LIPA has been transformed into PSEG Long Island. (Public Service Electric and Gas) Same service level.
We’ve had four outages since December of at least an hour plus several short lived ones. Last night, in cold winter conditions, the power went out right at midnight. I called the power outage reporting line. Went though the five minutes of useless messages and finally reported my outage. The system said it had already been fixed.
No - it - was - not – fixed.
When it asked me if I was done I said no and it put me in the human operator queue and said the wait time was two minutes. It was more like twenty. I did get an operator and after identifying myself to her, she admitted there was a problem affecting 1,900 homes in my area and that crews had been dispatched. When I asked about ETA she couldn’t say.
That left me with a decision to make. I start a fire or wait? I was so tired by 12:40 when I got off the phone that I decided not to go with the fire and hope for the best. My wife warned me if she got cold she was going to wake me up to start that fire.
The upshot was we had power back at 1:39AM and I still have my dry wood supply intact ready for the next one.
No idea what caused it, but I would guess that a vehicle hit a pole. There had been a freezing rain in the afternoon that later changed to a bit of sleet. Not horrible conditions, but not ideal.
Usually we tend to lose power during summer storms, on rainy nights during the leaf fall period (as cars skid off the road on wet leaves and crash into power poles) and during major freezing rains. Usually not as often as seven or eight outages over two winter months.
We’ve been very lucky that our power only blinked off and on once in the last few months. I was fully expecting outages with the blizzard and the icy weather we’ve been having and our power was fine.
My husband has been advocating for underground wires ever since we moved to LI from Brooklyn 10 years ago. A little research has shown that LIPA was given money to start this project and . . . didn’t. He is convinced at least 75% of these outages would be cured with underground wires.
