These are the kind of outages we have in my county about once a month. This was back on July 24 through July 26, less than a month ago. A line of storms rolled through, they weren’t even anywhere near severe. These are the kind of outages we have every time the wind blows a little bit. Almost zero line maintenance in 24 years. This outage had more than 10,000 people out of power for more than 24 hours.



This is the kind of bull crap message they give you when thousands of people lose power at the same time.



“Severe weather”, what a joke. Not that their estimated restoration times mean much when they do give them. It’s always expected to be restored three hours after the initial outage, and then they simply keep adding time in three hour increments after that until it finally gets fixed, complete bull crap.

Our program says 3hrs after a customer reports an outage too, it's just a generic number that generates after the trouble call is created. We always laugh when the news says that there's 1500 people out and the expected restoration time is 3hrs. It could be 1/2 an hour of a few days. During big weather events the outage map is disabled and updates are on the news and social media.
Management stresses that we update the restore times as we work, but the last thing we care about is keeping that outage map updated, among the million other computer/app paperwork we're supposed to fill out as we're trying to fix something. It wasn't very many years ago when the response crews just got the lights back on.....lol.
I just finished a quiet 55hr call shift then took off to Wyoming for the weekend. The first thing the supervisor says to me this morning is "Managment says you're missing 3 gas receipts from the last month that weren't saved in the "app".
I start another call shift tonight to pay off that buckle...hahaha. $$$$

Jake you guys don’t have meters that automatically read back to the office? They went to that here and works pretty good.

We finally got one recently. The tiny electrical co-op that supplies electricity to my camp had them installed years ago.

But the giant conglomerate we have here at home drug their feet and didn't install them until just before the deadline set by the PA Public Utility Commission. Before that they only did actual meter readings every second or third month, the rest were "estimated" readings.

As a result, our electric bills varied wildly, the bill might be $6.00 one month and $350.00 the next. When you'd call to complain they'd give you the option of reading the meter yourself. When too many people asked if they were going to be paid for that service the power company stopped giving that suggestion over the phone and began printing instructions on how to read and report your meter reading on the bill.

^^^Like from the utility worker side of the fence.

No but they’re coming sooner than later and I can’t wait. Disconnects for non payment would be a click of the mouse from an office. Ontario has had them for a long time, but there was a few fires started when Saskatchewan first started using them. That’s why we held off……but they’re coming.

My whole house General is one of the best things I have done. Power outages —no problem.

Had a bad storm here about 10 years ago. Our half of the county was really messed up. Couldn't go anywhere without carrying a chainsaw in your truck. Locl electric company was saying 7 days to make repairs on our line. I was at Tractor Supply that morning when they opened their doors to get a generator. We all charged into the store using flashlights since the lights were out. No generators left by the time I got to the aisle. I called the local Lowes. I do a lot of business there and thought I had the inside scoop from a manager I delt with a lot that a truck of generators was showing up at 1:00. I got there at noon and found a crowd of hundreds alos waiting. My inside scoop wasn't as inside as I thought.

We started driving north on the NJ turnpike with my wife calling lowes and home depots along our route. We drove 75 miles before we found one. The guy in that department told me that thy've been having people from down south drive up all day to get generators - some sort of storm down south.

We ran on that generator for almost a week.

Now that I have a generator - the electric doesn't go out anymore.

^^^The gas never gets old in my genny, our electric supplier makes sure of that. LOL^^^

We’ve had the meters here for years, mainly nobody wanted to read them anymore there was even a couple of instances that the meter reader was shot at.