This afternoon will be exactly one week without power...

[dank69]

A week without power really does suck. Goes to show the age we live in when nobody above me has joked about how are you posting on the internet without power.

Posting from hotel room. Was one of the lucky few to get one before they sold out in this area.

Where are you dank? We were fortunate, got ours back Monday night, but our town is still 30-35% dark, and just a couple days ago was still 90%.

Don't have internet, but I'm tethering through my iphone. Less than ideal, but better than nothing. Our office in East Hartford is still without power.

I bought a generator today, cheap insurance.

My house is in Ellington. Saw the first truck on our street today. I didn't expect that. Maybe we will have power when we go home tomorrow.

 

[jme5343]

Funny, we looked long and hard for a house in Ellington, it was our first choice.

We've only been here a month or so, but Willington seems fine.

Good luck.

 

[OutHouse]

Because it's something like 20 times more expensive to do it that way and it's much harder to repair when something goes wrong. Burying powerlines only makes sense in areas with huge population density so that tens of thousands of customers are served by a single mile of buried cable. Kind of like India population centers. In states like Connecticut with widespread population and lots of trees nobody is going to spend the billions and billions necessary to bury the power grid.

ummm hate to burst your bubble but nearly all new subdivisions have underground power. mine does and i live in a small town of about 1500 people and we are 30 miles from major city.

 

[zzuupp]

I wish y'all the best of luck. When Isabel hit, it was about 3 weeks for me.

 

[BoomerD]

ummm hate to burst your bubble but nearly all new subdivisions have underground power. mine does and i live in a small town of about 1500 people and we are 30 miles from major city.

It's much cheaper to put the power underground for new subdivisions than it is to go back and run the power underground in existing neighborhoods. Too many water and sewer lines to just trench without breaking and fixing them by the dozens or hundreds...Plus the cost of removing asphalt and sidewalks, etc...makes it prohibitive.

I spent 7 years working for the local electrical utility. I spent a lot of time with the underground crews, using a crane to pull wire in underground conduit, setting transformers, etc.

 

[dank69]

Still no power this morning.

 

[dmcowen674]

The good news is that the next big storm won't cause so much grid damage because the weak branches and trees have been eliminated.

But be sure and pay your double, triple and quadruple electric rates for the so called "Smart Grid" in the meantime.

 

[dank69]

The good news is that the next big storm won't cause so much grid damage because the weak branches and trees have been eliminated.

...

Heh, not on our street. There are still tons of old oaks hanging over the lines. I took out most of the ones on my property the week before Irene hit.

 

[DrPizza]

Good news, Dank, my son sent a text message; his crew (and the other crews) are almost done with Mass. now. They're heading to Connecticut either tonight or early tomorrow morning. You'll have power by Tuesday. Blame Connecticut, not those guys. They've been working their asses off 16 hours a day, since last Saturday at noon (he came home for the weekend, got his hunting license and planned to go turkey hunting with me; had to turn around and report for duty shortly after purchasing his license.)

 

[dank69]

Got power back today at 4:30pm. Exactly 8 days pretty much to the minute. :hmm: Well, except for daylight savings. So 8 days 1 hour. Problem now is it was a canadian crew that put my street back together, so I should probably lay off the canadian jokes for a few days. ()

 

[GagHalfrunt]

ummm hate to burst your bubble but nearly all new subdivisions have underground power. mine does and i live in a small town of about 1500 people and we are 30 miles from major city.

Ummm, hate to burst your bubble, but if you're comparing new planned subdivisions with 200 year old neighborhoods that grew and spread naturally you're monumentally stupid even by ATOT standards.


My sis in Simsbury is still dark after 8 1/2 days. CL&P is going to miss their 11:59 deadline by about 60,000 customers or so and it looks like she's one of them. She should be back up sometime Monday.

 

[DrPizza]

Got power back today at 4:30pm. Exactly 8 days pretty much to the minute. :hmm: Well, except for daylight savings. So 8 days 1 hour. Problem now is it was a canadian crew that put my street back together, so I should probably lay off the canadian jokes for a few days. ()

It would be one hell of a coincidence, but were the trucks from Thirau? My son's crew is mostly French Canadian. They were up there earlier than planned.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Wow that has to suck to be without power that long. The longest outage I can recall was that big blackout years back. We were out for maybe 8 hours at most? I remember it was early evening, and by next morning we had power. It was middle of summer, so it was not really a big deal. Now, it would be a pretty big deal, given the pipes would start freezing.

When I first moved here every time there was lot of wind the power would go out. The pole fuse/breaker would trip due to a tree branch hitting the high voltage line. The crew would come by within an hour or so and reset it. They came around that same year to trim all the trees in the area, only blew once this year, but I suspect it was due to actual overload. Was an insanely hot summer.

