OT storms and power outages

[Freedommachine]

I was watching live reports of the radar on Friday and it looked ugly for a large portion of Arkansas, Mississippi and a number of other states - even western ohio saw a tornado.

My grid power is guaranteed to go down when the wind blows over about 35mph. It was out almost 3 full days last weekend; about 4 hours on Wednesday and currently, I have been without power since noon yesterday. The power company is saying that most will have power restored by the 4th. I am in a semi-rural area so we always end up last on the list.

Anybody else in a similar situation? Or worse yet; was anyone in the path of one of the recent tornadoes?

 

[plastikdreams]

People lost power here in nj, 2 tornadoes about 14k still out of power.

 

[eKretz]

We rarely lose power here, but when we do it's usually only a few minutes or it's for a few days. Mostly the former. We did lose power for several days in a bad winter storm around 10 -12 years ago. Can't remember any other times longer than a day. Pays to live right next door to the utility's service HQ I guess.

 

[plastikdreams]

We rarely lose power here, but when we do it's usually only a few minutes or it's for a few days. Mostly the former. We did lose power for several days in a bad winter storm around 10 -12 years ago. Can't remember any other times longer than a day. Pays to live right next door to the utility's service HQ I guess.

I'm a few hundred feet from a major switching station. We only lose power when they blow something up (like they did last week, only out for a few hours though...sounds like a bomb going off). We were the only street for miles that had power after sandy. Go a street over in any direction and all you heard were generators...power, cable, and internet...we had it lol. Took weeks to get it back.

 

[cmccull166]

We lost power 3 days Tuesday we had lights, I turned on the compressor
all I did was a load humming sound thinking it was a bad capacitor
or the contacts needed cleaned I was one wrench away from tearing
the motor apart.
Then it hit me ,lost a leg on the 3 phase .....Turned on the surface grinder same problem....So keep this in mind a tell your guys to shut shut equipment down quickly
if the 3 phase motors a not running correctly it could get expensive quickly.

 

[cmccull166]

We lost power 3 days Tuesday we had lights, I turned on the compressor
all I did was a loud humming sound thinking it was a bad capacitor
or the contacts needed cleaned I was one wrench away from tearing
the motor apart.
Then it hit me ,lost a leg on the 3 phase .....Turned on the surface grinder same problem....So keep this in mind a tell your guys to shut shut equipment down quickly
if the 3 phase motors a not running correctly it could get expensive quickly.

 

[gustafson]

My street at home loses power waaay too often. Got like yours @Freedommachine, wind blows, no power
Suggestion: Contact the state utility commission or whoever has oversight.
SWIMBO did that and poof, whole corner of town is going to get new wires[several steps in between, town got involved etc]

I think the utility probably has to send outage reports to the state in most states.
Who pays attention?
No one
but if you find the right number to call, and they look at the list, you might find a receptive ear

Maybe not, but you never know

 

[CarbideBob]

Funny how we take reliable electricity for granted.
Being near a sub-station things were good. Except for the fact that my voltage levels a tad high.
When I bought my first Japanese cnc the install techs would not turn it on until I put in a big transformer for it. (I run up to 512 high on my 480 feed).
Six or seven years back the power company changed things for "safety".
Now I get drop outs that are 10-30 seconds. Just enough time to crash a machine.
Loosing one leg is maybe worse for conventional stuff. It is trying but talking. You wonder why and the breakers and fuses do not kick. Killed a few motors this way.
Local auto plant had their own power plant on site. They never ever lost power.
One year a bright guy decided to shut it down over Christmas break to save money.
Lost parameters, lost programs, where is my backup? Three months to get all the stuff back up and running.
Think about having just four hundred machine tools on your floors, JIT deliveries and the power goes bib. That has to be...... interesting

 

[DDoug]

We lost power 3 days Tuesday we had lights, I turned on the compressor
all I did was a load humming sound thinking it was a bad capacitor
or the contacts needed cleaned I was one wrench away from tearing
the motor apart.
Then it hit me ,lost a leg on the 3 phase .....Turned on the surface grinder same problem....So keep this in mind a tell your guys to shut shut equipment down quickly
if the 3 phase motors a not running correctly it could get expensive quickly.

Add a phase loss monitor, not expensive at all.

 

[EmGo]

Anybody else in a similar situation?

Lived in a redwood forest for several years, we were guaranteed to lose power a couple days at a time, at least a few times each winter.

Kerosene lamps, propane hot water and stove, the only shaky part was the refrigerator, had to get a little generator for that but otherwise, I kinda liked it. The house was 100 years old, so it was used to it.

