How often electricity goes out?

How often do you guy's electricity goes out? I live in Calgary (Canada) for 11 years and it only went out once for 30 minutes. Before that, I lived in Winnipeg and I don't recall it went out. So for me, electricity was off for a total of 1 hour in the last 20 years or so.

How about you guys? Where do you live and how often the electricity went out and why it went out?

When I lived in Ohio it would go out probably once a week, as they were building in the area and would need to take down lines to add in areas or something. Here in Indiana I don't think it's gone out but once, and it was only a few seconds..

Here in the northern part of Italy it goes out very, very rarely, and almost always due to lightning strikes.

The whole of Italy had a nationwide night-time blackout lasting several hours some time ago. It happened due to an accident to one of the main lines through which we import most of our energy. Most people in the north didn't even notice, as they woke up when it had been restored already, but it took rather longer to restore in the center and south.

It happened back when I used to sleep during the night and stay awake during the day (the very thought!), so I didn't notice it.

5-6 times a year in Alhambra (NE of Los Angeles). Most of the time lightning doesn't accompany rain here. If it goes out in rain it's because a tree, streetlight, or power pole falls because a driver hits it. Last summer we had a 72 hour outage (transformer blew because of heat). After that we had two scheduled outages (I think SCE finally upgraded the distribution transformer).
The number and length of outages dropped after that.

One 3 hour outage in the last 30 years, here. Otherwise, only a few momentary blinks. Despite the fun factor, I prefer having better electrical service to lesser service.

Here in Sacramento (in this neighbourhood anyway), there has been just one power failure in the year and a half I've lived here. Duration was approximately one hour.
I believe it was because a vehicle struck a utility pole somewhere nearby.

Portland, OR: Probably 1-3 times per winter of various durations usually due to high winds. I recall a few non-winter brown out type situations but not very often. I've been in this area for nearly 20 years.

It's already gone out three times in my corner of Oregon since summer ended. Last winter there was an outage for four days due to an ice storm, and I'm expecting at least one similar outage this winter. Many smaller outages of 1/2 day or less are common during the winter, perhaps once a week or so. If there's an electrical storm it's almost guaranteed that the power will blink, and just because the storm isn't right above me doesn't mean my power won't be affected. Power here is pretty stable during the summer, but it does seem that some drunk takes out a power pole at least once. My computer used to eat power supplies like candy until I put it on a UPS.

Obviously my power outage preparations include far more than just a bunch of flashlights and batteries.


:buddies:

We had a major ice storm related outage in 2002. Our house was without power for 2 days, but many of my neighbors were down for a week. 85% of the customers in my city were without power for at least 4 hours, and it took almost 2 weeks to get everyone restored.

It's not unusual to hear that a storm knocked power out to a thousand customers here and there several times a year - localized and usually fixed in a few hours. The frequency that it hits any one house is probably less than once in 5 years, but we do experience storm related "blinks" many times each year that drop power just long enough to shutdown / reset electrical devices.

The ice storm was a good opportunity for me to show off my long run CMG Infinity and ARC AAA lights, but the real winners were my girlfriends candle collection, which provided light AND heated the house by 10-15 degrees.

vancouver, near Science World Center. had the power off maybe a total of 10hours in the last 15 years I been here.

I work for a cellular telephony provider and manage a nationwide network here in the Netherlands. This network is made up of 1000s of antenna locations spread throughout the country. All these sites give an alarm when power drops, so I get a pretty good view of where there are powerproblems. Actually, we often know about outages faster than the powercompanies.

Poweroutages here in the Netherlands are a daily thing, but usually only affect small areas. If larger areas are affected, power can often be rerouted within 1-2 hours so the problem can be investigated thoroughly without it affecting people.

The most common reason for poweroutages are technical problems in local transformer cabinets, or cables cut in digging works as nearly all powerlines here are underground as sand/clay ground and very little height difference allow for it. Only the high voltage lines are above ground.

While I see power outages occur on a daily basis, I haven't been in one for a while. Closest I came was a couple of months ago when I was riding my bike to the trainstation and saw the lights go out a few blocks over (ofcourse I took another route to the station and rode through the blacked out area).
When I'm at work I probably wouldn't even notice a poweroutage. All our systems are connected to a pretty beefy UPS system, and we have a backup generator powerful enough to supply a small town with power

MayCooper said:

ofcourse I took another route to the station and rode through the blacked out area

Click to expand...

Hehe, this made me laugh.
Normal people take another route to get away from the darkness.
We take the shortest route to plunge straight into it.

I was going to post that in our part of the UK we just don't have power cuts. Ten , fifteen years or more, I can't remember any, but I'm glad that I didn't. Last night at about 11:15 pm the lights went out! However, I can report that the Ultrafire WF 602A-1, with SSC P4 upgrade and Sanyo Eneloop, propped up in a mug, (Wont tail stand) worked a treat. Great.

John L

The only couple of time power went out is during daytime, when they do maintainence, and usually restored when people get home. I think it was last winter or the winter before some icestorm knocked out power in a very large area of province, my area wasn't fortunately. Be able to play with flashlights is fun, but I'd rather stay warm when it's -20°C outside.

Very rarely. About 4 times a year, perhaps. Although, when it has gone out, it has often stayed out for a few days at a time.

What's more annoying, is when you get a really short power cut (a few minutes) in the evening. Long enough for you to get out and prepare all your lights around the house. Not long enough to actually need to use them

Regards,
Tempest

in SWFL this year, no hurricanes, but lightning still did the deed on three occasions -- usually only hours at a time. When the hurricanes come, it can go down for days or weeks. Last time was 3 days here, about 2 weeks over in the east side of Florida.

They have replaced the major feeders and local drops with hurricane resistant poles and it has made the situation better. Before, the power went out whenever the wind blew, it seemed.

At night, you want to carry an emergency light. I used to carry a Mini-Mag everywhere. Now it's a ROV 3W 2AA from Walmart, much better light, not as much runtime. Switched to AA LSD cells.

very rarely! There have been some big power cuts around here, but my city havent been affected by it. I cant even remember the last time the power went out here. I think it might have been atleast 5-6 years ago. I dont mind if the power would go, then I can show off my lights...

Not nearly often enough!

Every once in awhile we'll get a winter storm that will blow down lines and trees onto lines, etc. Maybe one big one every couple years. I can only hope for a nasty weather winter to blow through and pummel my area... but of course only enough to knock out power for awhile here and there, not enough to cause potential health problems or put trees through people's houses.

Thankfully,not too often where I live.(Portland,OR.) Although,the Blizzard of 1996 threw me for a loop.(Must've been 4 or 5 days straight without power,listening to the ice snapping trees onto power lines.Thankfully,I didn't go outside while that was happening.)It's been 11 years,but I remember it like it was yesterday.Wish I'd had my new Lightwave 3000 back then.

(advertised at 25 days of runtime..)

Very rarely in my area. We has some heavy flooding earlier this year and I lost my power for about two hours. Before that it had been three or four years since it was out.