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[DnJ]

Good Morning

Thanks m. Oh so many songs, so much singing. And food! Oh my goodness. What a yummy night as well. And days after. So many leftovers. Lol.

I was reminded while reading bttrfly’s thread that today is the winter solstice - shortest day and longest night.

Last night, technically second longest I guess, was darker and seemed longer than normal. For it was plagued by power blips and outages. Around 7:00 pm, the power shut off, and returned one second later. This repeated again around 20 minutes later, and again, and again. The same interval and duration.

The sun set a bit after 4:30 pm, bring the -28C day to a close. And ushered in the night with its -36C (-33F) embrace. A power shut off, even just a blip, shuts off the furnace. It takes a few minutes for the pressures to equalize and for it to restart. Then it cycles its way back through the stages to get up to full speed and heat again. All the while, the relentless cold seeping in.

My house is well insulated. The entry doors being the worst offenders of leaks simply by their design. So, the entry mud room, well snow room this time of year , had the largest dip in temperature.

Eventually the power blip frequency increased. Starting around 9:00 pm, the interval became 10 minutes, and by 10:00 pm was 5 minutes. The one second off time corresponds to the reclose time of the relaying on the sub-transmission line. The distribution intervals are different. A fact that was supported by the comments and complaints on social media, confirming how wide spread an area this was affecting. A distribution problem would only affect some houses and people, this was turning off entire stations and affecting everyone.

The cause was likely a failing insulator. Kind of easy to find in the night, if you happen to see the bright blue flash of plasma as the 66000 volts arcs to ground. That flash is visible for a good mile depending upon terrain. However, the line is several dozen miles in length.

With the 5 minute blips the furnace would barely get back up to speed and then shut off again. The house no longer maintaining equilibrium, and started getting colder. So, off to bed. It’s warm under the blankets!

A few more blips occurred, easily seen as the iPhone on charge lights up when the power comes back on. And then off. No reclose. The insulator finally failing and a sustained short locking out the line from any further reclose attempts.

From my second floor bedroom window the world was still. No light anywhere. Except my Christmas tree blazing out the piano room window directly below my vantage point. Lol. The lights are programmed and turn themselves off at midnight. The plug the tree is powered by, along with the entertainment equipment (TV, surround sound, etc.), arcade, and a few other surge and brown out protected devices, is fed by the battery powered uninterruptible power supply. I opened the app, logged into the network (the internet and wifi being UPS powered) and turned off the tree.

Complete darkness across the landscape, save the transmission station to the south of me. A good thing, the 230000 volt lines are on, so just our local line problem. The stations ground and structure lights prismed upward in the cold ice crystal filled air. A neat looking spire against the black and featureless void.

I blindly walked my way to the bathroom. It’s funny just how dark it is. Absolutely cannot see anything. Like firmly closing your eyes and trying to walk around. Normally the night lights and illuminated switches dimly shine; an overlooked mechanism long ago installed by me, and taken for granted.

So, I turned on the flashlight of the iPhone. Wow! That is bright!

I again reported the outage and location. Several reports were made by now, and the outage map showed the extent of the affected area.

Crawled back into my warm bed. Nothing I can do. Ah, retired.

A while later, I was awoken to my phone’s charger regaining power. I listened. The furnace came on, and the power stayed on. And I went back to sleep.

This morning all is well, no blips, house is toasty warm while outside is -28C. I’ll set all the house clocks, and the time clocks on the water purification equipment, and it’s back to normal.

Think I’ll drop a kind word to the Linemen and Technicians who had to be out last night performing switching and repairs to keep me all cosy warm.

Have a great day.

D