Daggone Power Went Out For The Second Day In A Row

Discussion in 'Weather & Natural Disasters' started by John Brunner, Jul 22, 2020.

  1. John Brunner

    John Brunner Senior Staff
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    My power went out yesterday evening at 7PM, and did not come on until 3AM.

    There have been afternoon storms going through much of the state, but the strange thing is that there were no storms around my area when the power went out yesterday: no thunder, no lightening, no hard rain. And it only went out here for the 3 of us down this private right-of-way. I drove up to the main road and everyone's power was on. I drove up the street to the next main road and everyone's power was on, so it's not as though there was an issue way upstream of us.

    I know it took so long to get restored because of strong storms throughout in the state. I have weather alert on my XM radio, and it was showing constant storm warnings for a bunch of counties nearby and elsewhere.

    I ended up throwing out a bunch of stuff that was in the fridge, then took advantage of the situation and scrubbed it clean. Went to the store, dropped over $50 on replacement food, and at 4:30 this afternoon the power went out again!!! At least this time it was only out for 2 1/2 hours...but more storms are predicted for Thursday and Friday afternoons. Maybe I'll get a cooler of ice and be ready for it rather than angst.

    The worse part is what this damned Flu Response has done. Before when there were outages, I could go to a local restaurant, get something to eat, and read some magazines. Now I'm pretty much stuck riding things out at home. Dinner last night was peanut butter on Naan and potato chips by the glow of an LED lantern.
     
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  2. Beth Gallagher

    Beth Gallagher Supreme Member
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    Time to buy a generator? :D
     
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  3. John Brunner

    John Brunner Senior Staff
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    I thought of that when I first moved in and expected reliability to be way worse than it is. I had an electrician come in and quote nearly $1,000 to install a transfer switch,and I declined. I guess I could go the route of plugging it into the 220v dryer outlet and make sure I hit the proper breakers (especially the Main) so as to not fry some lineman. But my need might be once every few years, if that often.

    And with the way gasoline is these days, I really don't need another gas engine to deal with. I already have a nice power washer sitting unused because I didn't coddle it enough.

    I might consider getting a generator if I could find a used one to hook up to my tractor's PTO. I got no problem with diesel, and running the thing overnight would not be a problem. But in the final analysis, risk don't equal the minimal reward. I tell you what I do need to get is a battery-operated window fan. Man, I forgot how tough it is to sleep without AC during a Virginia summer night! Of course, blowing humidity all over me is a barely-better option. (This is bring back childhood memories.)

    As an aside, I've mentioned that my electric co-op is in the process of upgrading the power transmission infrastructure as an offshoot of running fiber to everyone. Short poles/old poles are being replaced, and they're doing this right now on the lines served by my substation. I wonder if that's why the two unusual concurrent outages. Perhaps things will be back to normal when they're through.
     
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  4. Patsy Faye

    Patsy Faye Supreme Member
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    I hope you get back to normal living today
     
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  5. Ed Wilson

    Ed Wilson Veteran Member
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    Peanut butter and potato chips. Gotta try that. :)
     
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  6. Cody Fousnaugh

    Cody Fousnaugh Supreme Member
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    Weird, but when we lived in northeastern Florida, our electricity went out many times during the summer months. Not for long periods of time, but did go out. It did go out when Irma went over us and we were prepared for that outage.

    Back here in Colorado, now for almost a year, not once has the electricity gone out.
     
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  7. John Brunner

    John Brunner Senior Staff
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    @Cody Fousnaugh

    I've been here for 10 years and have had darned few extended periods of no power. Every once in a while it might go out for less than a minute, and then it comes back on. Other than that, it takes a pretty catastrophic storm or a unique equipment failure for it to go out for some period of time.

    One weird story: A few years ago I purchased one of those plug-in adapters so that my metal floor lamp is now a touch lamp. It has 4 touch levels: Low/Medium/High/Off. Every once in a while when a storm blows through and it I hear it rumbling off in the distance, my lamp will turn on Low all by itself. I'll get up and turn it off, and sometimes it goes back on Low again in a few minutes. It never progresses to Medium or High. And it never goes on when the storm is right overhead...only when it sounds like it's a few miles away.
     
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  8. Cody Fousnaugh

    Cody Fousnaugh Supreme Member
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    We've had a touch lamp, in our living room, for years. Had to replace it due to a mechanism going out inside. Can't use a "touch" bulb in it though, but sure love it. 3-touch positions.

    Since a pretty powerful t-storm blew our living room big-screen tv out a few years ago, in Florida, we always turn it off when we start seeing lightning/hearing thunder. A PCBA had to be replaced in Florida. We bought the tv in 2008 from the old Circuit City. It's a 46".

