I wonder how much is spent each year - by ComEd, the village, and affected customers - in response to outages such as this.

I also wonder what - if anything - could be done to lessen the frequency and impact of such occurrences, and how much is spent annually on such efforts.

I don't know - pehaps solutions are prohibitively expensive and everything reasonably possible is being done. Just seems so often in the US that we prefer to pay a big bill after disaster strikes instead of regularly contributing towards prevention.

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Just seems so often in the US that we prefer to pay a big bill after disaster strikes instead of regularly contributing towards prevention

Nail on the head again, Dins. "We", generally speaking of course, don't want to shell out the money to prevent potential disasters....we just want to fix them after they occur....reactiveness is HUGE in America, forget proactiveness. Which I find amusing since proactive moves were stressed profusely in business school (at least the one I went to, anyway). We did TONS of benchmarking and case studies on reactive situations and determined different ways the situations could've been handled to be more proactive instead. Makes me wonder why more businesses don't do these things *ahem, ComEd*....

Unnecessary, repetitive and redundant quote removed. --Ted E.

More proactive? Bless you but high winds ( 75mp or more) and uprooted / broken trees on village property/private property aren't ComEd's fault.
ComEd makes money when their meters rotate.
The faster the rotation and the amount of meters rotating equals cash for ComEd.
It's to their advantage to keep customers on-line. Basic economics. Supply and demand.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Ted E.,

quote:

Originally posted by Graham:
The faster the rotation and the amount of meters rotating equals cash for ComEd.
It's to their advantage to keep customers on-line. Basic economics. Supply and demand.

Right. But it costs them something to make repairs following such outages, doesn't it? Could a portion of those costs be directed towards burying lines and other steps to reduce future outages?

Also, as I tried to suggest, the village and end-users bear costs associated w/ outages. Do we prefer to bear those costs rather than investing in improvements?

Heck, I'd toss in some coin if for no reason other than to keep Bitterboy from hosing off in my yard anymore. Or to at least buy him a pair of swim trunks to use next time. Ew - my eyes!

quote:

Originally posted by Graham:
More proactive? Bless you but high winds ( 75mp or more) and uprooted / broken trees on village property/private property aren't ComEd's fault.

I spoke nothing of private property, I was referring to ComEd's property (i.e. power lines and transformers) when they are damaged and cause outages. In addition, I was more or less referring to knowing that the huge storm was coming and not having the manpower to make the adjustments in a timely fashion.

And in response to the rest of your comment: Yeah, what Dins said

ComEd enlisted help from Union Illinois and Wisconsin to help bring everyone on line.
I know this for a fact because I saw their trucks making major repairs.
No one can predict absolutely how much damage a storm will do.

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Originally posted by Graham:
No one can predict absolutely how much damage a storm will do.

Of course not. I don't recall anyone suggesting otherwise. But couldn't steps be taken to minimize the most likely types of damage?

Exactly, Dins....and it's quite simple to predict potential damage if you know how jacked up your system is in certain areas *ahem, GE*, though.

"Select areas of Glen Ellyn, including downtown, also lost power for about 30 minutes, Jones said. Power has since been restored throughout the village."

My townhouse in Baker Hill had no power from last night at 6pm until I left for work at 7am today - more than 30 minutes. I hope to return home to find we are at last part of the "throughout the village" that has been restored.

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Originally posted by Dinsdale:
But couldn't steps be taken to minimize the most likely types of damage?

To do so in GE, wouldn't they have to bury the lines or remove/trim thousands of big old trees? Aren't the majority of outages in GE due to trees coming down on lines? It would cost GE a ton of money to bury the lines or cost GE a large portion of their beautiful trees. Sounds like a catch 22 to me unfortunately.

Exactly bry.

quote:

Originally posted by bry:
Aren't the majority of outages in GE due to trees coming down on lines? It would cost GE a ton of money to bury the lines or cost GE a large portion of their beautiful trees.

As I said much earlier, perhaps there is no good solution. But when hundreds/thousands of customers go out, I question whether priority areas might be handled differently than they currently are. And yeah, burying everything all at once would be cost prohibitive, but if we pursued a long-term plan, perhaps adding improvements along with repairs...?

Heck, I got no dog in this fight as I have never lost power for more than a short while. So if everyone thinks the way we've always done things is fine, no reason to switch - or complain when power goes out.

Careful. I got crucified for such apparent blasphemy (saying power outages are a part of life- deal with it).

And Bry has it right, burying lines isn't even an option in a mature community like GE- cripes people go nuts when com-ed trims the trees in their easements that were foolishly planted under the powerlines, in an effort to reduce outages in storms. Plus burying higher voltage lines is actually harmful- closer you are to them the more EMF you get.

Darned if Tesla couldn't have solved this problem but he's long gone.

Over the past year, I've learned a few things about ComEd. First, undergrounding lines is very expensive. It is costing $390,000 to underground the lines the short distance from Roosevelt and Lambert south to Public Works (this is being done to allow addition of a northbound turn lane at Roosevelt Rd). As of now, this work must be done by ComEd at whatever (high) rate they charge.

Second, ComEd does monitor outages and makes improvements to the most troublesome circuits. Our neighborhood, by the YMCA, is part of a long circuit that extends from Eastern Glen Ellyn well into Wheaton and has been plagued by outages over the past few years. ComEd added fuses to our circuit to isolate outages. It seems to have had a positive impact. As DTM testified above, we did not lose power last week and that continues pretty long streak we have had without an outage.

I can promise you that the Village Board will continue to press ComEd to improve their storm outage responsiveness and to continue investing in infrastructure improvements in Glen Ellyn.

Thanks, Carl. I think one element of the frustration people feel is not knowing exactly why they seem to lose power frequently, while the next block over - or the other side of the street - rarely does.

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Originally posted by Carl Henninger:
It is costing $390,000 to underground the lines the short distance from Roosevelt and Lambert south to Public Works...

Have you thought about asking Wheaton for half?

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Darned if Tesla couldn't have solved this problem but he's long gone.

Okay, don't really have much to add to this conversation, but had to give this comment a big thumbs up!

hg

Tesla does seem to be one of the most misunderstood geniuses. What he discovered was his alone- Edison was brilliant but most of his "inventions" were from his stable of engineers. Tesla's AC blew away Edison's DC. Don't know if it's true or not but I heard the Brooklyn Dodgers were named that because people had to dodge Edison's stray DC voltage in wet weather on sidewalks. And of course Teslas AC success over Edison at the Chicago Worlds fair changed the world.

My son was really into Tesla. He recreated a Tesla invention that monitored the earths electrical field through a copper wound coil buried in our backyard and tied to an amplifier. Around midnight you could hear lightning strikes around the planet as little zings.

does any one know if we can throw out branches without any consequences?