we live in the northeast and, man .. have we had a bunch of blackouts recently.

i can attribute some of them to natural occurences - a storm, a car hitting a utility pole, a tree falling and knocking out power, plus a few 'unknowns'. each one of these knocked out power 2 - 6 hrs. not pleasant. a lot more than usual thats for sure.

i cant imagine what it would be like to see this situation lasting a week or more. sure glad we got our ups system up and running.

-- lou (lanny1@ix.netcom.com), November 11, 1999

Answers

In what area of the North east do you live! We have been fortunate here in South Central CT so far in terms of electricity dependability. I know my parents in Southern VT have been having some problems as of late.

-- thomas saul (thomas.saul@yale.edu), November 11, 1999.

lou ... Had a 2 hour 20 minute power off from about 3:15 to 5:35 this A.M. . No storm .. no high winds that I am aware of , but still the power was interupted . Makes you wonder what they are trying to fix at those early morning hours in western CT. Eagle

-- Hal Walker (e999eagle@freewwweb.com), November 11, 1999.

Two days ago, we lost power for nearly 3 hours. It was a beautiful day with not even a breeze...guess those squirrels are liking those electric cables a lot these days! BTW, I live in NE Maryland and am dependent on Conectiv (at least for a little while longer, after which I will depend on the diesel gen. and extra 275 gal. of fuel).

-- (nearly)Ready and Waiting (ready_a@hotmail.com), November 11, 1999.

A trend has occurred in the electric industry that will effect your service reliability in the future. It's not Y2K, it's DOWN SIZEING! Utilities are cutting back becouse of reregulation of the power industry. Where I work, we are at half the employee levels. When a storm, car hit pole, animal or anything interupts your service, the reponce time and re-energize time will be effected. Light a candle.

-- P.L. (Powerlineman@here.com), November 11, 1999.

We've had 2 power outs in the last two weeks. I have no idea what caused them and I'm not going to try and guess, but they only lasted for about 20 minutes or so. I also don't know what the area was that was affected. This was in MPLS, MN. NSP is the provider.

-- CygnusXI (noburnt@toast.net), November 11, 1999.

I live in Newtown Ct. and we've had no power problems whatsoever. Knock on wood.

-- Scottsworth (NewEnglander@Ct.com), November 11, 1999.

same here in northeast pennsylvania, happening much more..

-- cassandra (american_storm@usa.net), November 11, 1999.

no problems this year in central Michigan

-- Gus (y2kk@usa.net), November 11, 1999.

P.L. Your comments on the deregulation of Electricty affecting restoration times is absolutely correct. New Zealand deregulated the electricity industry in 1992, and instituted an electricity market in 1996. Since then the utility companies have had to split their line operations completely away from generation and retail. The end result is cheaper electricity to the consumer, but with a loss of efficiency to the country, and a huge increase in outage times due to any event.

Malcolm

-- Malcolm Taylor (taylorm@es.co.nz), November 11, 1999.

Yes, 2 power outages since Nov 2nd not storm related. We are in north central PA.

-- pamela (jpjgood@penn.com), November 11, 1999.

Here in north Ga --- We have been having short power outages have to reset all the clocks at least twice a week. Also very annoying power surges, makes the TV do weird things and loud pops sounds like release of vacume.

-- Onebyone (susanwater@excite.com), November 11, 1999.