quote:

Originally posted by Patriot:
Whole house generators are a norm in any new construction……

I didn't know that but I can see why. I would at least have the electrician wire it to be ready. My 3 closest neighbors each have added Generac systems to their houses.

I have a small generator that I wheel over near the house where I can plug it into a special receptacle that'll run the fridge, some lights, and the well pump. It's noisy though so I only run it intermittently.

quote:

Originally posted by selogic:
I started my career with the electric utility business in 1977 , so yeah , plenty of outages ...

Correlation or causation?

I recall a conversation I had with a Virginia Power employee when I and my late wife lived in Northern Virginia. For a while we had frequent power outages when a power transformer nearby exploded (you could hear it). He said, it was simple: Virgina Power had purchased a lot of power transformers cheaply which could not handle the power in the area. Virginia Power simply planned to use up the existing supply of transformers until they were gone.

Hell, I remember Reddy Kilowatt ads on TV urging people to use more electricity. We lived out on the east side of Denver and I don’t remember the power ever going out.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: arfmel,

quote:

Originally posted by trapper189:

quote:

Originally posted by selogic:
I started my career with the electric utility business in 1977 , so yeah , plenty of outages ...

Correlation or causation?

Observation . My phone rang at all hours back in 1977 and in 2017 when I called it quits it was still waking me up at night .

yes, and no, I think

younger life we lived in the burbs, and since it was the 70's, if power went out not a big deal,
candles, or if it was dark, go to bed,

we had electric AC and I think gas heat, and a fireplace, and mom, being from the country, had a closet full of quilts


so we stayed warm , and did not have the electrical gadgets we do now , so not a big deal

in the 80's we married and bought a home, closer to the city, and power only went out a few times for a longer period, once for a few days, due to a severe ice storm,

parents lived close to where I am now and they rarely lost power,


now, we have been in this house since 2002 and loose power on occassion, but not as much as we did when we moved it
commented to some neighbors recently that if the power company had buried the lines thru the state park, we would rarely loose power, since most are from a car hitting a pole, or tree falling,


did loose power for 14 days during isabel, which sucked,

but now it is maybe a few times a year, and rarely more than an hour or so, if that

As a kid I rarely remember it going out but it might be just because I was a kid. I bought my first house in 1992 and for 20 years I remember it going out a couple times a year. The last ten years I have been in Illinois and it’s never gone out for more than an hour or two since we built. I’m not sure if that has to do with everything being underground or not. I would assume so but I’ve never looked into it.

I don't remember the 70s or 80s, but our power sure went out a lot more in the 90s than it does now. We've been in our current house since 2006 and I don't think the power has ever gone out for more than 12 hours, even when tornadoes have come through and wiped out huge sections of line.

Our last outage was this summer when a neighbor's tree fell and took out a line. It was about 8:30pm when it happened and the power company had a truck out there within an hour, and he called a bunch more who were out there until 3am setting a new pole and re-stringing the lines. They were really efficient, too...I watched them stage a guy up in a truck by the fuse so they could re-energize sections of the line immediately as it was restored. Our power was back up in about two hours but the people down the street took longer because of the pole.

I sure do hate paying that bill every month, especially since it seems like it's about doubled in the past few years, but I've gotta admit they do good work.

We were the last, absolute last, house on the line. Power went out anywhere on our part of the grid, and we lost it.

More common in summer with thunderstorms and (I presume) drunks hitting poles than during the snow in winter.

quote:

Originally posted by ArtieS:
We were the last, absolute last, house on the line. Power went out anywhere on our part of the grid, and we lost it.....

I happen to be the last service on our line as well and this line has a lot of short power outages, like for just seconds.... enough to have to reset clocks on the stove and microwave. An engineer was walking along the line a few months back trying to figure out what was causing the frequent drops. Maybe the upcoming scheduled outage today is related to this problem and they finally fix it?

I don't recall it ever being out as kid in the midwest back in the 60 or 70's?

quote:

Originally posted by ridewv:

quote:

Originally posted by ArtieS:
We were the last, absolute last, house on the line. Power went out anywhere on our part of the grid, and we lost it.....

I happen to be the last service on our line as well and this line has a lot of short power outages, like for just seconds.... enough to have to reset clocks on the stove and microwave. An engineer was walking along the line a few months back trying to figure out what was causing the frequent drops. Maybe the upcoming scheduled outage today is related to this problem and they finally fix it?

One of my properties is the very last on the line (and so is my house so 2 properties). It always had 2-4 hour outages, probably at least once every 3 months. Very frustrating to look across the street and see everyone's lights on and yours aren't. One of the techs was complaining that they keep splicing the line and there were already 13 splices in it, the line was a block long and had trees close to it in many yards. They finally replaced it with underground power.

