Friday, November 24, 2006
Power Off Press Quit To Start
Wink: He who laughs last thinks slowest.
I awoke this morning at 2:30am to a thunderous sound and almost white flash of blinding light, much stronger than any lightening bolt could ever be. My heart was pounding with the what the hell was that syndrome. As my feet hit the floor at 2:31 there was a second explosive sound with accompanying intensity of light. Of course it then hit me that our power was out.
We have had transformers blow in the past in our neighbourhood, and although loud with lots of flash, nothing nearly as explosive as this. But this was not one of those. At the foot of a pole near my place there was debris spread half way across the street and on the nearby lawns. Power was restored by the repair crew approximately 4:30am, and by all appearances a new insulator did the job.
This made me think again how vulnerable we are when our power suddenly quits. As I listened to the radio while getting ready for work, this made me think how often owr power suddenly quits, as they announced numerous pockets of outages around our twin cities.
Outages are becoming more frequent. It is happening during normal weather conditions, not raging storms. Not long ago, the power company blamed sea salt in the air. Was it sea salt this time - in the rain? If so we have a problem, the sea is here to stay. Is it lack of maintenance? One rarely sees any maintenance in progress, unless it is replacing a pole that some vehicle knocked down.
The information seems to be that these power interruptions have been going on for some time over the past while in small patches over our entire city areas. Wait until winter and the storms arrive.
I grew up on a farm (quite a few years ago), and our power rarely went out, and when it did it was usually during a freezing rain period causing trees to fall on the lines. Equipment failure was rare.
Today our power system is like a dollar ninety five can opener - good for a couple cans, but don't depend on it when you are really hungry.
This work by NSCAVE is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License
I awoke this morning at 2:30am to a thunderous sound and almost white flash of blinding light, much stronger than any lightening bolt could ever be. My heart was pounding with the what the hell was that syndrome. As my feet hit the floor at 2:31 there was a second explosive sound with accompanying intensity of light. Of course it then hit me that our power was out.
We have had transformers blow in the past in our neighbourhood, and although loud with lots of flash, nothing nearly as explosive as this. But this was not one of those. At the foot of a pole near my place there was debris spread half way across the street and on the nearby lawns. Power was restored by the repair crew approximately 4:30am, and by all appearances a new insulator did the job.
This made me think again how vulnerable we are when our power suddenly quits. As I listened to the radio while getting ready for work, this made me think how often owr power suddenly quits, as they announced numerous pockets of outages around our twin cities.
Outages are becoming more frequent. It is happening during normal weather conditions, not raging storms. Not long ago, the power company blamed sea salt in the air. Was it sea salt this time - in the rain? If so we have a problem, the sea is here to stay. Is it lack of maintenance? One rarely sees any maintenance in progress, unless it is replacing a pole that some vehicle knocked down.
The information seems to be that these power interruptions have been going on for some time over the past while in small patches over our entire city areas. Wait until winter and the storms arrive.
I grew up on a farm (quite a few years ago), and our power rarely went out, and when it did it was usually during a freezing rain period causing trees to fall on the lines. Equipment failure was rare.
Today our power system is like a dollar ninety five can opener - good for a couple cans, but don't depend on it when you are really hungry.
This work by NSCAVE is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License
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