April in Texas.
Everybody's got their generation down for maintenance and we hit 92 degrees today. We went from a voltage reduction request to rolling blackouts in about 15 minutes.

Since our blackout policy consists of "Huh, what?", it was an exciting couple of hours. Finally got everything back to normal (until it happens again tomorrow).
Wish me luck.

[This message has been edited by WFO (edited 04-17-2006).]

Just wait until summer is here!

Sounds familiar... I did not think they would pull such a stunt with the trial going on right now.... 'Fat Boy' and 'Death Star' Whats this? 'Brown-out Lone Star'

"May 5, 2000 -- Enron trader, in an email to colleagues, announces "Death Star," a new strategy to game the California market." http://www.agsm.edu.au/~bobm/teaching/BE/Enron/timeline.html

After that crapola... It's real hard to believe anything short of massive transformers blowing up. Months of power companies intentionaly taking plants off-line, only for pure profit by the friends of our leaders... Declaring bankruptcy only to keep the money squirreled away. Then only being charged for ripping off thier employees, but not the entire west coast. But you live in Texas, there must be something wrong... They wouldn't do it to thier own state, would they?


'rollin' black-outs are because of all them environmental regulations they got there' - 'Ken Lay - Never heard of him' http://www.slate.com/id/2060884/

http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2002-05-17/pols_capitol.html

Quote:
"Months of power companies intentionaly taking plants off-line, only for pure profit by the friends of our leaders... Declaring bankruptcy only to keep the money squirreled away. Then only being charged for ripping off thier employees, but not the entire west coast. But you live in Texas, there must be something wrong... They wouldn't do it to thier own state, would they?"

Darn right they would. Although this "blackout" was legitimate (in terms of incredibly high temps for this time of year), deregulation is the biggest sham pulled on the American consumer since the Savings and Loan scandals.

On the other hand, I'm amazed this morning at the "man on the street" interviews of people complaining about a 15 minute outage. They have no concept of a black start situation (maybe the guys from New York would like to trade places).

...And I thought it was just another drunk driver that took out a power pole .

I realized it wasn't when the power came back on in about 10 minutes.

Mike (mamills)