The Observation Deck

Hi, All,

I would like to take an informal poll about electrical outages you may have experienced in the last week. My neighborhood has lost power 6x times for a total of more than 24 hours since the storm last Tuesday. Here is the log, times are approximate:

Tuesday 7/19 7:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
Thursday 7/21 12 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. and 5:15 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Friday 7/22 7:30 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Sunday 7/24 1:15 p.m. to 5 p.m.
Tuesday 7/26 1:30 a.m. to 6 a.m.

I live near the Warren/Madison intersection. Have any other neighborhoods have outages to this degree?

My husband talked to some CEI employees today who were working at Franklin/St. Charles. One said they "lost 4 out of 5 transformers" that affect the area since the storm.

I have called almost every time about the outages (not the first two, I was optimistic it was all storm related). No one seems to know the true cause or be willing to share information about the problem.

I would like to hear about others' experiences.

Christina-- I am located a short distance away from you---Warren in between Armin and Leonard. I have not, however, experienced any power outages since the big storm a week ago. There have been recurring problems with the traffic light at Warren and Madison (as verified by police scanner monitoring and the periodic placement of a power generator to operate the signals).
Early this morning, 4:40 AM on my walk/run there were 3 CEI boom trucks at Lincoln and Madison with crew out and flashlights looking at transformers.
Very clearly there is a problem and in fact has been one going back as far as 6 years ago. Just ask Bill and DL on Onondaga about their outage of days for no good reason.

Your post/thread on this topic, however, can be valuable if for no other reason than to show public awareness of a protected utility's seeming ineptitude to a problem.

I just hope that electrical malfunctions don't have the same consequences as natural gas malfunctions.

Stan Austin

Christina,
Power or lack there of has been the big topic for this neighborhood for much of July. From what I have gathered much of last week was due to the heavy rain the flooded a substation in Brooklyn on Tuesday the 19th, then a second smaller substation problem with water on Friday the 22nd. This damage also contributed to the problems when circuits are rerouted while the initial cause is being repaired.
If we were to eliminate the storms from the month of July, I think that we would have still had brown outs and outages but it would have certainly been fewer. From what I have been told, there are a variety of reasons and our area seems to get the brunt of it. At the end of the day, I'd assume that most would agree that regardless of the reason, there's an expectation that uninterrupted service is provided (unless there is storm damage or some unavoidable incident). It's certainly not being ignored or considered acceptable to have these inconsistencies.
I'm cautiously optimistic that the efforts to this point will prevent further issues and intend to keep the pressure on when the lights go off. There certainly will be more to follow and hopefully that answer includes what the cause is and how it's being fixed.

Shawn,

I am aware of the flooding problems and appreciate that storms damage systems and appreciate the difficulty of service delivery on damaged equipment. Maybe part of my issue is the lack of communication about what's going on. After all, if my power is out I cannot look at a map which might show geographically what areas are affected, or a possible cause, on my computer. And I cannot receive phone calls (except by cell phone) to get information. From what I've read of late, availability of power isn't the issue, it's the delivery.

The outages last week add up to more than 20 hours without power. Do I throw out the 1/8 cow in my freezer that I just bought in June?

I realized after I posted that I forgot Friday afternoon. This was one of a few days last week on which my husband, who works out of our house, had to leave in order to participate in conference calls and work on his computer. This scenario will continue to be grow as do people in work-at-home situations, affecting bottom lines.

Shawn, is your optimism that the utility will make sufficient repairs so that this problem will not occur again? Having lived in my house for 17 years and lived the history of the neighborhood power issues, I have to be skeptical. Several neighbors who have kept track of power outages and called each time were given an inaccurate count of outages when they spoke with power representatives, to the point where 1 outage was on record when one particular neighbor had experienced 5 .

When you refer to "keeping the pressure on," do you mean yourself personally, or is Council/City government having conversations with the utility and applying pressure?

Stan, I wonder how the power grids are arranged in neighborhoods. DL & Bill live around the corner; I'm not sure if they're out when we are. My neighbors across the street have power when we do not and vice versa, it sure is an curious set up. It must make sense to someone somewhere.