 

[nanette1985]

My grandkids were out of school all last week. Daughter is still waiting to find out if the little ones will have school tomorrow. She didn't lose power but she was one of the lucky ones, it was pretty bad. They're planning to extend the school year because they've already used up all their snow days.

 

[preCRT]

Fobot is correct. I just got done working 16 hour days for 5 days straight to get the lights on for our customers. We had crews from as far as Tennessee up here in ny.

The other thing that cracks me up is no one calls when their lights are out. They think we automatically know when their power is out. They'll call the cable and phone company but some how we can divine the fact that they have no power. Smart grid isn't here quite yet folks. Call and report your power outage.

I called every single day we were out, even reported where the trees were hanging down over the lines. Very frustrating to see power company vans parked babysitting in front of the hanging trees for 2 days before they managed to get the arborists out to cut them down. Then another day or two for the line crews to come out & rehang everything.

Sucked that the landlines went down as well. The kicker was cell transmission was blocked in the areas of the worst outages too, had to drive more than a mile just to use my cell.

No power, no light, no heat, no phone. At least I had running, but ice cold water. Those on well water in the area were totally screwed.



I am very thankful for the crews that came in to MA to help get folks back on line [although reportedly there are still thousands in the dark]. Why CT hasn't brought in more crews is a mystery.

 

[dank69]

It would be one hell of a coincidence, but were the trucks from Thirau? My son's crew is mostly French Canadian. They were up there earlier than planned.

No, these were Hydro Quebec trucks.

 

[Bignate603]

But be sure and pay your double, triple and quadruple electric rates for the so called "Smart Grid" in the meantime.

Did a power line touch you as a child?

Seriously, anyone that has a clue about the power grid knows that the US grid is woefully outdated and fragile. I'm not talking about the lines that run the last few miles, I'm talking about the major transmission lines. Yet you seem to think that any improvement is some evil moneygrab.

 

[ultimatebob]

Got power back today at 4:30pm. Exactly 8 days pretty much to the minute. :hmm: Well, except for daylight savings. So 8 days 1 hour. Problem now is it was a canadian crew that put my street back together, so I should probably lay off the canadian jokes for a few days. ()

My power was brought back by a crew on Oklahoma on Thursday... I haven't seen a single CL&P truck during the entire power outage.

Don't forget that while you're stuck with CL&P as your power transmitter, you can choose your generation provider in Connecticut. Vote with your wallet, and choose anyone other than CL&P! Odds are that your rates will be lower as well... mine were.

 

[seepy83]

Why CT hasn't brought in more crews is a mystery.

Last week, the media was saying that many out of state power companies were refusing to come in and do work for CL&P because CL&P still hasn't paid them for the work they did after Irene came in.

 

[lokiju]

Been there. Done that. Hated it!

Was a nearly yearly occurrence when I lived in SE FL due to the seasonal hurricanes.

 

[seepy83]

Don't forget that while you're stuck with CL&P as your power transmitter, you can choose your generation provider in Connecticut. Vote with your wallet, and choose anyone other than CL&P! Odds are that your rates will be lower as well... mine were.

I just recently switched mine (I'm a UI customer). With the lowest rates available right now, I could have saved about $8-10 per month based on my average kwh usage. I opted to purchase one of the the "green" 100% renewable energy plans, and I'll still save around $5 per month compared to the rates through UI.

 

[Jeff7]

Did a power line touch you as a child?

Seriously, anyone that has a clue about the power grid knows that the US grid is woefully outdated and fragile. I'm not talking about the lines that run the last few miles, I'm talking about the major transmission lines. Yet you seem to think that any improvement is some evil moneygrab.

For my part, my gripe with them is that they've evidently been lax about keeping the grid updated.
"Hey, we can boost profits a lot if we don't do any upgrades or maintenance on the power grid!" Ding! Give him a bonus for saving the company millions of dollars.
Sure it's all going to go to hell in the future, but that's the future. These bad decisions will result in having more money now. Most people don't want to acknowledge that the future will eventually be the present.

 

[PingSpike]

The only good thing about losing your power for a week is you don't complain about the price of electric after it comes back on! Once you live without it you realize its a fucking bargain price to not live in the dark ages.

 

[WelshBloke]

This afternoon will be exactly one week without power...

WTF? You live in Somalia or something?

 

[dfuze]

Posting from hotel room. Was one of the lucky few to get one before they sold out in this area.

My house is in Ellington. Saw the first truck on our street today. I didn't expect that. Maybe we will have power when we go home tomorrow.

Good luck getting it back, so many more backroad trees there than here in Enfield and we looked like a war zone, can only imagine how much worse you guys are. I finally got my power back on at 10pm Friday night, but still waiting for internet/phone/cable still. Supposed to be getting it fixed today.