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Back to the Forum Archives I do not expect a great deal of sympathy from those who read this. I am aware that ice storms and other vagaries of nature happen in many places to many people. Michiganders are not unique as victims of the weather. Just the same, I want to outline this particular ordeal. That will let me point out some flaws in what we have. Then I will get to my theme, Power To the People. It began on Thursday, April 3. "It was a dark and stormy night," as the trite story line goes. Thunder crashed around us all night. Rain poured down and we could hear trees falling in the woods. We arose Friday morning to a surreal silver landscape of true natural beauty. With the morning sun caressing the ice coated treetops we were gazing upon a scene from the Nutcracker ballet. Nature as an artist on a grand scale has no equal in Mankind. No true artist would fail to be humbled by it. In addition our power was still on and we thought we had dodged a bullet. That dream ended about 8:00 AM when the lights went off, along with everything else. A belated April fool! Of course, we called Detroit Edison's hot line to report the outage. They have an automated menu type system that is easy fairly to use. After fuming and fussing for a short while, we decided to go shopping. This is Mrs. Gaffer's philosophy. When nothing seems to go right, go shopping. In this case, I agreed. It beats sitting around and grousing. We went out, went shopping, and had a nice lunch at a nice restaurant with power. Unfortunately, when we returned, our power was still off. We have suffered these situations before and we are always prepared. Our actions were standard. I brought our two kerosine heaters in from the barn. The big one (22,600 BTU) went into the parlor on the hearth. The smaller one (8800 BTU) went in the kitchen, dinning room. We also have a Colman propane lantern which puts out considerable light and some heat. We live in a rural area so we depend on a well with an electric pump for water. Because of that, I have an 8 KW gasoline powered electric generator. My procedure is to run it for short (4 hour) periods in daytime. After that it must be refueled. With the generator, we can have lights and some range top cooking. Also our refrigerator remains viable. I do not run the generator at night when I cannot pay attention to it. At 6:00 PM we called Edison. They declined to give a time
estimate for power restoration. We were rather snug in our parlor with the big heater. For later, we had plenty of blankets for our beds. Just as with the generator, I will not run the heaters at night when I cannot pay attention to them. It is important to point out, even without continuous power, we were infinitely better off than the pioneers who originally settled this country. Let us never forget that. At approximately 8:00 PM on Friday, April 4 our power was suddenly restored. For a short time we thought we were out of the woods. We thanked whatever gods of energy exist and opened a jug of Chianti. Our jubilation was short lived. A few minutes later, the power went out again. On Saturday morning at 7:00 AM the problem persisted. There was no power. We were coping, no more. At this time, Edison had given us an estimate of 11 hours, more or less, for power restoration. On Saturday April 5, at approximately 4:30 PM the power came
back on. We were a bit uncertain and decide to delay any celebration. On Sunday, April 6, about 7:00 AM I called Verizon and reported
the phone problem. They promised to have it back on withing 12
hours. April 6, 2:30 PM. The Verizon folks were here and found a downed line. They left it on the ground, but made a temporary bypass splice to get us operational. They pointed out that I also had a problem inside the house causing a very noisy line. That turned out to be the modem in Mrs. Gaffer's computer. It got fried when the line went out. I will have to replace it later. For the moment, I just disconnected it. I thanked the Verizon guys profusely. They just grinned and went away. April 6 at 9:30 we called Edison's hot line and discovered that the estimates for our restoration had not been entered into the system yet. How about that? We went from an estimate of 6 hours at noon to "You do not exist." 3&1/2 hours later. Nothing to do but go to bed. April 7 at 6:00 AM. Edison was now giving an estimate of 12 hours to restoration. We seem to be the victims of bluster and bull crap guesses. April 7 at 12:30 PM. Edison was now estimating 5 hours to restoration. Right! It is clear that they were simply counting down from a previous guess with no real knowledge of what was really happening out there. April 7 at 7:15. The magic hour had passed. We still had no
power. There was a new estimate. We would be restored in about
8 hours. Sure! I wondered, why doesn't someone get off of his
butt and go talk to the people who are out there doing it instead
of making stupid guesses? Edison status reports are somewhat like the Iraqi information ministry war reports. They do not reflect any known reality. Rather, they are an attempt to obfuscate the situation while giving the illusion of being positive and helpful. In the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, they continue to pretend they know what is going on. It seems to be more a pattern of appeasement rather than any sharing of facts. In this pattern of appeasement, they have completely destroyed any credibility they could have had. They are simply not believable. What we discovered for sure is anything they say is likely to be untrue. A trail of appeasement after a period of time becomes an obvious trail of falsehoods. I would much rather have them tell me they don't know that to find out later they didn't know and just told me something to appease me. It would even help if they could tell me where they are working at the time. We are not stupid. We know they must work from the center out. Just tell us where you are for goodness sake and stop telling us things that you really don't know. they could even give status maps to the media if they wished. April 8,at 7:30 AM, we still had no power. We were still coping.
