Jolt Country

We lost power on Saturday evening and it stayed out for days. Finding out that power was expected to stay off until as late as Thursday at 7PM, I took my sister's offer to come over here and stay for a few days. So I'm at my sister's place using her computer right now. I'll figure on leaving Friday morning as I have to go to the <s>bank</s> credit union to cut checks for my rent and credit card.

Alright, keep us up to date on this, please.

pinback wrote:Alright, keep us up to date on this, please.

This is basically ridiculous, I can't remember when (American) power companies routinely had multi-day power failures in large cities twice a year. In the last six months, however, we've had two major outages from Potomac Electric Power Company lasting over 3 days, the previous one in the middle of Winter. It was 55 degrees when the power was out back then, and that was the temperature inside my house.

I have heard that same as cities and states are letting infrastructure such as roads and bridges deteriorate in order to use gasoline and road taxes on other things. There is - or should be, based on the amount collected in road taxes on commercial vehicles, upwards of $3-5000 a year on a tractor-trailer rig and the minimum 16-22c in state taxes on each gallon of gasoline and diesel - enough money to cover road maintenance. But it's such a lucrative source of funds it's too tempting to raid it for other pet projects.

And so it's reported that electric companies are apparently letting maintenance slip in order to spend money on other things, probably to make the profit figures look better. Cross-country power lines for carrying power are deteriorating because of deferred maintenance. It is what keeps the grids operating in places where there is extreme public opposition to build desperately needed additional power plants.

I once pointed out - this would have been back when, you lived here in the Washington, DC area, Ben - that I hope people feel good about the fact that there's been so much NIMBYism - "Not In MY Back Yard" - against new power plants that we have to import electricity all the way from Ontario, Canada to meet demand.