Bad enough here that we pulled the trigger on a generator install this summer. A lot of issues from dead ash trees here, but even before they started dropping we had plenty of issues any time the wind blew.

A small town west of me lost power for 4 days,many folks lost what was in their freezers.

Maintenance does = reliability

the town I live in has their own power company , local guys as linemen , local admin , all right here in town.

my power was out for 1 day about 10 years ago we had 90mph strait line winds and it dropped trees across nearly every street

that was 0600 at 14:45 the power was restored to any one who still had a connection , they had to cut free a hundred homes at the pole as trees were down over the line to the house
neighbors ran extension cords to get fridges and freezers powered. when power was restored.

other local power companies came to help with that , first the police started at the north end of town going to each place with a down line and building the list

then they power companies each took a street and worked north to south and west to east
while that was happening streets came through about 7 with the big payloader and pushed any trees out of the road
everyone with a chainsaw also was going to it about 7 cutting and pulling limbs off the road
where you couldn't go 3 blocks without a tree over the road by 9 you could drive nearly all

all afternoon it was a steady line of trucks hauling brush to the compost site

it was amazing how fast things cleaned up

I was one of those working a chainsaw and the kids and I made many loads with the old 15 passenger van and trailer .

the local power company is constantly ding maintenance and other than some squirrels taking out fuses and a transformer failure every once in a while , power is very seldom down more than a half hour and seldom everywhere.

if we can keep the lines up and our electric rates normal , what are the big companies that should have so much more economy of scale doing with the $ to maintain lines and keep a working grid
it sure sounds like miss management and probably some folks getting fat by risking the grid that supplies other peoples homes.

Makes a guy want to run out and buy that electric care to add to the grid in some of those places.

Most folks around here have bought generators since this crap started years ago. Many have bought auto-start, whole-home gennys.

I'm still using my old Generac 5500 that has been my work generator for almost thirty years. I use the 50A welding plug in my shop to feed the main panel in the house. It works okay. We can't run the water heater or dryer and only one window AC but it runs everything else including all my fridges and freezers.

The wife claims she can't start it (I know she can, I've seen her start it LOL) and wants me to buy a bigger, battery-start genny that will power everything for the times I'm working out-of-town or at camp.

It’s getting tough to maintain ROWs now a days. First off, public get livid and recently, the gov is tossing in a bunch of BS. Before trimmers go in, a bird sweeper goes through the area looking for nests. Any nests and the area hast to wait until august, if we can even do it. Our new CEO is prioritizing safety and it’s looking like our tree budget will go up substantially. 1 buddy dead a year ago and another burnt a few weeks ago. He asked why they were splicing wire in the first place…….trees. For 25 years, the only guys getting burnt were the guys that were pushed through the trade and never should’ve been there.
I like showing up to an emer call and the tap into the property is burnt down and hung up in trees…….no bucket access for a lot of our stuff. When I tell the owner I’ll be cutting a few trees to get the wire up they say “No!”……….I start packing up and leaving, but they stop me before I’m gone.

The birds this time of year can be a nuisance. Any little open bare spot near a ground along a feeder will be susceptible. 3-5 second operations all friggin day until someone finds it, or if it’s near the station where there’s plenty available fault current, she’ll just lock right out….kapow!…lol

Keep in mind the knee jerk reaction safety rules they’re throwing at everyone. More and more often we have to kill it to work on a line. When Mb Hydro bought out the old Winnipeg Hydro system, it was a nightmare!
There’s the odd wingnut in Corporate Safety…..especially when engineers get involved. Nobodies been in the field, the ones that have get railroaded out of there. I could go on forever.

All linemen rock generators at home. The wife only had to use it twice in 30 years but you never know.

What amazes me is the lack of useable solar power after all of these years for the average person to use daily. It’s always seems to be more of a project, look here I’m green novelty thing more then a solid investment. You would think in 50 plus years into it more available systems would be a lot more common and available to the public.

I have never received any practical solar catalog or info on systems to even consider to purchase Solar I find that strange.

As a utility up here, we’re not looking at solar but we did have huge cost sharing incentives with preferred dealers. Turns out most were a bunch of scammers ripping off the customers or feeding them a line of BS. I know of one guy that built a huge $70000 system, Hydro paid half, about 9 years ago. He broke even last summer and now he hopes nothing goes wrong. Don’t get me wrong though, even up here they have their place. Last week I installed a bidirectional meter at a seasonal place and that thing was humming backwards. His set up was about 20’x30’. Probably only a fridge drawing power, the rest sold back to us dirt cheap.

I think a big improvement in reliability comes when the people doing the maintenance all live locally. They don't want their family, friends and community to suffer any issues. I believe that's why everything gets so well taken care of in my area.

The cities in Ohio often use crews of Hispanics for all the maintenance. They probably couldn't care less, as long as they are getting paid.

Keith

Forty-plus hours since the thunderstorms and still almost 1,000 houses out of power.

Met-Ed is “hoping to restore power to nearly all customers by midnight tonight. “

How big of a utility is that? If it’s a smaller one, looks like they’re trying to handle it themselves? If you bring in the tramp linemen you’ll get some ugly work but it’ll make toast for a little while.
After a big storm, the new Europeans that come out here tell me that it should all be underground…….like Germany……..lol. “Then why don’t you go back?”……The Russians and Eastern Europeans never complain…..lol.
If Manitoba would install the distribution under ground where possible, nobody could afford to power their homes. We already got a good portion over the years converted to U/G in the really bad ice areas, but the bigger sub trans and transmission that feed the stations is over head.

First Energy is pretty big. They serve over 2 million customers. Back in 2001 they bought out a lot the smaller electric companies across the state, Met-Ed (my provider), PennPower, Penelec. West PennPower, etc.

All those smaller companies are now owned by First Energy. They immediately stopped line maintenance and everything was good for 8 to 10 years, but eventually we started paying the price for that lack of maintenance. At this point most of their equipment is very old and every time the wind blows, trees and limbs fall on the lines because they’ve never cleared them.

So every time we get a thunderstorm, 10,000 households lose their power for 12 to 48 hours.

Same here where I live. We are off the main road up in woods on the end of the grid. Every wind storm or rain fall of any kind we are out of power. I have 2 generators now but it is still a pain having to go thru that transition to a another power source set up. Once a month is about average here.