"Fast-moving storms in D.C. area leave mess in their wake" Washpost

 "As of 10 a.m. Friday, about 36,000 customers still lacked electricity. More than 22,000 of the outages were in Northern Virginia, with about 14,000 outages in Prince George's County. The numbers were down from Thursday night, when, as of 9 p.m., about 96,000 customers in the Washington region lacked power. The outage affected about 50,000 Dominion Power customers in Northern Virginia and about 46,000 Pepco customers, including about 39,000 in Prince George's, 4,200 in Montgomery County and 2,800 in the District. All Prince George's schools and office buildings are closed Friday because of extensive power outages. In Alexandria, Mount Vernon Community School is closed Friday, and all summer school programs are canceled.

Parts of Prince George's and Alexandria were hit particularly hard. Thursday night, Alexandria officials declared a local emergency to boost coordination with state resources and enable the city to take "necessary actions" to respond to the storms. In Prince George's, power outages left many traffic signals dark, including at major intersections such as Route 4 and the Suitland Parkway."  Washpost

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A little local color.  It was one hell of a storm.  Power was out at my house for about 18 hours.  Well, not exactly.  Our 20 KW standby generator cranked up nicely and Chez Lang was a beacon of illumination in a black, black world.   pl 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/06/AR2010080601564.html?wprss=rss_metro/dc&sid=ST2010080601611

Comments

[The beaver]

Good for you to have generator, Colonel :-)
Hope no property damages as far as trees or roof are concerned @ Chez Lang.

[SubKommander Dred]

Pat:
Backup generators are truly wonderful things. Amazing how a little electricity can go a long way. I think this post highlights just highlights how dependent our society is on a functioning electric grid, and how so many take it for granted. Back in late June, the city where I live (Charlottesville) was hit with a 'microburst.' Although the storm lasted less than 5 minutes, it knocked out power to a good part of the homes and businesses in town for the better part of a week, closed a number of roads from downed trees, and the city has still yet to completely clean up from it.
I always knew that 3500 watt generator I had in storage would come in handy some day.

Pete Deer

[Jackie]

So that explains the internet silence from SST.

[Fred]

A 20KW generator, you could power the neighborhood with that. We had a series of storms a couple of weeks back in Michigan. My area was out of power for 4 days. Fortunately I had picked that time to be up in Traverse City. Perfect timing for me, didn't even lose anything in the fridge.

[Patrick Lang]

I love generators, the bigger the better. This one runs on natural gas. Its the Generac machine in the picture. pl

[John Minnerath]

That's a nice genset Pat.
nothing like having some standby power.

[The Twisted Genius]

My father in law has a similar set up near Saratoga, NY. It is pretty sweet. I have come to the conclusion that north Stafford must be directly in the lee of the the higher Appalachian mountains. The severe weather always passes to our north and south. Even so, I wouldn’t mind having a whole house generator just in case.

[Jake]

Funny you should post such things....

The US Electric Grid: Will it be Our Undoing? - Revisited

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6817

[b]

You folks in the U.S. have a shabby infrastructure.

In my fifty years in Germany here I have experienced two outages. One about 60 minutes and one about 10 minutes. The first in a rural place and the other in a city.

I don't get it why even low power lines in the U.S. are still above ground and why you need some special UPS stuff to run your PCs. They do not even bother to market those here - our powersupplies are stable.

[WP]

With the power out in your neighborhood, how long did the telephone and internet work if at all.

Here, we have fiber to the curb instead of copper and if the power goes out, soon, when the local network hub's UPS's run down, all communications stops after a very few hours even if you have power in your home. It is no longer like the old days of copper when the telephones had their own power.

[Fred]

Nice, made in Wisconsin if I remember correctly. I interviewed with them when I first got out of the Navy. Went back to school instead.

[Norbert M. Salamon]

All interesting and applicable to your power issues:

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6817

The grid in USA

[arbogast]

How much noise does it make, although I guess that's not a big deal if your freezer is melting?

I won't ask how much it cost.

Where do you have it, and can you bury your gas tank?

We have gas from the street, which I guess is relatively immune from interruption.

Where we live, on the other hand, the big historical risk is flooding. And that's hard to prepare for.

(No specifics please, generalities)

[mo]

you spoiled First-Worlders! I invite all and sundry to come enjoy the pleasures of 40c (thats 104f to those of the other persuasion) in Beirut with daily cuts of electricity (therefore no air conditioning)...(please excuse the sweat sokaed posting). Of course if thats not enough we can always go down South where another little war is brewing up.

[walrus]

Glad to know the beer is cold at Chez Lang no matter what.

[Patrick Lang]

mo

Be honest. We could make a fortune selling these in Lubnan. pl

[Patrick Lang]

arbogast

I think Lyon would be enraptured by my machine. It is well insulated and sounds like a muffled lawnmower. The neighbors are green with jealousy. It doesn't have a tank. City gas from the company founded by Bill Fowle's father. It is out in the back garden with the AC outside thingies.

WP. Eventually the internet and phones shut down, but... I have a laptop that does internet using my BB as a modem, So...

Jake

you need to "lighten up."

b

Eric von Manstein, Rommel and Clausewwitz, Schiller Mendelssohn, Goethe, etc.

That is how you IMO should argue, not from your ability to make the trains run on time wherever they were going.

Yes. We are inefficient. we lack clarity. Good. pl

[Fred]

Mo,

Yes, but you have fewer neo-cons as immeidate neighbors. Looks like a regional heat-wave. Not like you have much of a grid to connect power:
http://www.medemip.eu/Calc/FM/MED-EMIP/AUPTDE/Electicity_Interconnection_Maps/Arab_World.pdf

The legend is at the bottom. Dots are 'planned'. Isreal's power facilities obviously not shown. They should have interconnected a facilitated power capabilities years ago, but why spend any of $3Billion/year US on something that might actually allow gernerating good will and co-operation when you can buy military hardware instead?

[Fred]

I should have put this up instead of my last link:
http://www.medemip.eu/WebPages/Common/Default.aspx

b, most of Germany's grid was built post WWII. The US electricity infratstructure had a significantly different developmental history. Our regulatory envirnonment is significantly different as well.

[Jake]

"In my fifty years in Germany here I have experienced two outages. One about 60 minutes and one about 10 minutes. The first in a rural place and the other in a city."

Now b....

Let's see. Bevölkerung (Population) Deutschland (Germany) - 82,110,097. Population United States - 307,006,550.

geringe Differenz Fütterung der Monster (Slight difference feeding the monster)!

[Jake]

By the way Colonel...

"Jake you need to "lighten up."

The way this Country is heading there is nothing lightly to be taken anymore...

With exception of a kegger party or two are our age...

[J]

Colonel,

Ahh tethering your BB does provide you some flexibility.

The power vrrroooom (Generac) backup you have is great if you're hooked up to Natural Gas like most city folks are, but a swoosh sucking sound if you're on Propane out in the middle of the boonies. To use one as a power backup requires installing a separate [large recommended] Propane storage tank exclusively for the generator's usage.

[Frabjous]

How much natural gas does it consume per hour, or to put it another way, how long does it have to run before you notice a significant spike in your summer gas bill, which is usually pretty low, at least at our house.

Mark

[WILL]

@mo

the way Lebanon is folded, it's pretty easy to escape the muggy heat by going up the mountain.

[mo]

Already ahead of you Colonel. Problem is that until they start drilling in those new found off shore fields and as long as our neighbors dont take it all first, I think there is a distinct shortage of natural gas to be found around here.