Yeah, you won’t lose power much. That’s prioritized.
I don’t get as many power outages in the winter as I do in the warmer months (in fall it’s not unusual to have some weeks without grid power). I did however get a freak outage before the last round of storms and cold. The overhead lines coming up the mountain to me have wetlands at the bottom, it appears a sudden extreme drop in temperature caused the wires to contract and tilted a pole enough (before ground could refreeze) to disconnect the lines. This is in NJ. JCP&L/firstenergy utility just does a shit job here.
> in fall it’s not unusual to have some weeks without grid power
This blows my mind. The last time I lost power was ~2 years ago and it lasted maybe 5 days. I know others in my area were out for longer. I suffered for a few days but ended up going down to Toledo and getting a hotel, thankfully only for one night as it was on the next day.
Outside of that, I can only thing of maybe ~100 hours total my power was out over the last ~5-8 years.
Aside, I do think I'm lucky in some way. I live off a semi-major road (40mph) and like I said earlier, less than 1 mile as the crow flies from a major regional hospital. But still most of my street will lose power and only me and a few neighbors will still have lights on. I always thought I was on some random spoke off the hospital grid but based on the surrounding outages it never made sense. There is a creek nearby to complicate things. One day I'll research/track the lines and see what's really up.
Yeah, it’s true though. The most annoying outages we’ve had are when poles get damaged and need a full replacement.
A couple years ago we had a black locust tree split and break the T on the top of telephone pole across street. It didn’t take the power out itself, but the utility felt it was safer to shut it off until the pole was replaced. Took 3 days as they sent the crew from texas to NJ.
My parents place had 2 pole replacements on their driveway, each time in different years it was same guy sent up from Alabama. Each time took days.
This area I just don’t think they prioritize getting power restored quickly, population density too low, most own generators, and we don’t have medical stuff nearby. Better to send workers from regions where pay is lower, that’s my guess. I had to file complaints with BPU last year as they fired the meter readers and estimated the bills for like 7 months before installing smart meters.
Yeah, you won’t lose power much. That’s prioritized.
I don’t get as many power outages in the winter as I do in the warmer months (in fall it’s not unusual to have some weeks without grid power). I did however get a freak outage before the last round of storms and cold. The overhead lines coming up the mountain to me have wetlands at the bottom, it appears a sudden extreme drop in temperature caused the wires to contract and tilted a pole enough (before ground could refreeze) to disconnect the lines. This is in NJ. JCP&L/firstenergy utility just does a shit job here.