I wonder what that cost

[orezok]

About 5:30 Friday afternoon, my power goes out. It happens from time to time, but usually never lasts more than an hour or 2 so I ignore it and figure SCE will have it back up shortly. The Generac kicked in and all was well when I went to bed. Generator ran all night (very unusual) and in the morning I called SCE and reported outage. When I looked outside at 5:00 all my neighbors had power. Hmmm…

Somehow SCE knew that my power was out and had sent someone out to investigate. Maybe the smart meter is smarter than I think.

I go to my CCTV, and see that a service truck is at the house at 1:00 AM, opened the transformer and left after about 20 minutes.

I call SCE to see what the back in service will be several times and finally get a real person who states “up by noon”. Noon comes and goes and no service. Call again and was told up between 3 and 6. Six PM passes and no service. Called again and was told, workers are on the way and they don’t know ETA. Well generator is purring along so no big issue other than it’s eating $3.00 propane and solar is also down.

Crew finally shows up just before 8:00 with a service truck, a bucket truck and 5 workers. I talk to them and they tell me that that were dispatched from Bishop in northern CA, a 5 hour drive from my house. I don’t know if some local crews were sent east for hurricane repair or what.

They state that some component failed on the pole that services my property and it will take 4 to 5 hours to repair. Power came back on about 11:00 so they exceeded their estimate. I’ll bet thet were enjoying the overtime!

They have another 5 hour trip back home today. I wonder what that cost SCE?

 

[EddieWalker]

The last time I lost power, the guys who showed up to fix it where out of Mississippi. I'm in East Texas.

Somehow the metal rod that holds the hot wire at the top of my power pole had gone bad. It took about ten minutes to remove it, and install a new one. I have no idea how long they spent going from pole to pole to figure that out..

 

[ponytug]

@orezok I'm glad that things are back on track for you.

We've had a few 1-2 customer outages, so I tend to call in the outages, just in case (line fuses and transformers, and insulators). The smart meters do get polled every few minutes, but it can take awhile for the the information to get over to the outage group in PG&E land. SCE is better and worse than PG&E in my experience.

@EddieWalker Crews have a gizmo that can pulse loads onto a line and measure the time delay to the issue, and get a read out in feet to the problem. The Telco version is a TDR (Time Domain Reflectometer), but I don't know if that is what the electrical version is called. We've had both of them used here more than a few times... Also works for cable, and something similar for fiber optic lines. Yes, I think that it saves a great deal of time for crews. I remember trying to find line faults before the equipment was widespread/existed. Pick a point half way along the line, check, then check half way from there on the direction towards the fault, check the half with fault half way, check, check, check. Slow and painful.

All the best,

Peter

 

[oosik]

Last month we had two outages - VERY unusual. The co-op utility service guys came in to check my line and service during both outages.

It was a heavy equipment operator who had knocked down a power pole at a construction site. Same operator - same heavy equipment - both times. Appears he got better training or now a new operator on this equipment.

Both outages - last month - were within three days of each other.

First outage - four hours. Second outage - two hours.

Practice, practice..................

 

[bigtiller]

I was the only one to loose power last week. The power guys found a dead squirrel at the base of the pole.

This 22 inch piece of plastic should stop the next one.

 

[Too many Kubotas]

I was the only one to loose power last week.

Oh no, you weren't.

Loud boom on Wednesday, then the generators came on. Never did ask why we had no power and the neighbors did.

 

[oosik]

I know there are squirrels out here. I've seen two pine squirrels in the 42 years out here. The chipmunk population makes up for the lack of squirrels. I've never seen a CM up a power pole. Must be a good reason.

However - the various types of wood peckers have no fear of the power poles. Up on top - they peck away. You can hear the pecking from a quarter mile away. Perhaps - defining their home range.

 

[Dftodd]

The last time I lost power, the guys who showed up to fix it where out of Mississippi. I'm in East Texas.

Somehow the metal rod that holds the hot wire at the top of my power pole had gone bad. It took about ten minutes to remove it, and install a new one. I have no idea how long they spent going from pole to pole to figure that out..

We have a lot of sub contractors working for entergy running around our area.

So I wonder if you experienced similar and why the repair crew was from Mississippi.

 

[Dftodd]

I know there are squirrels out here. I've seen two pine squirrels in the 42 years out here. The chipmunk population makes up for the lack of squirrels. I've never seen a CM up a power pole. Must be a good reason.

However - the various types of wood peckers have no fear of the power poles. Up on top - they peck away. You can hear the pecking from a quarter mile away. Perhaps - defining their home range.

Squirrels offing themselves by shorting out transformers and sub stations is a common occurance around our area.

I haven't seen a chipmunk around here.

Lots and lots of squirrels and flying squirrels though.

 

[ponytug]

Squirrels offing themselves by shorting out transformers and sub stations is a common occurance around our area.

I haven't seen a chipmunk around here.

Lots and lots of squirrels and flying squirrels though.

