Power outages -- How often in your area?

Here it is very unusual to have power outages. When it happens, normally is due to some heavier storms, but even then it doesn’t last long!
But that is always a good time to play with flashlights :smiley: :partying_face:

2003, now I feel old for remembering this :smiley:

Over here we don’t have (there is only one part left where we still have those; Krimpenerwaard. Total length of 37,5 miles/60 km) above the ground low voltage (<110kV) networks. I think it mainly has to do with us being a small country with a large population density. So there are nog outages because of poles being downed :slight_smile:

Where I’m at here in FL, our Co-Op does a decent job. Power has only had prolonged outages from hurricane hits. Irma took us out for 10 days, which was the only significant interruption.
I do have a really sensitive re-closer in my network close by that seems to trip just about lightning strike, and knocks us out for 5 minutes, 8-10 times a storm. But I have all the pertinent necessities on UPS systems, along with whole house surge protection.

Never. Nothing that can go wrong during a few drops of water or a few gusts of wind. :wink:

When demand for power is high they switch us off 2-4 times a day for between 2-4 hours at a time. Thanks to the Covid 19 crisis it seems power demand is lower than normal at the moment.We have not had any outages since the beginning of lockdown.

Midwestern Brazil, Pantanal region. Haven’t seen a blackout in over two years, at least not at home. The grid of the university I work at is complete trash and constantly browns out or has voltage dips that make lights flicker (so much so they constantly burn out, CFL bulbs barely last weeks so they switched to LED) and computers reboot, though proper power outages that last for more than 5 minutes are also rare.

Power reliability here is pretty good. No issues in my neighborhood since I bought the house in September. 2013-2016 I lived in an older neighborhood (homes from 190x) with overhead lines, and it was worse. 2016-2019 I recall two outages, both for only a few hours, and the result of some sort of random crap like a tree falling or a car crash or something.

They do pretty well considering the range of weather. It can reach mid-90s (35C) in the summer and as low as –2 (roughly –19C) in winter, and storms with high winds in between.

In general, though, a lot of this country’s infrastructure is aging and not getting the upkeep it needs. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” should not be the strategy for infrastructure maintenance… But everyone wants lower taxes, so here we are.

Can’t remember the last power cut we had, maybe 6 or 7 years ago, for maybe an hour?

Our electric costs 16.1p/kwh ($0.20), I wonder how cost and reliability correlate around the world…?

Just got a notice that power will be cut all day for pole replacement. A steel transmission pole has been laying by the side of the road a few miles downhill from us, so that might be the one. But a neighbor’s notice read one day difference, so it might be two days?? In the city they used to set the new pole and “hot-stick” onto it, but up here there is a greater potential for destruction (forest fire) I suppose. Or maybe they stopped hot-sticking because they drop the lines too frequently, I saw it happen once and it caught a building on fire. Dangerous stuff. If it goes into the late evening my LT1 has charged batteries!

In southern Ontario, the only extended power outage I’ve lived through was the 2003 blackout. Aside from that, maybe a few hours once or twice for idiots hitting distribution infrastructure. My mum lives in a more rural area and has lost power for days at a time due to weather taking down power lines.

it;s pretty reliable
atlanta area
not sure what you can really learn from a survey like this

i feel like my answer is not what you want to hear :slight_smile:

wle

Oregon: 2 locations

Portland - very rare we ever lose power. Last time was perhaps 6 months back, a car took out a pole at 2 AM. The previous time may have been a winter storm 6 months previous.

Coast small village we go down on weekends and approx 85% of the times I start the day by resetting all of the LED clocks. The clocks on the range, the music player, microwave are all blinking and off. The timers are all off as well. Clearly power went out during the week, can’t say how often. It would be a rare month where the power had not gone out more than once but I confess I have not tracked it.

As luck would have it, we had just a little wink last night.
Half a second at most. Just enough to make all the UPSs light up and chirp.

The best present you can buy for a desktop computer is a UPS.
All the Best,
Jeff

I'm getting quite a bit out of it by seeing the variety of answers, especially when combined with people's locations. It's a nice reminder to myself that I'm not crazy -- power reliability in Florida is pretty poor compared to other regions and that the precautions/planning I do as standard in Florida is complete overkill for projects we have in other areas. The concept of going a month without a power problem, let alone 2 years, is mind-blowing to me.

I've seen some people mention cost of electricity vs. reliability. The US cost per kWh run $0.083/kWh to $0.373/kWh. Florida averages about $0.12/kWh. There's plenty of extra fees and taxes on top of that. Using Florida as a guide, there's NO correlation between the cost of electric service and reliability. Duke Energy is one of the most expensive energy companies in Florida and has some of the worst reliability, bar none. Almost all self-inflicted, like when they decided to stop trimming trees for a couple of years to save money. Florida Power & Light (FPL) has a well-documented history of neglecting their grid, with 50-75 year old wooden power poles decaying around the state. To FPL's credit, they have been making decent progress on replacing and upgrading their grid over the past 10 or so years. Still a long way to go.

As far as non-profit/municipal owned vs. investor-owned, I definitely see better reliability with the municipal-owned/co-op services over investor-owned ones, at least for day-to-day. When it comes to hurricanes and recovery from them, the investor-owned ones seem to be up quicker, minus Duke.

Interestingly, hurricanes have been very good at improving long-term reliability here. As each hurricane takes out more neglected grid, the replacement grid is better and stronger, and the temporary linemen on loan to us from across the country do an amazing job of making sure things are done right the first time.

well
every utility has its own costs and problems
i would not guess that the price/kwh has much to do with reliability

i mean it does, but there are at least 25 other factors that influence it
rates
corruption
cost of the generation
density of population

wle

generally, we have three kinds of power interruptions:

1. the “blip”. power out just long enough so we have to reset/reboot. don’t know the cause.
2. the “call the power company”. usually a tree or construction cuts the line. fixed that day.
3. the “get out the generator”. weather related. mostly hurricanes. days maybe weeks without.

Unno. Which?

Guessing poles are easier to drill down (every 100 ft or so) than sawing an UG system through solid (and sometime shifting) bedrock. We had a line run a few miles into a ranch we had in the 80s. They tried sawing through rock (with a 15 ft diameter blade with about 300, 12” long carbine teeth). They gave up after the first 1/2 mile and went to poles the rest of the way.

That’s what I figured, too, as a practical matter. But some scenic but loony locales would actually ban stringing “ugly” power lines on “ugly” poles, and would require power cables be buried underground for æsthetic reasons, no matter what the cost.

I had a couple "blips" a few days ago. Due to UPSs, the network, PCs, and TV were unaffected. What was interesting was the oven/stove kept its time through one of them. The Microwave did not.

I used to have a floor lamp on a UPS, but it was both inefficient, and the LED bulb didn't agree with the "modified sine wave" (read: square wave) the UPS put out. So now I have five UPSs:

  • My PC and the modem/router (largest unit, it's a 750VA but the rack-mount, runtime-oriented one)
  • Wife's PC (pretty standard 1100VA home-use unit. Actually gives less runtime on less load than above)
  • Big TV in the living room, and associated peripherals (850VA, nothing special)
  • Small TV in the bedroom, and associated peripherals (550VA)
  • Switch and PoE injector in the basement, to keep the rest of the network/wifi up during blips. (350VA, cheapest by far and the only non-APC)

While, yes, it's kind of neat when the power blips and my PC use is completely uninterrupted, I've mostly got the units for the surge protection.