Well That Was Interesting

So, DTE had let the management at the office building where I work that if the heat gets high enough, with resulting electrical demand, guess whose building gets the electric service shut down?

Yep, the one I'm trying to do work in.

Maybe additional reliable power generation should be put online rather than closing power plants and building rather quixotic and unreliable renewables, eh?

Happily they did not cut power during a meeting and no one got stuck in the elevator. But, as the temperature kept going up, as a protective measure I decided to work from home after my last in-person meeting in the afternoon.

Just as well that I did, as within an hour after I got home, the sky opened up hard with a really impressive thunderstorm that rattled windows and knocked out traffic lights all along the route I would have taken home. 

Power got knocked at home three times, but happily it did come back on.

That DTE addresses these issues by doing deliberate brownouts instead of working to generate power to meet demand as part of their and the Democrats running this state's greenie approach to things is rather pathetic and a lack of reliable power is going to be a major problem for this state.

Power Still Out

Power is still out, and DTE changed their restoration estimate they had made all day yesterday that it would be restored  yesterday is as of now changed to  today -- this morning.  How comforting. 

Anyone wanting to place their bets on this latest estimate being correct?

Yesterday we dug out the Driveway of Doom™, moving about 6 inches of very heavy wet snow, which took longer than you might think, dug out Leah's car at the parking pad at the bottom, and had delivery pizza for lunch. We then had a nice salad for dinner as no power required to make it.  Eating healthy-ish for the win. 

Spent time hanging out doing some reading and non-electronic stuff, rather relaxing. Bundle under extra blankets and no major issues.

House is down to about 57 degrees and still dropping, but no worries about pipes freezing yet, even though outside temps want to dip to 30-32 at times during the night.  Kinda cold inside but the hot water is working. Now it's nice and sunny outside and 40 degrees.

One tree in the front yard looks to be down for the count, with half the limbs down touching the ground at this point while still attached to the trunk and not springing back. Likely will be an expensive removal operation.

As the backup batteries are out of juice we went to the office today and are recharging all the things and everyone is getting stuff done. Also brought with us most of the perishables form the fridge/freezers as ice cream is melting in one.

Had looked into a whole house generator about a year ago, but neither of the two major sellers of such ever returned my calls so it waited undone.  Now it will likely still wait as we plan to move within a certain timeline that makes the generator install rather uneconomic.

So far this is still just at an annoyance stage (I'd really like to get some laundry done, get the dishwasher done, etc) rather than a real problem.

Update:  Power was indeed restored Saturday late afternoon, which was a good thing.

Green Dreams And Brownouts

 This is what happens when the greenies in power think electricity comes from skittles and unicorn farts.

Gov. Whitmer has been on a binge being against coal and nuclear and  focusing on the rather unreliable renewable and with magic thinking expecting solar and wind to eventually cover 100% of the state's energy needs. 

So while eschewing coal and nuclear, refusing to allow the building of coal and nuclear plants and having magic thinking instead of actually heeding reality and "following the science", Michgian is gonna get this:

The Detroit Free Press: With summer heat and storms brewing, some say Michigan is headed for brownouts

The reality is there is currently insufficient power generation to keep up with the projected demand.

Even worse, two coal plants are being shut down, and  the Pallisades nuclear plant is now shut down  taking plenty of clean, reliable power offline right when it is needed the most.  That the nuclear plant provides electricity and needed to stay open to prevent a loss of capacity. 

Gov. Whitmer was all for the shutdown before she was against it.

So, she decided to grandstand and ask it to stay open long after the decision to shut it down was made ,and the shut down was underway in the final stages and she did far too little and too late to keep it open and the closing was assured before she spoke up.  She had 4 years to speak up against the closing and plan for it, and she wholly failed to do so.  Her "attempt" if you can call it that to avert the shutdown seems to be more for show than anything else.

But don't worry, I'm sure Gov. Whitmer and her greenie allies will have all the infrastructure and power generation available for charging all those Electric Vehicles they're pushing.   If you believe that, I  have a nice bridge for sale that's linking the Michigan peninsulae together that's in great shape.

Bail! Bail! Man The Pumps!

But sadly there were no pumps to be manned so we had to get the water out manually.

We happened to get a rain storm in earlier this week that took out power in ours and a lot of other neighborhoods.

The storm was intense and as you may have guessed, that meant water rushing into the sump pump pit. With the power out the sump pump decided to take the night off.

That left Leah and I bailing it out for more than three hours until it finally stopped coming in.

That was not pleasant, especially when it looked like it might overflow as were were not keeping up with it.  We filled two different 5 gallon buckets and I would carry the full one to the drain and then come back for the other once Leah had filled it up.  Over 60 buckets - 300 gallons - was dumped out of that pit which is a helluva lot.  I really got a workout in as a result. My aching everything.

I've now ordered a Raybend Primary Sump Pump Backup Power System and while waiting for it to arrive, I've purchased the appropriate Deep-Cycle battery so it will be ready when it gets here.  This should hopefully stop future bailouts from needing to occur.

That Was Not A Fun Way To Spend A Sunday

Last year the power was out for a week in March due to a windstorm.

Now it looks like we're going to be out for awhile as well due to yesterday's ice storm.

The Detroit News: Mich. Monday: Drizzly and 259K without power

The key difference between last year's outage and this one is rain.

Lots of rain.

Lots of rain and very sodden ground.

Yes, with no power, the sump pump pit was filling up at a ridiculous rate. We could only keep pace bailing it out by hand and we easily drained over 1,000 gallons (200 full 5 gallon buckets, and we did more than that) from the pit.

All day, and all night.

During the day the minions were helpful assistants while Tash was out working.

During the night, Tash and I did 2-hour shifts each bailing the pit and then getting a two hour nap and then up again.

It finally slowed down to where we could get ahead of the water coming in it at around 2 am this morning, and we were then only having to empty it every five minutes or so and it's now about a 10 minute fill time now.

More rain and even snow is in the forecast, along with possibly freezing temperatures tonight and no real estimate to when they will restore power yet but some people seem to think it will be back on by Tuesday at 8 pm.

This doth suck, and it sure was a lousy way to spend a day and night.