Yes, Our Power's Out Too

By Robert Wilonsky Fri., Apr. 15 2011 at 5:51 PM

Categories: News

The wife called: Power just went out. It's a trend: When I checked Oncor's outage-info website 10 minutes ago, close to 39,000 folks in Dallas were sans juice; that number has since jumped to 41,722, with another 12,680 outta luck in Fort Worth. Here's the latest map. Oncor says: That's the way wind blow. Because it's 1912.

"It's due to very high sustained winds and much higher wind gusts," says Megan Wright, Oncor spokesperson. "We had 30,000 at 4 p.m., and it's going up. The wind slows our crews working to restore power, and as soon as the wind subsides, which we hear will be tonight, they'll move much more quickly. The big problem we've seen today is trees hitting the power lines. And we have problems with homeowners not wanting us to trim trees. That's been the biggest problem today."

And, yes: Even if you have a "smart meter," do call in your outage at 1-888-313-4777. "Just to be on the safe side," Wright reminds.

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Gus mitchem

Your all self absorbed idiots. The residents that bitch the most about power outages are the same assholes that won't let the trees get cut.

The power outages of today are just more irritating because you have to remember how to actually speak to your family

Augie

The grid is beyond maxed out. More and more outages are coming. We'll be told it was something else next time. The truth has been spoken...rolling outages are the normal state and mean that the grid is "working as it is supposed to." Really? So for the previous 30 years when we only lost power with great ice storms or tornadoes, that was not the way a grid is supposed to work? Gonna have to invest in infrastructure soon, like it or not.

Guest

If high winds knock out power, they must never have power in Amarillo.

I guess the Oncor lackey will appear before the City Council again and once again promise that, this time, they're going to give their customers better information about outages and repair times (Granted, they were really close in their repair estimate for my house. It only took them 14 hours longer than they thought to restore power, but they also did take a roughly 16 hour break between the time the first crew left my neighborhood and the time they came back to restore power to the part of the block where I live).

Also, the power lines are buried in my neighborhood, but our power goes out for several hours at least once every couple of months (and there are no overhead powerlines between my house and the house two doors down whose power was restored 15 hours before mine). It must've been really windy underground yesterday, too.

JIF

Electrical deregulation has worked wonders for Texans. Higher prices and lower reliability.

Hannibal_Lecter

Since the power lines are owned, operated an maintained by a heavily-regulated company, Oncor, and not one of the deregulated power production companies, what's your point?

JIF

What was the point of deregulation when consumers were told that it would promote more reliable service ? It seems to me since Oncor owned all the lines, deregulation made no sense. We still don't know what the truth was with all the so called planned outage around the Super Bowl. What was the first story ? The water pipes froze ? Yeah right. How cold does it have to be for pipes to freeze when the water is moving ? I guess that story didn't fly so they had to change it. Heavily-regulated my ass. Whoever is regulating better start doing their job.

Cliff Dweller

When are they going to bury the damn lines? Think of the money they spend on this outage exercise over and over and over. Short term thinking at its finest. . .

KSK

I grew up an Air Force brat, and have lived all over in my adulthood, and I can confidently say this:

The power infrastructure in North Texas is the most unreliable I have seen in the U.S.

Syd_Nancy

Fight the Power

super_tigre

Saw a long line of northbound DART trains queued up as I was walking home from work here in Downtown. Guess the power outages are affecting them as well. Needless to say, it was an impressive sight.