Power Outage
 

How's it going down there with the Power Outage that happened a few weeks back. Is most areas back online now? I know a bunch of people were running generators for awhile. Hopefully, everything will get back to normal for everyone back there. So far, up here we are lucking out. NOthing too BAd, except for some snow. "KNOCK ON WOOD".

I've got some family out in central NE, between Grand Island and Kearney. They lost power for 2 weeks. Got it back on January 12th. Last I heard there were still a few isolated areas without power.

We got lucky in Omaha too, it all turned to snow by the time it hit us.

I don't have a clue about power companies, but wouldn't it be cheaper in the long run to bury the lines.... seems like the cost of repairs after ice storms would cover the inital burying costs?

We were without power for 10 days. But luckily the weather wasnt too bad as far as temps go. Did you miss the ice in Kasson. Maybe you just got snow. Hopefully we wont get any more ice storms. That was the worst Id ever seen. Thank goodness for generator power. Saved the day for us.

Cowboy you're on to something. LES will bury lines here free of charge whenever someone upgrades their service panel. I guess the rationale is if they do it free, period, then everyone and their dog will want it tomorrow. This way, give it 30 years, they'll have the most of the city pretty much underground.
Our panel is a 1969 and it needs replaced in a big way. Its one of those push o matic things where each breaker costs you 60 bucks nowadays.
But Lincoln was lucky too and didnt go out. We got to gripe about the lack of snow removal, but I think I'd rather have that than no juice for two weeks.

my house was from 79 and was made with burried electrical :] . AND they dont bury the cables in the middle of nowhere. in the towns with out power most of them are burried cables BUT it is the feed to the town that is above ground. It would be an astronomical cost to burry the lines the thousands of miles out there.

From you house to the transformer, doesn't really matter if it's buried or not if the main power lines are down. But, I would rather have my electrical buried from the transformer to my house. Just one less thing to worry about. It really would be outrageous cost to bury those main lines. Very High voltage and amps. No matter what they were contained in, I wouldn't want to dig around them. What would you contain them in to prevent someone digging in to them. Also, the highline wires now are just bare ungrounded regular cable. Inexpensive. Something like that hasn't happen to NE for quite some time in such a widespread area. Nothing like that in my lifetime until now. I think the best way to go, is too get your home setup for easy access for a generator if the time came.

Or another route, I have never been a fan of gas, but my home has a gas furnace, water heater, and setup for stove. A very small generator could run my furnace fan and water heater. So, I would have at least heat for my house very inexpensively. I'm not a refrig. guy, so I don't even know if gas refrigeration is an option. Never seen that, only in campers. The three main things would be covered. Heat, Hot water, and refrigeration.

Or just have a camper to camp and have fun and also use it as a standby home. Just plug it into a small generator with a 30amp breaker and you can run the whole thing, because most everything in the camper would run on your propane tanks. If I had room, I would have something like that instead of my little pop-up.

You don't really think about it until it happens.

I agree it would be too costly to bury the main high voltage lines that would be dangerous. Probably the worst ice storm to hit Nebraska ever. Lets hope that we dont have one that bad again.

Yea. We were without for 9 days. Luckily we moved into town with my brother and sister-in-law for 6 days until we got a hold of a generator. I agree that this has been a very weird winter. They still have tons of line work to do though!!!!!!

-Jake

You guys are right about the cost of burying lines. I was talking to some linemen here ( I work at Omaha public power) and they said it's really not feasible. That, and you'd hate to cut into one of those 4160v lines by accident!!