Dependency on electric utility company

Tom in TN

Well-known Member
Good Morning,

The Duck River EMC provides electrical power to this area of lower, Middle Tennessee. They're a good group of folks. Yesterday, due to the icy weather, we lost utility power for 10 hours. I greatly respect the EMC for restoring it in such nasty weather, but it made me realize again how dependent we are on utility companies.

I have propane space heaters and a portable generator to use during outages, and I used them. But it sure is a pain in the neck to have to scramble instead of just turning on the lights and turning up the thermostat.

Thank you to any and all of you utility workers out there.

Tom in TN
 
I am retired from the power industry. Repair crews can never be thanked enough. I have seen crews out in weather that would have most. Staying in bed.
 
Yep, I can relate to that. I put in 30yrs of service with our local power company.
Those guys put themselves through some tough weather, hot and cold.
 
x4. And when there is a multi-state outage, those crews leave their homes to help others. We remember very well seeing some Georgia crews here in SW OH in 100+ deg weather - on the 4th of July - replacing poles around here that had been snapped in a storm. We called their home office to say thanks. They didn't get to be home with their families.
 
Tom,Yes Thanks to the crews!Through heat,rain sleet and snow the power crew has to go.With one wrong move they are toast you know!
 
You never miss the power until you're scrambling to hook up, start and run a generator (or two) to prevent an oncoming catastrophy - frozen pipes, no water for animals, refrigeration failure, that sort of stuff!

We can live for a while without power, but then it's crunch time. We lost power here a couple weeks back, thankfully for only about three hours, but getting in the generating mode in subfreezing temperatures at midnight was not a welcome alternative. Just missed starting that task when it came back on. Think power company blew a major circuit breaker - power down over a wide ares(s).
 
(quoted from post at 19:00:20 02/22/15) Why would you worry about the fridge in this kind of weather?
ecause the "atoms" might get excited & we all be consumed by the giant magnetic field! Don't YOU know???? :roll:
 
Every Sunday morning, a huge well known generator manufacturer has been running a half or full hour informercial on their automatic backup reserve generator system. I've seen parts of that informercial a couple of times, and two things go through my mind. One, our economy isn't thriving no matter how hard some will try to convince everyone that it is, so everyone is scratching and clawing to get what they can to get their companies to float back into the black. Two, people are suggesting that all its going to take is a cyber attack on our electrical grid to knock the lights out nationally, so now is a good time to capitalize on the notion like folks jumped on the band wagon to capitalize on "green" if only by painting company vehicles "green". During lean times, you survive anyway you can and don't look back.

Mark
 
In Jan. or 2007 we had an ice storm here and where with out power for 7 days and we got by. No power at all for the first 6 days. On day 7 I got the old Koler power plant to fire up and used it to cook a hot meal. Carried water from a pond to the animals and used a propane heater to keep the back half of the house warm. Was not fun but we got by just fine. Never had to worry about things not staying cold enough in the fridge or freezer either and no frozen pipes
 
I also want to thank the power crews. They have to work in the worst weather besides having to work with ice coated materials. I haven't been out of power due to ice for thirty years but the two times I was out it was for a week at a time and I had livestock. The well pump at that time was a jerk rod type with a pump jack run by electric motor. I could pull the belts off the motor and belt a tractor to the pump to at least get water to the hydrants. The automatic waters were frozen but I could rig up some tanks to carry water to with pails.
 
The other night here in mid michigan our power went out at about midnight with the temps outside at -20F. I don't have a wood stove and was getting ready to bug out and go to a motel somewhere. I pretty much decided to throw caution to the wind and let the place freeze as solid as a block. I've had it with going out and trying to get generator going and with it that cold I wasn't even going to worry about it. Our power goes off around here way too often. Thankfully they got it going in about an hour.
 
A couple of years ago, my youngest son was dispatched from St.Louis to Egg Harbor, NJ to be at the expected "hit" site for Sandy. His company does storm damage assessment for line crews. He (driver) and my older brother (retired line superintendent) were gone for over 2 weeks. Covered areas in NJ, Upstate NY, and Penn.
 

When we had a major ice event here in NH in '08 we had a bunch of crews from Nova Scotia in. I think they enjoyed their time here. Every night they had home cooked dinner served at our firehouse by a bunch of ladies in town.
 
Tom, it has been my experience that the EMCs provide faster service than other companies. (Not intentionally stepping on anyone's toes, that's just the way it is.) They trimmed and cleaned the right-of-ways around here last summer, so that eliminates a lot of limbs on the lines.
 
Yup they work in all kinds of weather I would not want to work in.
I MI though consumers has just let so much go that they got a wake up last year. They have been playing catchup on the line maintenance here. The limbs were let go, and such so when we got that ice last year, there was a lot of down lines. I told the one gal that I know about a cross arm and insulators last summer she had some body out in about 2 weeks. In the past they would take months to fix them. This one the insulators were hanging on the wire out of the cross arm. They deserved what they got here last year. Lots of damage.
 
very tough people.

few years back, big winter storm, power out for many days.
When most came back on, my son, and his 2 neighboring houses were still out from a blown transformer.
Out of state crew that was helping out showed up with the weather still brutal. Son and his neighbors
went out to tell the crew that they were fine if they wanted to wait for a break in the weather.
(power outages are very common here, most are prepared and deal with it)
Crew said, we're here, we'll fix it. tough fellas.
 
Sounds like your on A&E Power(old I&M). We live on the farthest western edge of A&E Power in NW Indiana and in the last 10 years we are out of power 4 or 5 times a year and several times out up to 6 days. After the last outage last summer and losing everything in fridg. & freeze I put in a transfer switch and got a portable generator more than large enough to run everything we need during an outage.
 

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