Here, too. Two squirrels once took out the county's largest employer (23,000+) by shorting out the transfer switch between the grid and the site's cogen power plant, leaving everything dark. There happened to be a replacement switch on the East coast, otherwise 120-180 day lead time for replacement. It still took close to a week to get the replacement from the East coast to the West coast and in place. As far as I can tell, there isn't much inventory of larger electrical equipment anywhere.

Speaking of "Booms". My then to be wife and I were walking out of a local bakery, ordering a wedding cake, and walked under some power lines.
"BANG!" followed by a slightly charred seagull landing at our feet. Scared the living daylights out of both of us.

I have since seen triangular additions to crossbars to keep birds from getting too close.

What does this triangle do?

This photograph shows an electrical power distribution line in beautiful Summit County, Colorado, at an altitude of about 9100 feet above sea level. The first reader to post a comment correctly ex…

blog.oppedahl.com

Stay safe out there.

All the best,

Peter

 

[Dftodd]

Here, too. Two squirrels once took out the county's largest employer (23,000+) by shorting out the transfer switch between the grid and the site's cogen power plant, leaving everything dark. There happened to be a replacement switch on the East coast, otherwise 120-180 day lead time for replacement. It still took close to a week to get the replacement from the East coast to the West coast and in place. As far as I can tell, there isn't much inventory of larger electrical equipment anywhere.

Speaking of "Booms". My then to be wife and I were walking out of a local bakery, ordering a wedding cake, and walked under some power lines.
"BANG!" followed by a slightly charred seagull landing at our feet. Scared the living daylights out of both of us.

I have since seen triangular additions to crossbars to keep birds from getting too close.

What does this triangle do?

This photograph shows an electrical power distribution line in beautiful Summit County, Colorado, at an altitude of about 9100 feet above sea level. The first reader to post a comment correctly ex…

blog.oppedahl.com

Stay safe out there.

All the best,

Peter

Yeah, we had a transfer station get wiped out by a squirrel knocking out power for a day or so.

They bussed in a used part from somewhere and got us back up.

But then about 2 months later the used part had a catastrophic failure.

We were out for a couple days until they could replace it with another used part.

They had a 6 month wait for the part.

It was shortly after Katrina, so spare parts were hard to come by.

Factor in a few large areas being smoked by tornados, (my town included) as well as other natural disasters around that time, it really taxed the power grids.

 

[oosik]

Four years ago - almost to the day. Evening Bar-B-Que. Saw a transformer explode. What a fantastic sight. Particularly since it was a block away and at my son's place in Spokane.

Around here - this time of year - an event such as this would likely start a large wildfire.

 

[bcp]

About 20 years ago, I watched a squirrel jump onto a transformer at my house. Big flash and bang, squirrel falling into the low bushes at the base. Saw breakers open and house went dead. Called it in. They INSISTED I check my main circuit breaker first, before taking the report.

Went back out to the pole and the squirrel was gone!

Repairman came out and rewired it all with insulated wire instead of bare. No problems since then.

Bruce

 

[Too many Kubotas]

Four years ago - almost to the day. Evening Bar-B-Que. Saw a transformer explode. What a fantastic sight. Particularly since it was a block away and at my son's place in Spokane.

Around here - this time of year - an event such as this would likely start a large wildfire.

One neat thing with the Northridge quake in California (which didn't really affect us much, living on a ridge to the south) was seeing transformers blow up by Los Angeles.

It was quite the light show, and oddly enough we had no fires nearby as a result. Oddly, because fires were all too common.

 

[Dftodd]

Four years ago - almost to the day. Evening Bar-B-Que. Saw a transformer explode. What a fantastic sight. Particularly since it was a block away and at my son's place in Spokane.

Around here - this time of year - an event such as this would likely start a large wildfire.

Years ago I was sitting in traffic waiting for a light to change during a thunder storm.

Lightening struck the pole right next to me blowing a transformer.

That scared the daylights out of me. My foot came off the clutch when I jumped in my seat and I almost hit the vehicle in front of me

 

[Oaktree]

The last time I lost power, the guys who showed up to fix it where out of Mississippi. I'm in East Texas.

Somehow the metal rod that holds the hot wire at the top of my power pole had gone bad. It took about ten minutes to remove it, and install a new one. I have no idea how long they spent going from pole to pole to figure that out..

Around here - this time of year - an event such as this would likely start a large wildfire.

Had something similar happen here a couple weeks ago. Tree came down, hit the top (hot) wire and the impact pulled the wire off the top insulator of the pole in front of my house (even though the tree that fell was a couple hundred yards away, and closer to a different pole). Wire was arcing and sparking against the pole for quite some time before the power company got there to repair it. Burnt the pole pretty good. It had rained earlier in the day, so the pole was still wet.

Always wondered how "visiting" power company workers can troubleshoot outages far from their own region. Do the local companies make local grid maps available to these guys? Seems that just finding the shutoff might be a challenge in an unfamiliar area.

 

[ponytug]

Around here, they get maps (tablets) and keys. Our local guys, at least the ones that I have spoken with, really like the tablets because they are more up to date, and they aren't having to organize rolls of paper.

All the best,

Peter