One Year After Irene, What Have You Learned, What Do You Remember?

mrfixit August 28, 2012 at 04:28 pm

The storm reinforced what I already knew-LI'ers are whiners who can't live without the TV or AC. When they want the power on, they want it NOW! After all, it's easy to repair downed wires, right? Why shouldn't their neighborhood be first at the rates they pay? My favorite comment was one by a guy who was upset because his mother needed power for her oxygen machine. Never occurred to sonny boy to buy his mom a generator BEFORE the storm. If we get a major hit,it will be the Twilight Zone's "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street."

Nassau Taxpayer August 28, 2012 at 04:54 pm

$176 million on storm repairs last year and perhaps $2 billion over the past twenty years -- not including rate payer losses of probably double that.
Why didn't LIPA bury the power distribution network?

K. August 28, 2012 at 05:20 pm

I don't intend this to become a political point, but... I have seen quite a few houses with "Solar Panels" on their roofs. If you have them, or talked to someone who does - was the house adequately powered when others' power went out? That outage would seem to be a good indication of those panels' ability to prove genuinely useful; more-so than the sales promises. Thanks.

Trust_N01 August 28, 2012 at 06:32 pm

Probably because it would easily cost more than 10 times your $2 billion estimate for the last 20 years, and take AT LEAST that long to complete... and probably longer.
Not to mention the increase in isolating and repairing problems in buried lines when there are problems. And don't say there wouldn't be problems, ConEd has their lines underground in NYC and they still have outages.

Trust_N01 August 28, 2012 at 06:38 pm

Without any storage capacity for the power they generated, I'd assume people with solar panels were in the dark too - once the sun went down.
Still an Interesting question, I'd love to hear the answer too. Depends on your definition of adequately powered, I guess. Maybe enough to maintain the fridge during the day, but I doubt anybody was firing up their cental a/c.

John K Massaro August 28, 2012 at 06:41 pm

Some of the more advanced Solar Power systems have batteries that can store quite a bit of juice. Pretty expensive setup though...

Trust_N01 August 28, 2012 at 07:00 pm

Don't batteries, by definition, have to store electrical power as DC?
That would seem to seriously limit the usefulness of that power since most household items use AC.

Trust_N01 August 28, 2012 at 07:07 pm

Of course power inverters can convert DC to AC, but they're not terribly efficient. You lose a lot of power in the conversion.

John K Massaro August 28, 2012 at 07:18 pm

Yes, that's why it's a very expensive system. Mostly lithium batteries can hold amperage for sustained periods of time with a constant draw. But they're extremely expensive. Those inverters aren't cheap either. Solar Power will never be a viable source of energy for mass consumption simply because it's not very cost-effective & not at all efficient. But as a backup system for single family homes, it's worth it if you can afford the initial installation...

Nassau Taxpayer August 28, 2012 at 07:47 pm

$2B was the estimate in 1999. Comparatively speaking, not many ConEd outages. Play again?

Nassau Taxpayer August 28, 2012 at 07:53 pm

Digital inverters are highly (near 95%) efficient.

Trust_N01 August 28, 2012 at 08:35 pm

Hey, YOU were the one who said $2 billion "over the past twenty years", how was I supposed to know you were quoting a 13 year old statistic, especially when you put it in the same sentence with the $176 million estimate for last year. Fine... add another 75% for the years 2000-2012 and say $3.5 billion over the last 33 years. That still would hardly justify an expenditure estimated at $20-25 billion to bury all of Long Island's power grid.
No, it's true that ConEd generally has very few hurricane or storm outages, that wasn't my point. However at this very moment their Outage Map (available at http://www.coned.com/sm/outageinfo.asp#) is reporting 19 outages impacting 165 customers and buried cables make those problems more difficult to find and fix... and it's not like LI has the network of subway and utility tunnels like the city does to make the cables accessible. Sorry, I was trying to make a serious response to your question before, now that I know you're just "playing" I won't waste my time with further responses. Have fun playing with yourself.

Nassau Taxpayer August 28, 2012 at 08:53 pm

Those being LIPA numbers, why not go play with YOURself. Stick it in a 5-15P outlet.

John K Massaro August 28, 2012 at 09:03 pm

Nassau Taxpayer - With all due respect, you're acting like a tool...

