On 12/27/2013 9:55 PM, Jason wrote:

Over the past 10 years or so, the frequency and duration of outages has
increased steadily, despite a lot of tree trimming by our local utility.
Friends who worked for said utility confirmed my suspicion that as their
profits shrank, they basically quit performing maintenance and just fixed
things when they broke and so were overwhelmed when a big storm hit. Oh,
and RFI is at an all-time high around here which I think also reflects
"deferred" maintenance. The utility company in question sold off bits and
pieces of itself for years until finally they took a buyout by a Canadian
utility this fall. I don't know how that will affect grid reliability,
but I'm skeptical.

Some years ago, crews from Hydro Quebec came to Massachusetts to help
rebuild after a major storm, and I got to talk to some of the workers,
practicing my high-school French.

They politely told me that they'd rather speak English, and then they
said that they were very surprised at the age of the equipment our
electric utility was using. They didn't give me specifics, but they did
use the word "ancient".

73,

Bill, W1AC

--
Bill Horne
(Remove QRM from my address to write to me directly)