We were long beyond the time of Edison's last prediction. April 8 at 5:40 PM. Our power was restored. We hoped it really was. We began to wait and see. There you have it. Our power did remain on. I learned later that we were lucky at that. Two days later some folks still did not have power. If God gave me the grace to resolve one problem in my life, I would choose to resolve our energy problem in favor of people. I would like to fix things such that no human being is ever caught again in a slave master relationship with a arrogant wallowing public utility. No human being or group of human beings should be held hostage to a public utility. I would give people home based power sources that worked. Each person would be in control. We would not be dependant on an arrogant, bureaucratic empire that has trouble delivering basic services when we need them most. One thing Edison has that all other big companies I have seen have is the entrenched levels of cover your butt petty bureaucrats. These are those little people who are willing to lie their little eyes out to please the ones above them. They suck up hoping to get a pat on their little pointy heads. All companies have them The older the bureaucracy, the more of them will be entrenched in the system. These people live this as their MO. Misdirection and obfuscation is their way of life. They are entrenched at all levels of the bureaucracy. The companies put these people in the way of their customers and in charge of their workers. The top dogs couldn't create a rotten system without the active participation of these creepy little turds. They will do anything to get a nod from a big shot. However the entrenched turds are just a small part of the problem. There is a much larger problem having to do with system manageability. Normally we take electricity for granted. It is only at times like these when we come to realize how completely dependent we are on electricity. There is nothing like a tiny ice storm to demonstrate how totally unmanageable this current power delivery system is. This is not just about Detroit Edison. They are just a small part of it. Their system has become untenable due to sheer mass. The grid is too big. But for inept management, it could work better, but it is still untenable. It is just too big to be managed with a bloated wallowing bureaucracy. This situation will continue to degenerate. We will soon reach the point where the least little surge or pole down will disable the whole system. We could have guarded against part of this. Thirty or forty years ago Edison had the technology to put their lines underground. If they had begun then, we would now be immune to the vagaries of the weather. Being realistic we know Detroit Edison is not going to change. No power company is going to change. The situation will continue to degenerate. So, we need a new and different solution. A better reason for replacing the power grid is that it is very vulnerable to enemy attack. Our enemies don't need to take out the power plants. All they need do is take out the main switching stations to take out the whole grid. There is no way we can protect all of them. Considering what a little local ice storm does to us, think of what a concentrated attack would do. If they take out our power grid, we are disabled. Without power, our entire structure is dysfunctional. Going underground would not solve this problem. What is needed now is a new solution to power and power delivery. We need individual economical power sources that are not dependent on a huge grid or a bloated bureaucracy to deliver power to the users. We need to invest in research for alternatives to massive coal and oil fired utilities. I believe with honest effort we could develop a small viable fusion type power source that could be spotted where it was needed. I envision a 40 or 50 kilowatt unit about the size of a small refrigerator that could easily run a house or a small business. Several of them could run a factory. A smaller one could also run an automobile. Don't tell me it can't be done. Sixty years ago you would have told me it would be impossible to put a man on the moon or destroy an entire city with one bomb. Give science the task and it will be done. It takes money and dedicated leadership. Therein is the problem. It is many years since we have had dedicated leadership. Power to the people!
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