My house OTOH same thing, but rarely if ever is there an outage, unless it's an entire neighborhood outage but no trees along where the power lines run in anyone's yard.

quote:

Originally posted by tatortodd:
Short version: Yes

That’s awful just to read. We didn’t have it nearly as bad in NTX but similar things have occurred. Our neighborhood went through these outages, numerous, 2 years ago IIRC. Same thing. Oncor hadn’t maintained trees over the electricity poles. High wind speeds, and the power would go out, often. No rain, no cold, no inclement weather. Just windy. It went on and on, until someone really complained or went up the food chain. Finally after many months Oncor relented, and spent the money for the big trucks to roll and trim trees all down the major street that borders my neighborhood. It was a shit show. Since, it hasn’t been a common occurrence.

The power does go out more frequently than I remember in the past, especially as a kid in the 80’s and an adult in the 90’s. It’s been OK this year but the reality is our grid is screwed. Millions have migrated and moved here over the past 10 years. Texas AG has stated we are running out of water. We need new reservoirs to be built. The grid needs investment and upgrades but these greedy utility providers want to extract every dime out of what they have without having to invest anything. With the steep population increases it’s going to continue to be an issue. If they get around to any upgrades, expect our kwh rates to keep climbing to offset. This is a big reason why I leased 35 panels in 2014. That’s the major portion of my electricity and its fixed cost to offset the kwh increases which have been substantial. I’m paying 100% more per kWh than I did before Uri, and Covid.

Uri was Moses parting the seas and showing us all how poor the grid here has been maintained. That was an awful week. I lit the fireplace and the k9 and I holed up in the living room. The stupid pool froze over. I was so scared of that ice getting in the pvc lines that I kept breaking the ice up. I broke a pool pole, and a large industrial broom. I finally walked to the neighbors and got one of their boys metal baseball bat and that did the trick. I was beating ice for hours. I didn’t lose power for multiple days, just 1. I was so thankful to God, that I didn’t have pipes burst. One definitely would have but I paid a lot of money a few years earlier to the plumbers to stop running water to that faucet and had them remove it. They cut off water going to it from under the sink then removed it outside. I had to pay my siding guy to come back over here and redo the siding there. Either way I thanked God and considered myself extremely fortunate that I didn’t have major shit break or have to file a claim with homeowners. Homeowners is so expensive here now that I’m afraid to use it for fear of the cost after a claim. It has gone up $1000, each, of the last 3 years. I fear renewal, which is just over a month from now. I fear it will rise above $500 a month. TX is just getting too expensive in general.

Long term issues I see here are the grid itself. Water. Property Taxes. Homeowners insurance. Ever increasing traffic. Overall cost. Combined, scared me enough to buy land out of state with plans of moving, working, and ultimately retiring up there. I want to spend the last 10 years of my career out of here. My permanent home will have solar like I have now, battery backup and a generator. And perhaps a small windmill. I will also drill a well. Don’t want to have to be concerned with all this as a retiree.

quote:

Originally posted by Patriot:
Whole house generators are a norm in any new construction…

…

I think that is highly dependent on where you are. In VA and NC fewer than 10% of our homes had emergency back up power. It was usually driven by folks who lived in more black out prone areas and decided to rectify it on their new home.

I recall one big outages when I was a kid.

It took out the whole North East and Canada.

I talk to someone in the power industry years later.

The North East guy on duty as several seconds to react. He saw the meter bounce. The at first thought is was a meter problem by the time he figured it out, it was too late and the cascade took the North East with it.

NO Other blackouts than that small outages lasting a few hours.

I did work in a building that was fed from different substations. Some fool would it a pole and take the feed out of one side.

It was real weird, part of the electricity would go out. It would drop a high voltage leg.

Some lights would work and some outlets but not others. It took a few partial blackouts to figure it out.

Power companies raising rates to cut away trees is the same strategy as using gasoline tax to repair roads. Sounds good. Never happens

Well the power that went off at 1 just came back at 8:30 this evening. Cold and snowy today but dogs and I were toasty with the wood stove going. It would have sucked to be in an all electric house without a source of supplemental heat.

If nothing else these outages sure make you appreciate having (mostly) reliable power!

recall the 70's out in the country at my grandparents,

no idea if they ever lost power,

however, it a thunderstorm was coming, did not matter what was on, the TV got shut off and unplugged,


bug bunny in a pivotal scene? grandma walk by after hearing a clap of thunder and seeing a dark cloud, and unplugged it was,

best not plug it in till the storm was gone, or she would lite up a storm on your behind