70 minutes

[orbital]

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Yesterday we has a full Winter Storm Warning snow event, this is red on the forecast

Lake Michigan has a big influence on how weather patters & systems come though..
because of the 'wraparound', heavy snow started picking up in the afternoon and at 4:15pm the power went out.
Starting to get dark, I grabbed a flashlight, reading glasses and my electric bill to call the electric company... reported the full outage.
You have to keep in mind, full winter storm happening, now dark, windy, powerslines coming down etc ((((

at 5:25pm, the power was already back on.
How this was dispatched/troubleshooted/likely had plows rerouted, and fixed in 70 minutes is nearly unbelievable.

Full Gold Star to the crews of WE Energies ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

 

[ghostguy6]

Good that they got the power fixed so quickly.
It always amazes me how the utility companies can fix something so quickly when mother nature is at it worst but on a bright sunny day it takes 5 times longer to do the exact same job.

 

[Jacke2c]

I worked on a line crew as a young man... bad cold weather can really motivate you to get the work done.... no one... no one likes standing around in the cold weather... even the grunts (helpers on the ground) jump through hoops to anticipate what the lineman needs so there is no delay in having what he needs next available exactly when he needs it.

When the weather is what you think nice, put on some rubbers and go up in a bucket when it is a 90 degree day... it is a lot hotter than you can imagine. cooling and resting take precedence...

 

[AstroTurf]

thats how long it took me to watch the last 60 minutes show...

LOLz

 

[hamhanded]

Good that they got the power fixed so quickly.
It always amazes me how the utility companies can fix something so quickly when mother nature is at it worst but on a bright sunny day it takes 5 times longer to do the exact same job.

Speculation: During windy weather and storms, branches are often swaying and/or coming down, shorting wires and tripping the resettable breakers. It only takes a short while for a truck to be dispatched to reset a tripped breaker on a pole.

But on bright sunny days when branches aren't likely to be tripping breakers, when the power is out it may be that capacity is overrun and the outage is intentional, or something is Seriously Broken somewhere and it takes more time to diagnose, repair, or replace.

Would love for a lineman or someone with industry knowledge to chime in and let me know if my hunch is correct.

 

[bykfixer]

You are probably correct hamhanded. Our last outage was a tripped circuit breaker with a small branch on the wire. There are 3 high wires on my system and two were not affected so I had power but the next street over did not. When the wind stopped they could safely remove the branch and reset the breaker. When they rest the breaker it tripped another one a few poles up so the whole system was down for aboout 15 minutes.

Another factor is how many customers can be re-energized with a repair. The repairs needed to turn on lots of customers vs same repair for a few, the one with more customers goes first. That's a business thing.

 

[ghostguy6]

For clarification at my old house there was a transformer on a pole down the block that would blow about every 6 months. Always at night for some reason and not always during a storm either. Im not sure of the exact cause but it was a regular thing. In the winter the transformer was replaced in about 3 hours despite the horrible conditions. On some occasions they even needed a bobcat to clear the snow out of a back yard to get to the power pole. In the summer that same job could take 18 to 24 hours.

I get that the crews must wait until weather conditions are safe but that doesnt explain the huge delay in the summer vs winter.

 

[orbital]

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The outage for the area was fairly big dark everywhere, including the homes to my south that I can see.
Interesting,, in that short while after the outage a couple people to my south had power = generators running.

I somewhat live in the country, but that's trees & hills country.
The two closest towns to me have a combined population of less than 1500

 

[bykfixer]

I like the direction this one is going.
It's a "yay to the power workers" thread.