Ping Jake power lines down - non HVAC related

I live in PA where a small tornado came through four counties leaving 400k people without power. It has brought down trees and power lines; imagine that! Tonight the "news" showed pix of an outside power co's that sent crews to help the local utility (PECO) with restoration. It was named Pike and I believe they said it was from N Carolina. I expected to see Nooner or Jake but no luck. It's not surprising they had to bring in outside help because PECO has been getting rid of the more experienced people and either not replacing them or with outside contractors. But not to editorialize but things come around in a circle.

The Philly Inquirer had a pix of a lineman removing the ground clamps from a repair.

Funny but when I was writing this I heard some local cops tell the comm center that the local phone co (Verizon) had a generator that was back feeding to a local convenience store and he wanted PECO notified so nobody got hurt. The dispatcher was quizzing him and his reply was "The situation was explained to me by the Fire Co. and I'm not an electrician and I don't pretend to be. Just tell PECO they have to check it out and to use caution so nobody gets hurt".

Reply to
Tekkie®
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Queens, NY, some 100,000 or more people without power for a week. During 100 degree temps at one point. No one in the Con Ed is really sure why the power is out. Lot of miserable people, I'm sure.

Reply to
Stormin Mormon

Well you should load up the pinto and get er done!

Reply to
Al Moran

Oh they know why the power is out alright. They may not know where the problem is but they know what happened.

You see it's all of the people who ran home and turned on their a/c equipment without thinking that everyone else in the borough was doing the same thing. The power infrastructure was unable to handle the load and many points along the line just melted.

...Ron

--

68'RS Camaro 88'Formula 00'GT Mustang
Reply to
RSCamaro

Sorry for the late reply.... it's been hot in Indiana too... and the systems don't like 110% load too much.

Much like the systems you guys install, HV systems are 'usually' protected against melt down... unless some moron decides to override the safeties and take their chances.

The down-and-dirty is we don't have enough generation, and we don't have transmission to handle high peaks anymore. That went out the window more than 5 years ago. While systems used to be designed for 20% over rated capacity... it just doesn't happen these days.

I saw the ISO reports on NY. No lines 'melted'... as far as anyone can tell. Subs tripped... then reclosed... then tripped again until they gave up.

Even if the fault was a under-voltage condition, utilities are required (by due-diligence) to check the entire secondary system before re-energizing. This takes some time... as you might imagine.

Ron is right... utilities know very well what their load profiles look like. They go to great lengths to ask customers to 'stagger' their loading of the system. People don't listen... and then they're out of juice.

The 'system' will protect itself... above all other factors.

We don't have enough capacity anymore, and people are going to have to learn to adjust.

Jake

Reply to
Jake

What do you suggest, for staggering the loads? Electric clothes dryers in the middle of the night, and what else?

I remember from some where that some folks in Californication have a remote switch on their residential AC so that the power co can shut em down for a while, on a rotating schedule. So they don't overload the system.

What's to be done?

Reply to
Stormin Mormon

Stormin Mormon posted for all of us... I don't top post - see either inline or at bottom.

In your case turn the computer off and shut up. We'll call you went the crises is over. 10-4?

Reply to
Tekkie®

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