We’ve had quite a storm today here on the far end of Cape Cod, and it’s still raging as I write (5:26 PM Saturday). All day long the northeast wind off the Atlantic has been ferocious, and the snow’s been falling (or more accurately, blowing sideways) at two to three inches per hour.
I’m writing this post to salute the amazing men (and perhaps a few women as well) who work at my electric utility, Eversource, to maintain and repair the electrical lines. We lost power at about ten this morning, and by two in the afternoon it was back on. The conditions outside were absolutely brutal, yet these dedicated and fantastically competent people were able to diagnose and repair the problem, in a raging blizzard, in less than four hours.
These, and not the comfortable, soft-handed sophisticates who make up our ruling class, are the people upon whom our lives really depend — and so do the lives of those who look down on them with such haughty disdain.
None of this is breaking news, of course, but a situation like this is a clarifying reminder of just who really matters in this world — and who doesn’t, really, at all.
4 Comments
Nothing was actually repaired during the height of storm. You can not have bucket trucks up with winds above 40MPH.
Restoration is done remotely at the office through computers via SCADA enabled reclosers and motorized switches configured in a loop scheme.
Devices around the downed lines are opened to electrically isolate the damage while normally open ties are closed into neighboring feeders to re-energize the undamaged segments.
If it were not for distribution automation the number of outages would be 5 times greater than they are now.
“But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”
George Elliot, Middlemarch
Delta,
Thanks for this information; it makes sense that they would do things this way.
I hope, however, you didn’t mean to diminish the efforts of the crews who have been out en masse — before, during, and after this storm — trying to keep everyone’s lights on.
Welcome
Dispatchers who do contingency switching and direct service trucks are just one part of a team of linemen, ground men, operators, coordinators, electricians, electrical engineers, technicians, geographers, liaisons, among many others work together in unison to restore service.
Restoring power is a war like effort with an army of people working long rotating shifts which push past of the point of mental and physical exhaustion.