And has been since Thursday, courtesy of the North East Ice Storm, V. 2008. At the height of the storm, my neighbor’s willow tree fell on his service entrance, taking out his power and tripping the circuit breaker on the utility pole for our power. The rest of the street, they are just fine. In fact, the surrounding area, there are no outages, just us.
Tree on electric service entrance
So, you would think this relatively easy repair would be a snap for Central Hudson Gas and Electric. No, apparently we are a low priority in the grand scheme of things. We’ve called and they are very apologetic, “Yes, we are sorry… We know that it is inconvenient… We’ll try to get it back on as soon as possible.”
In the mean time, I was able to borrow a generator to run some of the things in the house; heat, refirgerator, sump pumps, TV and computer. We’ve been running it two hours on two hours off to save gas. The only thing we are lacking is running water. You don’t understand what running water means until you don’t have it. I had to go to the nieghbor’s pond and break the ice so I could get buckets of water to flush the toilets.
emergency backup power
So, as soon as possible, I’ll be going ahead with the solar powered backup system. More on that later.
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Tough break on the weather. I live in Michigan. the roads got bad but that was about it. Good Luck on to solar panel backup that is a great idea, very green to.
Paul,
We’re out too, and they are telling us a week possibly before it’s repaired. I got lucky and bought a generator, the last one on the shelf. Hopefully we’ll be back online sooner than later. Half the state of NH is without power today.
Todd,
I saw on the news this morning that NH was hit really bad, I was wondering if you had power or not. Glad you have at least some power. A power company survey crew stopped by about noon. They seemed to think it would be easy to fix if they could get a truck here. We shall see.
Still no power today….crews are starting to appear here from as far west as Ohio. They are telling us another 3 or 4 days. Our road has probably 1000 feet of wire down and damage to poles.
The line men just left, as of 11:00am today (Sunday) our power is back on, which is nice. The biggest problem was lack of water. Good thing I was able to borrow a generator to at least keep the heat on. I am in the process of creating a solar backup power packaged system, sized to run about 6,000 watts (10,500 watt surge) for about 3-4 days without being recharged. List price, around $25,000 or so. I think it may be popular around these parts.
Hope you get yours on soon, Todd. Sound like a real mess.
Paul,
Day 4 and still no power. Crews fixed some of the 3 phase power down the road. But they still haven’t got to the single phase that feeds our street. Sounds like a few more days….ugh!
How is your generator holding out?
I am very glad that your power is back. It is good that you had the woodstove.
The generator did great. I actually tried to only run it for a few hours at a time, then shut it down to cool.
Today at 4 am the power was finally restored. We were on generator for almost 5 days. It’s amazing how much we rely on power, water and heat to survive!
You know, the first time the power went out, it was fun feeding the wood stove, there was a sense of adventure in it and a sort of thumbing of the nose to mother nature, you can’t get me, ha ha!
The second time, still fun, less adventurous, still can’t get me…
The third time, less fun.
This is the fourth time it’s happened. No fun, can’t say I particularly enjoy sleeping on the sofa so I can keep an eye on the thing overnight, especially over a three day period. By the third night, I let the generator run all night to keep the furnace on.