All posts in the topic Electrical Service (Short link)
Summary
- There are 4 posts — by 4 authors — in this topic.
- Latest post made by Dick Lambert at Apr 18 17:29 UTC
| From | File | Date |
|---|---|---|
| Dick Lambert | Brenwood Xcel Outage History.pdf | Apr 18 17:29 UTC |
I moved into Roseville in 1999 and I feel like in terms of electrical
service to the house from Xcel Energy, we moved to some sort of rural
no-man's land. It seems like our power goes out quite frequently.
While we have not kept records of how frequently the power goes out on our
block, it seems quite frequently. This past summer was the worst, almost two
complete days. Long enough to have to dispose of everything in our
refrigerator and deep freeze. We "survived" by doing a little urban camping
and grilling. In fact hosted an ad-hoc pot luck to commiserate with
neighbors in a celebratory "clean out your fridge" party.
Our side of the street seems to be on a different service because it has
been particularly frustrating to be living without electricity while the
neighbors across the street are fine.
On Monday, we experienced a strange sort of brown-out where only about half
of our electricity in the house worked just fine, the other half didn't.
This was somewhat disturbing as I was concerned that there may have been
some strange electrical fire or short somewhere in the house. We were
finally relieved of that concern when I talked to neighbors who were
experiencing the same problem.
So, the question is... how do we best approach this problem?
Consider having the house wired for a backup generator?
Contact Xcel and attempt to lodge a complaint to which they will likely say
"sorry" or "big deal"
Band together as neighbors, attempt to come up with details of how
frequently the power has been out and use the power of many people to
complain?
Pursue a simpler lifestyle less-dependent upon modern convenience or
electricity?
When was the last time the power went out at your house?
Hi Ken
I am pretty sure that you are on the line that goes down County Rd B, to the
east of your house and through the back of the properties on the north side of
B. I also noted when I moved here five years ago that I have gone without
power way too often and recall the day last summer that you are referring to.
(it must be that County Road B name thing....Xcel thinks we are rural...just
kidding).
We have a line that runs through lots of trees. Last summer, right after the
long power outage you reference, Xcel came out and cut back quite a bit of
space and I think things got better. As long as there are lots of trees back
in our yards and the power lines run above ground...we are prone to problems.
At least that's what I was told by the nice man who cut down half of my River
Birch. They really gutted a good size area all the way down the row. If you
ever want to stop by the backyard...you can actually look down the lines and
see what I mean.
That's pretty much what I know.
Don't get me going on Xcel! I actually have one of their high power
transmission lines running through my back yard (and it was a bone of
contention with them 2 years ago because they took out a tree that was not in
any way a threat to the tower). I wish we had the option of Minnegasco or
another power company. I've had a few power outages as well - and Xcel
actually told me that my power wasn't out at one point (it was less than a week
after my son was born and the power was a necessity because of his jaundice and
the treatment blanket that he had). It took them about an hour to even admit
our power was out (and it was out for blocks in each direction).
Over the last 10 years our neighborhood which is centered around the
intersection of Millwood and Brenner (SE of Victoria and County Road D) has
been plagued with an abnormally high number of power outages. We've been
without power an average of 6 hours and 45 minutes per year since 1998 with an
average of 3.8 outages per year. Click on the attached file at the bottom of
this post for a detailed record of dates and times.
In 2004, Xcel agreed to a settlement with the State which requires them to meet
explicit performance goals. Under this agreement they must attain an average of
not more than one outage per year per customer and a maximum outage time of 98
minutes per year. If they miss these targets they must pay a fine of $1,000,000
for each goal missed.
I suspect the reason we've seen such poor performance is that Xcel has not been
maintaining the distribution system for our neighborhood properly.
The following file was added to this topic.
- Name: Brenwood Xcel Outage History.pdf
- Type: application/pdf
- Size: 290.24KB
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