Nassau Taxpayer August 28, 2012 at 09:07 pm

Tell that to "Fool_N01"

Trust_N01 August 28, 2012 at 09:15 pm

John, are you really so sure he's acting? :-)

Nassau Taxpayer August 28, 2012 at 09:18 pm

You "Fool_N01" but yourself.

Paul L. August 29, 2012 at 10:40 am

So what is your point? We laugh at the people down south when 1 inch of snow paralyzes them and everything shuts down.

Justin Time August 29, 2012 at 11:41 am

LIPA and Optimun rock..keep up the good work on repair work during storm emergencies..but lets get rid of the antigue above ground wiring.

Dave Adams August 29, 2012 at 11:55 am

I remember breaking out the BBQ and having all the neighbors that were out and about over for burgers and dogs and cocktails. I have a generator for my home business and only ran it during the daytime so people around me could sleep. It also kept the beers cold for the impromptu BBQ :-)

DSmiley15 August 29, 2012 at 12:44 pm

Was without power in RP for a week on our block - nothing too critical. We did have a generator, but we only ran it during the day as well -- some people actually think of other people! I did hear generators around me going all night & day as well. I think that is pretty inconsiderate to be honest....

DSmiley15 August 29, 2012 at 12:45 pm

We did that too and, honestly, it was kind of a nice break in the normal routine. I guess that may sound strange to some people, but it really didn't ruin my entire life :)

Scott Ray August 29, 2012 at 01:57 pm

I remember the neighborhood cameraderie that permeated the area during/after this storm. Neighbor helping neighbor with downed trees, food, etc. I found it refreshing actually. When there is a power loss like this, it tends to force people to relate face-to-face and not Facebook-to-Facebook. The loss of "Electronic Opiates" such as Facebook, et al, seemed to affect some folks more than the loss of electricity. I was out of power for almost a week - frustrating and inconvenient but certainly not the end of the world. The reality of the power distribution infrastructure is what it is. I don't see this changing anytime soon, at least not in my lifetime.

April Quiggle August 29, 2012 at 02:15 pm

I hope I wasn't the obnoxious neighbor to whom you refer (but I suspect I am). I'm very sorry but I'd do it again. Using the generator saved all my food in my freezers and provided a little normalcy during a difficult time. I never want to annoy people. Next time let me know it's bothering you and perhaps we can limit how long we run it.

John Gruber August 29, 2012 at 02:31 pm

my point is we're almost spoiled with the weather we get up, where the rest of the country deals with deadly tornados, earthquakes and hurricanes, here we are complaining about a little storm

John Gruber August 29, 2012 at 02:36 pm

half a million people down in NO have no power and here we are complaining about a storm over a year ago. that is pretty funny. and kind of sad...

K. August 29, 2012 at 02:55 pm

Remeber that when the Apocolypse hits, that generator sound becomes a Zombie Dinnerbell!

littleShamrock August 29, 2012 at 04:55 pm

I work from home but bought a generator for my husband as a gift 5 years earlier along with the outlet materials, and who gets to use it more?? Me. I only ran it an hour or two a day with the boss (who is me as well) knowing what was going on ... All we have to do is look out the window, right? Well, "thems" the breaks. Luckily we didn't have it too bad, but we have to move on. I think the NEWS and the "so called" weatherpersons just like to build stuff up more then it is for us in the North, but I have to say we didn't have it that bad ... 5 days no power? It could have been worse.

pbug56 August 29, 2012 at 06:19 pm

We bought a generator on the way home from dropping our child at college; we'd run it an hour or so every few hours during the day, not at all between midnight and 7AM, enough to save medicines and food, for the most part, and run a computer and keep the cell phones charged. We used the cell phones to get internet service.
We learned how inept LIPAsuction is. Our local outage took 5 days - and all that was actually wrong was a blown fuse that it took a visiting lineman 30 minutes to fix once LIPA finally decided we could have power again. BTW, the next house over had power the whole time. Also, we learned that LIPA saves a bit of money by its cutbacks in tree and power line clearing; doing a better job would have resulted in far fewer outages. We also learned that LIPA's network is a century out of date; they don't know what is down where, and they have little ability to reroute around damaged components.

Justin Time August 29, 2012 at 07:47 pm

See, pays to be handy around the house..lesson learned?