Why is it that every time we have a thunderstorm my town gets major brownouts or even complete blackouts? Yesterday we lost power for like an hour, and the power surge totally fucked up my digital cable box. Thankfully the cable modem, the router, the wifi AP and the 3 computers that were on at the time survived without a scratch.
I really need to invest in a UPS.
Sigh.. When I lived in Warsaw, I never worried about thunderstorms. Sure, we had blackouts now and then for various reasons. But I never heard anyone saying: “Oh noes! A thunderstorm is coming! I hope we don’t loose power!” until I moved to US.
Maybe I’m a little slow, but can someone explain to me why do these brownouts and blackouts occur every single time? Is it really that hard to avoid these things? Wouldn’t it be logical to develop a redundant system that would be mostly weather resistant?
One thing that I noticed is that very few buildings in NJ have lightning rods. Could this be the potential issue here?
[tags]brownout, blackout, thunderstorm, lightning rod[/tags]
just got my UPS on Sunday. Will hook it up up in SYR
How big is it? Here at work we have this huge piece of junk that I can barely lift, and it only lasts for like an hour :/
Bwahahahahaha!! Redundant system? You serious? That’ll happen when we get our priorities straight and stop dumping cash into corrupt officials’ pockets and actually spend it on infrastructure. Blackout 2003 anyone? I mean, they’re still going to fix those levies in New Orleans right? How much would it cost? How much are you spending daily in Iraq? Priorities much? :)
The only reason the US has interstate highways is because Eisenhower used defence dollars to do it. “…interstate highways are also designed for use in military and civil defense operations within the United States,…”
Oh, and my power went out last night at 12:30am while I was in the middle of coding on my PC at home. So ya, I feel your pain (and I live in Canada).
Heh… I forget. Sometimes I start to think that we live in this advanced, civilized society… And then someone reminds me that we are just a bunch of monkeys. Monkeys who can operate guns and planes, but monkeys nevertheless.
Gotta love the priorities. No one cares about the levies, or about improving the infrastructure. But we apparently do have money to build a “great wall of china” on our Mexican border.