the power rarely went out and it did usually back on within an hour or two.

It sure does now though. It's already been out for over 2 hours at least three times this year. Once off from 11am to 4 pm for a "system upgrade" and we were notified of that one. Now I get notification there will be another planned outage for 8 hours to do "system upgrades" tomorrow from 1pm to 9pm.

So after months of moderate weather our first cold snap is coming Monday as well with high only reaching 37 and down into the 20's by 5:30 when it'll also be dark. 8 hours is long enough that I guess I'll get out the generator because my house is all electric including to run the pump for water. Heat's not a problem as I heat with wood when it drops into the 30's anyway.

Anyway that's what got me thinking that I just don't recall power going off so often in the past.

I feel power is fairly reliable here, SE WI. The worst was 25 years ago when some summer storms broke a bunch of power poles. That one was 5 days or so, warm weather, so easier.

I have a woodstove so don’t worry about heat. I have a smaller portable generator, that’s been enough here for decades.

We all get used to reliable power, can be a bummer to go without more than a few hours.

I'm a 90s kid [Houston & Beaumont areas] & don't recall power outages outside major storms. Definitely not to the frequency they happen now.

But, we were also outside much more than 'normal' now.
I'm sure the grid didn't have nearly as much load on it then, as now, either.

I don't remember it going out frequently, but when it went out, it was out for much longer than is typical now. You're right though, it does go out more now.

I'm the opposite. I remember the power going out quite a bit when I was a kid.
For anywhere from 12-24 hours. Mom kept lamps and candles. We had a fireplace and I remember getting dressed by it on some mornings because it was all the heat we had during an outage. In the summertime, we just opened the windows and sweated.
I still live in the house that I grew up in. Power is a lot more stable now than back in the 70s and 80s.
This is (well, used to be) a rural area. We had a dairy and I remember Dad having a generator that hooked up to the PTO on a little Massey Ferguson to run the pumps and milking machines.
I still keep a generator but don't seem to use it much for the house. It mainly gets used for projects that require some remote electricity.

What I remember is that when I was a kid 55 years ago the infrastructure was newer and the overall demands were less. The systems weren’t being stressed like they are now.

Very infrequent outages in my zip code.

It used to be much much worse than it is now. These days, outages are usually restored within an hour or two, it used to be days. Back then, any thunderstorm would potentially take the power down, now it has to be a major storm with very high winds. I ascribe the latter to the clearing that they do around the lines, not always pretty, but it seems to be effective.

quote:

Originally posted by nhtagmember:
What I remember is that when I was a kid 55 years ago the infrastructure was newer and the overall demands were less. The systems weren’t being stressed like they are now.

I suppose you're right.

It sounds like power goes out less now for some and more for others, depending where you are.

Short version: Yes

Long version:
Texas deregulated which had the desired effect of competition and low electric prices. However, they way they split the electric utility into 3 markets left something to be desired:

Producer of electricity (i.e. the people who failed us in Winter storm uri by not building their plants to handle 3 days in the teens).

Transmission lines who own from producer to the electric meter (i.e. the people who are failing us now). The way they wrote the regulation left them with little incentive to upgrade or maintain their system. More on this.

Seller of electricity. This is the portion consumers are selecting from several dozen choices in providers and plans.

Gov't regulators are a disaster:

ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas) - Texas was 4 min and 37 seconds from complete failure of the Texas grid. A federal report had warned of this lack of winterization 10 years before winter storm Uri, and the assclowns did nothing. Five of fifteen ERCOT members lived out of state including one living in Canada.

PUC (Texas Public Utility Commission) - these assclowns oversee ERCOT and are the ones who let 1/3 be out of state and didn't do the winterization either. On top of that, when you complain about the electric transporter repeatedly failing to provide electricity even on clear sunny days they just flip it to the electric transporter. No statistics looking for bad actors or statistics looking for locals getting poor service and at risk for catastrophic outage.

In 2018, my Neighborhood began to experience multiple power outages per week. On top of that, construction of new homes was ongoing and the final straw was when the bastards took power off-line for three hours in the middle of the night in August without notification. As a CPAP user, I woke up immediately and couldn't go back to sleep, and then started the internal discussion of do I haul me portable generator from my garage to my backyard and install my window AC? In July 2018, I had a Kohler whole house generator installed with automatic transfer switch. About the same time, centerpoint apparently got our grid fixed and we had very few power outages and no hurricanes until winter storm Yuri in 2021. In fact, I was openly pondering whether I had made a mistake installing the whole house generator, but it paid for itself in Winter Storm Uri as neighbors with portable generators were still having pipes burst.

