After five days, an electrical crew from Connecticut did what PECO and Pennsylvania could not do, which is turn on my damn electricity. At 3:00pm on the nose, we heard the furnace click on, and CabinGirl did a memorable happy dance.
I’d like to thank the guys we met on the road who were kind enough to travel down here and help us out. We will look for the first chance to repay the favor to the Nutmeg State.
It’s already up from 34 degrees in the house to a more reasonable 49 degrees.
Pretty soon, we can take off our coats and start to defrost.
Electricity is a wonderful thing.
Cell phones have cameras. Is there perhaps a video of the happy dance?
Even if not, we’re happy for you.
It was kind of like this.
Indeed, it was.
YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!
I understand that in Europe it is standard practice to do preventative maintenance on power plants and lines, whereas in the USA in is standard practice to fix only systems that have broken. Is this true, or was your lack of power due to storm damage which simply could not have been anticipated and planned for in advance?
There was a big ice storm last week
Utilities are supposed to have in place tree-trimming policies and practices to check their lines regularly for (a) growth of limbs up into and overhanging the lines that could be brought down onto them in a storm, and (b) so-called “danger trees” that, through a combination of disease and proximity, could be toppled into the lines, either by a storm or by the ravages over time of the disease itself. Some programs will also try to trim back a third category, trees that are still healthy but whose proximity to utility infrastructure puts them at risk of falling into it in severe-enough weather.
How often? Depends in part on the species particular to the area. Also depends on how rigorous a program the state’s utility regulators demand. How much distance from the lines is safe? Again, depends on circumstances. How radical a pruning and/or tree removal is appropriate or possible? Several factors affect this, including whether the tree in question is on public land or on private property.
Any tree-trimming program costs money, millions of dollars for a large utility. The costs have to be balanced against a number of competing interests. There’s no one-size-fits-all answer to any of the questions I’ve outlined. Utilities do conduct preventive maintenance (on both plant facilities as well as overhead lines); it’s not always enough, whether through penny-pinching or because the storm was simply so powerful that even a sensible program wouldn’t have made much difference.
One of the things Malloy did that makes me a fan is undertake a massive tree trimming campaign, even in the rural areas near me. We love our trees here, but we love our heat and light even more.
To be fair, we called CL&P: Cold, Lightless and Powerless.
Glad you will be back to thinking about politics after you get warm and cleaned up. Having endured a 10-day outage in 2003, I understand the frustration of waking up each day with the same old-same old and the joy when the lights and heat come back on.
Very good news! Heat, and Finn must have been missing cartoons.
We always honk at the caravans of bucket trucks, whether it’s our CMP guys heading down to the Carolinas after a hurricane, or the Duke Power trucks coming north to help after an ice storm or nor’easter.
The investor-owned utilities (IOUs) that distribute electricity have mutual aid compacts with each other, generally regional in nature. Thus, all the New England IOUs will work together in allocating resources, for example. The process for each utility actually starts several days in advance of a storm forecast to be potentially damaging, with prepositioning internal linesmen and contractor crews (most utilities actually depend on private contractors for a lot of line work these days) where the worst is expected to hit. Once the storm arrives, it’s game on, with all hands on deck; command staff in a control center, various other personnel plucked from their usual jobs to do damage assessment, stand by downed lines until they can be made safe, etc. Prudent IOUs also staff liaisons at the emergency HQs of their cities and towns to ensure fast, accurate communications.
It’s not uncommon for a utility that anticipates major damage to precontract with private contractors from a significant distance away so as to be sure they’ll have trucks and crews on hand in the immediate aftermath — not least because of the travel time needed to get line crews to, say, Massachusetts from, say, Tennessee.
The IOUs themselves will also release their own trucks and crews to other utilities in dire need of help, assuming they don’t have to hang onto them to complete their own restoration efforts. This mutual aid has become complicated as more and more states put into place laws or regulations requiring that a utility must have 100 percent of its own customers restored before any of its personnel can be released to help elsewhere.
How do I know all this? I proofread transcripts of utility regulatory hearings, and the subject of storm prep and response has been a Very Big Deal in a lot of cases over the last couple of years. It’s been quite the education.
“It’s already up from 34 degrees in the house to a more reasonable 49 degrees.”
So …. she wasn’t naked???
That would have been one way to keep Booman warm!
You guys are forgetting about Finn! It’s not like they could send him off with warm cookies & milk and set him down in front of the TV to watch a favorite movie while they got “warm”.
Sheesh! Will no one think of the children? 🙂
It was just a joke. Granted, a male bonding type of joke.
Well, us Connecticut folks remember with great fondness the many out of state line crews that came to rescue us after the October 2012 tree-murdering snowstorm.
Glad the help got returned.
The CT guys reminded us of that today too. 🙂
Yeah, I was out of my house for a week after the Halloween blizzard. Connecticut understands how long it seems when the power is out.
So glad to hear that your ordeal is finally over.
As a veteran of many such happenings when I had the homestead at the end of the power lines, I’m very happy for all you cabin critters! May you be warm and toasty for the rest of the wintry season.
Great news!
I hope you guys are all warm and toasty by now!
I don’t expect this to make you feel any better about your ordeal, Boo, but I must ask: Is your place sort of on the edge of PECO’s system? Are you well out on a subsidiary line?
In any utility restoration, the priorities are:
(1) Central facilities like substations and transmission lines (the high-tension lines bringing power in from generating stations);
(2) Major feeder lines radiating out from substations;
(3) Subsidiary feeders off the major lines for local distribution;
(4) Individual taps to homes from local distribution lines.
That’s simplistic, of course; high priority, for example, will be given to infrastructure feeding hospitals, emergency services facilities, and so forth. But if you’re way out on the system, then yes, you should consider investing in a generator because you’ll always be a lower priority for restoration, and with climate change bulking up storm ferocity we can expect worse to come.
I have a buddy who heads emergency management for much of bucks and Montgomery counties north of philly. He’s had crews from Alabama and Baltimore helping in his area. Funny thing he told me he doesn’t get many calls from the public even though they are mostly without power. His explanation is that it is a pretty affluent area and “most folks either have a generator or are in the Hampton Inn”
First words out of Finn’s mouth today: “we’re in our wooden house! And it’s warm!”
Nice to finally be home and not frozen.
Smart kid that Finn.
Heat is a wonderful thing. Glad you all are back in the 21st century.
I’ve been worried about the three of you. Very glad to hear things are warming up. A week or so ago I woke up to -16 degrees, so cold that it hurt to go outside. Warm beats cold every time. Take care.
“They only answer – more more more”
Good luck with the next Snowpocalyse. It looks like it has you in the bullseye.