High Wind Warning

[Gpwrangler]

It’s bad enough that nothing is ever done about my pet peeve. Like clockwork, when there is a moderate to severe storm, thousands of people in Michigan lose electricity for an extended period of time.

Mind you, they never lose telephone service, even if they still have a land line, and their natural gas is supplied. [[Although without electricity, the gas isn’t much help in keeping the furnace running.)

Those^ words are not WHAAAA! WHAAA! from DetroitYES. They are those of Keith Crain in his editorial of this week's Crain's Detroit Business.

He makes a good point. This did not use to happen to this extent. It now seems that whenever nature sneezes a hundred thousand households lose power.

Unfortunately Crain goes on to turn this into an argument for coal fired plants that has nothing to do with the failure of the delivery infrastructure.

Power has always gone out when storms cause trees and lines to fail. It's physics. Not all power lines can be on 100' poles. We don't need to double our rates to upgrade infrastructure. Just take reasonable precautions, have your house wired for a generator and keep it in good condition.

This is is nothing new.

[Lowell]

Power has always gone out when storms cause trees and lines to fail. It's physics. Not all power lines can be on 100' poles. We don't need to double our rates to upgrade infrastructure. Just take reasonable precautions, have your house wired for a generator and keep it in good condition.

Physics sure, but because lines are not cleared as regularly as they once were. The fact is that our rates are de facto raised when freezers full of food are lost, businesses and schools have to close and wages are lost, accidents even death occur when wires, street and traffic lighting goes down or when, as you suggest, someone gives up like I did after the big one in 2004 and pops $5K for a generator that runs off my underground natural gas line. But how many people are fortunate as i and can afford that?

[Gpwrangler]

Physics sure, but because lines are not cleared as regularly as they once were. The fact is that our rates are de facto raised when freezers full of food are lost, businesses and schools have to close and wages are lost, accidents even death occur when wires, street and traffic lighting goes down or when, as you suggest, someone gives up like I did after the big one in 2004 and pops $5K for a generator that runs off my underground natural gas line. But how many people are fortunate as i and can afford that?

you paid way too much. You can light your whole house for the cost of a big TV, cheaper if you buy used. It's a matter of priorities, not fortune. When the choice was a TV or a generator I bought the generator. I'd rather prepare than bitch about the grid.

[Jimaz]

I was visiting a medical facility yesterday during the windstorm. All their power lines are underground but they were still losing power frequently along with another business in the area and a traffic light at a busy intersection.

They had special red [[emergency-generator-supplied) electrical outlets for critical medical equipment and even those were going dead! Maybe it was only temporarily out while switching to generators. No harm done.

[sumas]

I have posted on this forum several times that I lost power over 500 times. Over 20 years.

DTE- This is on you.

DTE sucks! Tried to get them out. We have several mature 100 plus years old laying all over lines in our neighborhood. I asked them to be proactive and they just laughed.

Lost power for 5 1/2 days because they didn't trim trees in the alley on the next block. They didn't have to replace all of my food or neighbors food spoilage so they keep thumbing their nose. Maybe our legislature should pay attention to realities like making utilities accountable instead of wolf issues.

[mtburb]

These winds were powerful enough to send a tree, that stood on a vacant lot on my block for decades, crashing down and barely missing a house by inches.

[Bham1982]

I have posted on this forum several times that I lost power over 500 times. Over 20 years.

Wait, what? Over 500 times?? That wouldn't be the norm even in Guatemala. You have a power outage almost every week?

I have never lost power in Michigan, not once, and have lived here roughly 20 years of my life.