Ahhh, the joys of no lights....

[machinist@large]

Here in the west side of the lower peninsula of the State of Michigan, we've had a wild day in the weather. Being on second shift means that 5am is the middle of the night for me. That's about the time the lightning bolts and extreme heavy rainfall woke me up.

What's much more "WTF?!?" was what I saw coming my way when I was about 5~6 minutes out from work out on my way in.

There are some impressive pictures that other's who weren't fighting it out on the worst highway interchange took of the second storm front rolling thru about 1pm on the local news sites; and depending on which radio station you listen to at the shop, we got ~3 to 4 inches of rain in two bands, with each band passing through in about only an hour each.

Why am I posting about this (other than the how was your day thing)? Maybe because my Dad called me at work with what the neighbors were calling and telling him about just how the local neighborhood is. Just from what I saw on the drive home, the local power company's website is probably not worth bothering with for facts. They list 200 homes as (including mine) in the local area as being the only ones affected. OK, that covers the rich folks on the two lake's, but what about the other couple of hundred homes in the actual covered area?

It's a good thing the new tablet has good battery life, and I'm now pretty dang glad I (to quote my brother) "Fell" for the sales pitch for that massive external power pack for my phone, as well as the tablet. It's the only reason I can while away the time in the dark like this.....

 

[landuse]

We have power outages quite regularly. The countries power company failed to make long term plans with regard to upgrading their power stations, and now we are feeling the crunch.

Here it is called "Load Shedding". It is a nice term for basically saying "we are going to cut your power for a few hours to lighten the pressure on the grid". There are schedules and everything.

I bought myself a small 950W 2 stroke generator a few years ago, and it is just enough to run a couple of lamps and power the TV and satelite decoder .

 

[itsid]

Oh that sucks...
I hope they have that fixed soon.

'sid

 

[machinist@large]

Possible restoration....

Just got off the phone with the power companies automated response system; tentative restoration "should" be sometime this afternoon or early evening. I drove around the neighborhood for a bit before heading into work (I'm in the parking lot, killing time before my shift starts as I type this). It looks like we had some serious strait line winds; about a mile south of my place, the county road crews look like modern lumber jacks. What makes it even more surreal is the fact that they're just trying to hack a path for the road; the right of ways will just have to wait.....

 

[OzFab]

Not to nitpick but, isn't 5am the middle of the night for most people?

 

[Poboy kartman]

Not to nitpick but, isn't 5am the middle of the night for most people?

Well.....Pat's lights have been out for a while. ....just humor him....medication is on the way........

 

[machinist@large]

Not to nitpick but, isn't 5am the middle of the night for most people?

Most heavy industries in this part of the world have first shift start times running from 5 to 7 AM. We still have a lot of companies that run three shifts, so things like the middle of the night really become rather arbitrary.

Well.....Pat's lights have been out for a while. ....just humor him....medication is on the way........

Medication is spelled "WORKING ELECTRICITY!!!!!". The lights were back on when I got home about a little after 11:00 PM.

Paul, I should have added your post to the list here; I do have a small generator of my own (a GC 190 Honda powered 2800 watt continuous unit) that I bought for portable use. It'll run the furnace, the fridge, TV and a couple of CFL light's for ~2 to 3 hours on a tank of gas, depending on how cold and blustery it is outside. It could never power the AC or the pump for my well though, let alone the electric water heater.

I do have access to bigger unit's thought; my Dads' house backup unit is rated at 6800 watts continuous, and doesn't even break a sweat running every bell & whistle he has, which means it would probably look at my house and go "Huh? You need power? Why didn't you just say something....".

If I want to go for the most expensive way to run the house, I'll break out the farm's old insurance policy; 15,000 watt continuous, 20,000 watt surge, tractor driven unit. The only thing on the farm we can't run with that is our grain drying system. It's also the most expensive way to power your TV that I know of. My personal tractor is gas powered, and has over double the power needed to run it. But with the pump price of gasoline heading back up to the $4.00 a gallon range, I won't' even turn the key to start the tractor. That's why I have so many LED lights and battery powered things around the house....