 

[EPAIII]

Funny you should say no one pays attention.

I had some fun some years ago while working for a local TV station. There were frequent outages at the transmitter site which was in the woods, some miles out of town (it served three cities and was between them). The boss was on me, the chief engineer, to do something about it. One answer was a back-up generator, but there was the 10-15 second delay and reliability issues that sometimes bit us. It was an old generator that they had purchased used.

So I did battle with the power company. They said all was OK. I surveyed the situation and found that the principal problem was trees and their lack of an effective tree trimming program. I spent three weeks roaming the countryside taking photos of the lines from the sub-station to the transmitter site. I made a photo album. We had a meeting with the power company's PR guy and an engineer. The PR guy gave his load of BS on everything they were doing and how everything was fine. And the power company's engineer sat back in his chair, saying nothing. My station manager ate it up.

Then I dropped the photo albums on the table. The PR guy looked. The engineer sat forward and looked. The PR guy sat back and SHUT UP. The engineer then admitted that there was much work to be done.

Over the next month a lot of trees and vines were cleared from the vicinity of the power lines. And the outages became a lot less frequent.

My station manager never even acknowledged my role in this.

My point is it is not just the winds. Believe it or not, most power lines can stand up to a lot of wind. Often it is the trees and vines that are not properly trimmed. So they swing into or fall on the lines, breaking them.

And, under the proper circumstances, the power companies CAN be SHAMED into taking action. Having their engineer in that meeting was part of "the proper circumstances". He knew very well what needed to be done. I believe he even wanted to get it done. He just needed some ammunition (my photo albums) to take back to his boss to get it done.

And when you talk to the power company, KNOW what department the person you are speaking with IS IN. Usually it is PUBLIC RELATIONS, not ENGINEERING. If you have a business that is frequently effected, talk to some people at places like TV or radio stations (TV engineers) or hospitals (maintenance dept) to see if you can get the numbers of the people you really need to talk to, instead of the PR department who's job it is to block such access.

My street at home loses power waaay too often. Got like yours @Freedommachine, wind blows, no power
Suggestion: Contact the state utility commission or whoever has oversight.
SWIMBO did that and poof, whole corner of town is going to get new wires[several steps in between, town got involved etc]

I think the utility probably has to send outage reports to the state in most states.
Who pays attention?
No one
but if you find the right number to call, and they look at the list, you might find a receptive ear

Maybe not, but you never know

 

[Freedommachine]

My street at home loses power waaay to often. Got like yours @Freedommachine, wind blows, no power
Suggestion: Contact the state utility commission or whoever has oversight.

That is a good idea; actually, I owe them a call anyway. They allow Ohio Edison to charge me an extra $28/mo because I refused to accept a smart meter. Yes, I'm one of those people lol.

Lived in a redwood forest for several years, we were guaranteed to lose power a couple days at a time, at least a few times each winter.

Kerosene lamps, propane hot water and stove, the only shaky part was the refrigerator, had to get a little generator for that but otherwise, I kinda liked it. The house was 100 years old, so it was used to it.

There is a bit of peace from the disconnect of routine for sure, unfortunately I'm not in the redwoods though.

I've got a 9kw genset running the house at 10 gal of gasoline per day. I can run my old SB lathe, mig welder, saws and other misc equipment but I don't want to risk cnc's on generator power so I'm losing ALOT of production time.

I've spent the last 2 days working on spare generators I picked up from auctions; changed oil in the truck; a little house cleaning and junk sorting that I otherwise wouldn't have time to do. I also got to spend some quality time with the family which was quite nice.

It looks like we have another storm coming through on Tue-Wed so I doubt this week will be very productive.

Funny you should say no one pays attention.

I had some fun some years ago while working for a local TV station. There were frequent outages at the transmitter site which was in the woods, some miles out of town (it served three cities and was between them). The boss was on me, the chief engineer, to do something about it. One answer was a back-up generator, but there was the 10-15 second delay and reliability issues that sometimes bit us. It was an old generator that they had purchased used.

So I did battle with the power company. They said all was OK. I surveyed the situation and found that the principal problem was trees and their lack of an effective tree trimming program. I spent three weeks roaming the countryside taking photos of the lines from the sub-station to the transmitter site. I made a photo album. We had a meeting with the power company's PR guy and an engineer. The PR guy gave his load of BS on everything they were doing and how everything was fine. And the power company's engineer sat back in his chair, saying nothing. My station manager ate it up.

Then I dropped the photo albums on the table. The PR guy looked. The engineer sat forward and looked. The PR guy sat back and SHUT UP. The engineer then admitted that there was much work to be done.