In 2023, my neighborhood began to experience multiple power outages per week. We could lose power for five hours on an 80° day with no rain and no wind. Hundreds of households filed formal complaints to the PUC about centerpoint energy. It cost me five times more per day to run my house off my generator than the electric grid so I filed a PUC complaint as well. The PUC just flipped it to centerpoint and did nothing for Texas residents. Finally somebody in the neighborhood called one of the Houston TV stations investigative reporting and our neighborhood made the news. It turns out that centerpoint had ceased trimming powerlines in 2020 and had ceased doing substation maintenance at the same time. My neighborhood was serviced by above ground powerlines going through 60 miles of woods and swamp. Centerpoint started sharing outage route causes and there was a lot caused by trees in the lack of Right of way maintenance. The double whammy was the lack of substation maintenance when they automatically rerouted around a problem several times that electrical switch caught fire because it had not been maintained. After the news report, the local politicians got involved and put some heat on centerpoint who begin an aggressive tree trimming campaign and substation maintenance. Notice I did not list anything that the PUC had done because near as I can tell they didn't do jack shit.

In 2024, the greater Houston area experienced a category one hurricane that was an indirect strike (i.e. didn't come a shore in Houston) on the western and northern suburbs. Over 2.25 million people lost power from this little hurricane that should've been nothing and in fact more people lost power from this than hurricane which was a direct strike cat 3 hurricane. It turns out, Centerpoint hadn't been doing any right away trimming and very little maintenance in the entire Houston Metro area. On top of that, centerpoint was installing a new electric outage monitoring system and the jackasses did not have it ready in time for hurricane season so they could not tell even the governor where crews were working, what had been returned to service, etc. If the PUC had been awake in 2023 they would've noticed what was occurring in my neighborhood was a risk for all of Houston.

This week, another Houston news station investigative reporters were doing similar outage stories (i.e. similar to what my neighborhood experienced in 2023) for Northwest Houston and Northeast Houston. The common denominators are centerpoint and Texas's useless PUC. Governor Abbott needs to clean house at the PUC and needs to remove centerpoint's license to operate.

---

Ego is the anesthesia that deadens the pain of stupidity

DISCLAIMER: These are the author's own personal views and do not represent the views of the author's employer.

No

No, power outages were rare in those days. (central and southern California)

quote:

Originally posted by tatortodd:
Short version: Yes

......It turns out, Centerpoint hadn't been doing any right away trimming and very little maintenance in the entire Houston Metro area.....

That's been a problem around here too, trees and large limps falling on overhead lines are probably the cause of outages.

A few years ago the power company CEO was on a talk radio interview making the case for another rate increase to give them more money to maintain right-of-ways. But it seems to me it'll save them money if they maintain them opposed to having to come out to repair the lines and clear trees after they fall on them.

I don't remember the power going out frequently back then. But I think all of the grids were newer then and perhaps better maintained. I agree that when it went out back then, it took much longer to restore.

I remember it, and the irony of it — Dad worked for the power company, and we spent a number of nights in the dark, huddled around the woodstove.

“We,” of course, means me, Mom, and my brother. Dad was out working, helping to restore power to people further away than us.

\

quote:

Originally posted by ridewv:
A few years ago the power company CEO was on a talk radio interview making the case for another rate increase to give them more money to maintain right-of-ways. But it seems to me it'll save them money if they maintain them opposed to having to come out to repair the lines and clear trees after they fall on them.

You’re not incorrect, sir.

This brings back a memory of August 1998, Detroit, MI me and my ex were living in east Dearborn and a tornado ripped through and we lost power for days and then had a brown out.

No, neither did the tv reception.
All this " progress " will be the death of me

quote:

Originally posted by sourdough44:
I feel power is fairly reliable here, SE WI. The worst was 25 years ago when some summer storms broke a bunch of power poles. That one was 5 days or so, warm weather, so easier.

I have a woodstove so don’t worry about heat. I have a smaller portable generator, that’s been enough here for decades.

We all get used to reliable power, can be a bummer to go without more than a few hours.

Look up the Ice Storm of 1976. At least Wisconsin and Michigan as I remember. Nice thing about an ice storm is you don’t lose a freezer full of food and the beer stays cold.

Over the next 22 years that I spent in SE Wisconsin, the power went out for a day maybe two every couple of years.

I’ve lived where I am in Florida longer now than Wisconsin. I believe we’ve been without power over the same amount of time in Florida less frequently but longer duration.

Whole house generators are a norm in any new construction…

…

I started my career with the electric utility business in 1977 , so yeah , plenty of outages ...