    The only power problems we've had, since being back here in Colorado, is with Comcast. Our tv and Internet is combined with them.
     
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  9. John Brunner

    John Brunner Senior Staff
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    I've lost 2 of the 3 HDMI inputs in my flat screen TV due to lightening. I figured out what the problem was when I installed a roof antenna and was running the cable. I opened the junction box and saw that the Direct TV tech ran the dish cable through the signal splitter instead of through the grounding block.

    The weird thing was that the lightening went right through the satellite converter box, exited the HDMI outputs and fried the TV. All without harming the converter box! TWICE!!! One of those times I was at work. The converter box wasn't even powered up.

    On some TVs, the inputs are on a separate board you can buy (and replace) pretty cheaply. On my Panasonic they're part of the motherboard. For the price of a new TV, I can limp along with one HDMI input.
     
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  10. Cody Fousnaugh

    Cody Fousnaugh Supreme Member
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    We have 4 HDMI inputs on our tv. Two in back and two on side. As far as the "replace" thing..........definitely not me! I'm sort of a "computer geek", but definitely not any kind of tech.

    When we lived in Colorado before, we had Dish at our old house. Worked great, until a snowstorm or blizzard hit, then one of us had to go out into the snowstorm and clean off the snow. Apartments don't allow Dish or Direct TV dish to be installed on an apartment. At least the ones we've lived in.
     
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  11. John Brunner

    John Brunner Senior Staff
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    3rd power outage in the making?

    Weather map.jpg

    Weather is way worse than it was when the power went out yesterday and Tuesday, yet I sense it's gonna be fine. Makes no sense...and my touch lamp just went on!!!

    At least I got ice and coolers ready today.
     
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  12. John Brunner

    John Brunner Senior Staff
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    Well, I learned that Walmart ice is a great talisman against power failures.

    Must be something in their water. Or perhaps I should just hang one of these over my door:

    [​IMG]
     
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  13. Frank Sanoica

    Frank Sanoica Supreme Member
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    Living in Missouri, we learned that our rural gravel road, on which our property was situated 6 miles off the paved state road, had been electrified only by the late '50s from a local guy who lived there all his life. He attended school in a big, one-room schoolhouse adjacent to our property 1 mile down the road: no electric lights in grade school!

    Anyhow, the electric system was very old, many power poles original from 50 y ears earlier; heavy gust of wind, power was out, at least every 2 weeks, sometimes oftener. Usually only a few hours; Black River Electric Co-op had crews out 24/7. Once, after a tropical hurricane had made it's way up into the Midwest, my wife happened to be away in Indiana, and our MO power was out going on the 3rd. day. Fridge was getting warm inside, I had a small generator which I used to power the well-pump and fridge, separately, but sparse lighting at night. So bought a 3500-watt job in Rolla, 95 miles there and back. It ran all except water heater (had wood stove) and kitchen stove (had wood cookstove), separately. I had no "transfer switch", but "back-fed" the generator into a 220-volt outlet outdoors (generator out back). This allowed me to switch in and out, circuits I wanted on or off in the house. To achieve this, the main disconnect at the meter HAD TO BE OFF: with it ON, the generator "saw" an infinitely black hole of "load", the power grid outside, which of course represented a dead short circuit to the generator. Once, I forgot to open the main.......:oops:

    Having lived now in West-Central AZ along the Colorado River, we have since 2012 experienced perhaps 4 or 5 outages of bried duration, < 1 hour, despite hellacious desert winds. It's usually a fool jumps a curb hitting a transformer.
    Frank
     
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  14. John Brunner

    John Brunner Senior Staff
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    Sounds like me, Frank.

    My main concern besides the fridge for long-term outages is the well. They make a manual pump for drilled wells (the 6" pvc ones) that allow you to pump the pressure tank full of water. Or you can open a faucet and pump water into the sink. I have no idea how deep my well is, so don't know exactly what wattage generator would be required to drive the pump. And I, too, heat with wood. And I have a propane stove (except that these modern ones without pilot lights require electricity in order to use the oven.) I can't imagine that the power draw on the oven electronics are all that great if I removed the incandescent bulb.

    If I went that route, I've read of some folks buying strings of LED Christmas lights, only using every 5th bulb, and using those inside the house rather than incandescents (although there are lots of low-wattage options available for the E27 screw based bulbs.) But then long-term outages require a lot of gas on hand for the generator.

    I've mentioned that my electric co-op is running fiber to every subscriber, and in order to do so they are replacing any poles that are too short or that are split or otherwise damaged. But it's been very reliable. I've been pleasantly surprised.
     
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