We had two extended outages this past week. One, due to the storm, and a second for the heat overload. Sometimes in the past, the power company has been able to post estimated times of repair on their phone message, but I think the situation must have been pretty fluid last week. (with the storm at least, no pun intended )

As for why the power went down in the overload situation, I did learn that in our neighborhood, one transformer was apparently handling more houses than it should have been. I was told that they would be adding a second transformer to the neighborhood. Let's face it, we are all relying more and more on electricity these days.

I checked with a service truck who did give me an estimate of restoration for the second outage. When that time came and went and more hours passed, I called the Mayor's office, and they called me back twice with accurate updates. Thanks to the Mayor's office for this service!

I did feel the need to toss the bulk of the freezer stuff out TWICE last week. There are places on the 'net that can provide guidelines for frozen stuff. It pays to be safe. It's your own tummy that you need to be concerned about, after all.

I've been told that you can file a claim with your insurance for lost food, so you might want to check into that. We had relatively little food loss, but each situation is different.

I did mention that, for awhile, I had to get Dad out of the hot house and into a safe environment. I do believe that with any emergency situation, that a public area of safety (other than, say, the hospital emergency room) needs to be open and available with coffee and donuts. We have a CERT team in Lakewood that hopefully will think about that possibility for the future.

Shawn, thanks for your response, as well.

Back the the non-electric banjo...

While I do appreciate Shawn jumping into the mosh pit of word jazz on the Deck,
Lakewood's power grid has sucked for some time now. I have a friend that lived on the
north side of town that 8 years ago referred to her neighborhood as Little Havana,
because the electricity was so undependable in summer.

While I can but into the fact that massive storms can knock out power, and that freak
accidents can knock out power, one would hope in the 21st Century redundancies had
been built into the system, and that grids could be connected and disconnected with the
flip of switch. On one hand they tell us to put solar on the house, and pump it back into
"the grid" does a grid even exist?

I fear, upgrades have been slow incoming for the bottom line. A couple weeks ago I was in
an interesting discussion with Sean McDermott and Steve Davis while standing over a
Tesla electric car. One of the things that came up while talking about the need for way
finding in Lakewood is, why are we not burying wires? Sean explained the cost involved in
the process but it would seem that the benefits far outweigh the negatives, and as storms
get seemingly more and more violent, and more and more frequent doesn't it make sense?



Also we need to be realistic, as pointed out in another thread. If we throw more hot days,
more devices, and things like electric cars onto the grid, are we headed for disaster?
Lakewood homes, for that matter, 70% of the homes in the county were built with one
outlet in a room. The thought was that was the only outlet needed. If the homes were
built in the 40s or 50s, maybe three walls had outlets. Ten years ago, I upgraded to 220
coming in the house, and I have rooms with ten outlets on one wall. Yet, I am not aware
of the massive upgrade to the "grid."

Shawn, What is the city's policy or opinion on burying utility lines underground? I know
that past council president Michael Dever was for it. Councilman Dennis Dunn said over
10 years ago that soon ATT would be completely wireless and not need over head lines.
Today we have above ground Uverse boxes on damn near ever other corner humming and
with above ground line.

Where it is headed, who knows. Where is the future when you need it?


.

We lost power twice at the Westerly which can kill elderly people in numerous ways -

Oxygen pump
Sight impairment and falls
No elevators for EMS
Heat - Older people and disabled people, do not have much of a capacity for extreme heat.

sharon kinsella wrote:We lost power twice at the Westerly which can kill elderly people in numerous ways -

Oxygen pump
Sight impairment and falls
No elevators for EMS
Heat - Older people and disabled people, do not have much of a capacity for extreme heat.

As an elderly apartment complex, the Westerly should consider installing an emergency generator for back up to avoid these potentially dangerous situations for their tenants.

Hey! I can say with pleasure and some surprise that we have not lost power today! I am cautiously optimistic that the substation/transformer/flooding issues have been resolved. . .one can hope.

We'll see if it lasts through this evening when the draw from air conditioners increases after work hours.

Christina McCallum said:

I am cautiously optimistic that the substation/transformer/flooding issues have been resolved. . .one can hope.

Christina--- I hope so, too

You have put in a l ////////////// (flicker) of arghhhhhh. my iron lung isn't
jeeeeeeeez. Bye all-------------

While out doing a survey of the actual grid in Lakewood and the condition it is in, which is not good. I ran into a
series of poles on Clifton that looked to be falling over, or near that.