Over the next month a lot of trees and vines were cleared from the vicinity of the power lines. And the outages became a lot less frequent.

My station manager never even acknowledged my role in this.

My point is it is not just the winds. Believe it or not, most power lines can stand up to a lot of wind. Often it is the trees and vines that are not properly trimmed. So they swing into or fall on the lines, breaking them.

And, under the proper circumstances, the power companies CAN be SHAMED into taking action. Having their engineer in that meeting was part of "the proper circumstances". He knew very well what needed to be done. I believe he even wanted to get it done. He just needed some ammunition (my photo albums) to take back to his boss to get it done.

And when you talk to the power company, KNOW what department the person you are speaking with IS IN. Usually it is PUBLIC RELATIONS, not ENGINEERING. If you have a business that is frequently effected, talk to some people at places like TV or radio stations (TV engineers) or hospitals (maintenance dept) to see if you can get the numbers of the people you really need to talk to, instead of the PR department who's job it is to block such access.

I was thinking about doing that exact same thing. I had not considered reaching out to a hospital maintenance dept for an electric company contact though, now that's pretty clever.

Trees, brush and rotten poles are definitely the #1 issue we have. Everytime I run into town I am now looking for potential issues. I found quite a few line failures that could have been avoided by replacing a pole or trimming back dead trees.

The electric company had a tree service in my area all summer last year. They parked in front of my place quite a few times. They would sit for 2 or 3 hours until someone would show up in a pick up. The guys would run saws for 45 min and then back to sitting in the truck...all summer.

My power came back on this morning but I fully expect it to be knocked out again on Wednesday when the next storm comes through.

A tornado shelter is pretty high on my list of things to save up for. Videos of the tornados going through the south last week are devastating.

 

[plastikdreams]

We are at 4 confirmed tornadoes and 3 being investigated

Not sure if any trailer parks were involved...

 

[Booze Daily]

I only lose power on calm, sunny summer days. Don’t know why.

 

[CarbideBob]

I only lose power on calm, sunny summer days. Don’t know why.

Me too... mostly on a light wind day when the little sailboat is liking it or on the days the fish are biting hard.
Bad power, need to shut down.

 

[Ries]

Living out in the country for over 25 years, I find you have to have a range of backups. We have some propane devices that don’t require electricity, like heaters and hot water heaters, oil lamps, camping stoves, candles, wood stoves, matches!, flashlights, a generator, backup gas for vehicles, bicycles, tire chains, pumps, and lots of tools. Plus- friends who owe me favors.

 

[Kingbob]

after hurricane Ida the shop was with out power for 3 weeks, we've been talking about a large enough generator to at least run a few machines for almost 20 years now.
After the storm my house was dark for 5 weeks and the internet was out for 3 months ....

On a much funnier note we've lost power a handful of times due to vultures sunning them selves next to the transformers up on the pole. You hear a bang, the lights go out, and you find another fried buzzard at the base of the pole. Not even I am cajun enough to eat one though.

 

[boslab]

We lost power 3 days Tuesday we had lights, I turned on the compressor
all I did was a load humming sound thinking it was a bad capacitor
or the contacts needed cleaned I was one wrench away from tearing
the motor apart.
Then it hit me ,lost a leg on the 3 phase .....Turned on the surface grinder same problem....So keep this in mind a tell your guys to shut shut equipment down quickly
if the 3 phase motors a not running correctly it could get expensive quickly.

I had to replace 8 extractor fans for a lab in work, a phase went out and to be honest the motors quickly overheated ( what happens I’m told) eventually they died, I’d have thought they would stop but not so lucky, I had to get a crane to lift the things onto the 4 th floor roof, plus it came to rain ( it is usually raining in wales)
I got three rewound but some were antique and over acid fume cupboards, eaten a bit.
Mark

 

[Hightemp]

Moved here in 2012. Had at least one multi-day outage every year. Used big gas portable generators (we are all electric with a well). Big PITA.

In 2020 I finally bought and installed a nice 17kw low-hour Kohler hardwired propane unit. We haven't lost power for more than a couple of hours since...

 

[reggie_obe]

I had to replace 8 extractor fans for a lab in work, a phase went out and to be honest the motors quickly overheated ( what happens I’m told) eventually they died, I’d have thought they would stop but not so lucky, I had to get a crane to lift the things onto the 4 th floor roof, plus it came to rain ( it is usually raining in wales)
I got three rewound but some were antique and over acid fume cupboards, eaten a bit.
Mark

What does your story have to do with utility outages or even phase loss?