South of the poles the wires were very taught. Borth of the poles the wires some times had so much
slack in it that it was well within reach of a person walking by. We are not talking about cable
or phone lines.


The poles range between 6.7 and 8 degrees. For some understanding, when the Leaning Tower of Pisa
hit 5 degrees they got busy to fix it as the laws physics were working against it. At it worst it was measured
at 5.5 degrees, they restored it to 3.99 degrees.


3.99 degrees.


.

From the Mayor's Office

I wanted to update our residents on the recent power outage situation in Lakewood and let you know we are working with the electric company to try to resolve the issues we are having. I met with Trent Smith, President of The Illuminating Company, on July 27 to discuss the situation. The Cleveland Electric Illuminating Company (CEI) is a First Energy subsidiary and delivers the electical power to the entire city of Lakewood. We had a frank discussion about the condition of our power supply and the outages Lakewood experienced last week. Mr. Smith was very interested in understanding what our specific experiences were. I was able to relay this experience thanks to the many many calls and messages received from our affected citizens. It was very helpful to know the frequency and duration of the outages which were reported in many of the messages. Mr. Smith reported that CEI used thermoscan technology to identify five critical circuits that need serious attention. An additional 18 circuits are being reviewed. Additionally a review of the substations, including Lauderdale, is being conducted.

The root cause of the electrical outages was a July 19 storm which produced 5 inches of rain in two hours. This rain caused flooding in the electrical substation in Brooklyn. Pumps are present to deal with this a situation like this, but the pump size and discharge pipe size were unable to deal with the volume of water. CEI is redesigning this pump system, as well as working with Brooklyn, to identify a better place to discharge the water. As a result of the serious damage to the Brooklyn substation, all of this electricty had to be redirected to other circuits. In the course of doing so, CEI overloaded another smaller substation which caused an outage to 43,000 Lakewood customers for an average of 93 minutes.

Things were complicated further when a Fault malfunctioned and overloaded some equipment and power lines at the Lauderdale substation on the corner of Lauderdale and Madison. This caused additional outages and attempts to redirect these circuits. At this point, the redirected circuits were placed under increased stress as a result of the multiple days of extremely hot days and nights. The average temperatures during the days were in the mid 90 degrees and night time temperatures remained warm as well preventing the transformers from adequately cooling off. A futher complication is the normal gradual increased demand over many years that today’s average households place on the electrical grid. In addition, due to the extremly high temperatures all over the country, the electrical demand in the United States was at record setting levels. Putting all of these factors together: weather/moisture, temperature, high demand caused an extreme situation which resulted in exteme power outages.

Our discussions with CEI aren’t over. We will continue to work with them to try to improve service in the City of Lakewood. Mr. Smith and I agreed to meet in the middle of August. At this meeting, representatives from CEI including Mr. Smith and his engineering staff along with our Police Chief, Fire Chief and Public Works Director will meet to provide CEI with a better understanding of what's going on in Lakewood, and to extend our support and knowledge to help CEI do its work.

So much for cautiously optimistic.

Shawn Juris wrote:So much for cautiously optimistic.

You're right. I was shocked to drive up Marlowe between Detroit and Madison and see the lights out again tonight. Unbelievable! Belle seemed to be OK, although Lincoln was out. I noticed a CEI truck at Star Mart on Madison/Lincoln just before 11:00pm. They arrived to see a wire hanging down next to a transformer behind the store.

Cleveland and the inner ring suburbs have been woefully underserved and ignored by CEI/First Energy. They have no plan in place to systematically replace outdated lines and equipment in the older parts of the county.

While newer standards have lines buried and service amperage upgraded, places like Lakewood have to suffer from outages that are due to aging equipment and lines that are subject to wind, trees, and weather because they are above ground. When you want to add air conditioning, see what kind of resistance you get from the utility when you ask to upgrade your service.

What kind of business ignores its oldest customers? What kind of business has no plan to gradually replace and upgrade old equipment so that there is less of a chance of failure?

And doesn't all of this figure into people's decisions to relocate to outer suburbs? Why put up with this when just a few miles west your unsightly lines are buried and safe from wind and ice storms and your house has enough power to handle of of your electrical needs?