Rant #1,722: A Shock to the System

Yesterday, my family and I had a shock to our systems that could have been worse, much worse, than it actually turned out to be.

For the past few weeks, we have noticed that during peak hours of electricity usage, our electrical power in the house has gone down, and gone down noticeably.

My son first realized that something was funny in the house, when his air conditioner was spouting hot air, not cold air.

Certain appliances did not work well, either.

At times, our oven, television and dishwasher wouldn't work correctly.

This was sporadic, not happening every day, and an electrician did come to the house and told us that our circuits were fine.

So we chalked it up to overuse of power by not only us, but of our community.

The heat has been unbearable this summer in my neck of the woods, and people are using more power than ever.

It would stand to reason that at peak usage times of the day that power would be impacted, so we thought it was that.

But then the lack of power went from sporadic to a few times a week, and we kind of knew that something was amiss.

The last straw was on Tuesday, when our air conditioners were blowing hot air, our oven wouldn't get hot, our TV would not work and our dishwasher clunked along, hardly making a sound.

The electrician came back to our house, and while I am not going to use the correct words to describe what had happened, he did find something was not right with the power in our house.

Using my own terms, he found that some of the circuits were generating less than half power, maybe slightly over 100 when they were supposed to be generating 200-plus.

He told us that once these circuits got below 100--and they were just over 100--that that would be the end of the power line for us, per se, and we would have no electricity.

He went outside, checked the actual power line, and determined that the problem was the lack of electricity being generated from the pole and the transformer outside, so it became a PSE&G problem.

He called PSE&G for us, described the problem, and a truck was going to be coming to fix this mess, but it could come anywhere from about 8 p.m. to 12 midnight.

In the meantime, we had to shut off all power in the house, and I do mean everything had to be shut down.

So with sweltering temperatures outside, we had to shut off everything, including the barely working air conditioner.

My parents live beneath us in the house, and as you know, my father is recovering from pneumonia. The power company allowed us to keep his air conditioner on to keep him cool, but everything else was shut down.

I cannot take the heat, so I sat in my car, charging up my phone and tablet and sitting there with the air conditioning on.

Yes, that was a good move by me, because it also allowed me to see when the repairman was going to come to the house. And yes, I was prepared to sit there all night.

My mother was also waiting for him, but she refused to wait in the car with me, laying in the living room in the blistering heat. My father was OK in the bedroom, but it must have been over 100 degrees in the rest of the house, and my mother just decided to stay it out, but she was falling asleep. I begged her to come into my car, but she refused.

Anyway, sometime after 8 p.m., the repairman came, and determined that the transformer our house was attached to was faulty.

Evidently, there is a default mechanism wherein if the transformer you are hooked up to is faulty, it automatically switches you to another transformer so that you don't lost your electricity.

The problem was that the transformer our house was switched to was itself overtaxed, and being that we were the last one on the line, we were the ones who were getting shorted on power, and this is the reason whey our electricity has been so in and out during the past few weeks.

The repairman determined that while more than 50 houses could have been directly impacted by this, only three actually were, our house and two others, so he set to work to remedy the situation.

He found another transformer with fewer houses attached to it, and set about hooking us and the other two houses up to that transformer.

After about an hour, we got our power back, and we set about resetting the TVs and the other appliances.

Hopefully that will be that with this mess, but it was scary.

I was just happy that my father was comfortable; that aspect of this really scared me, and early on, we were told to bring him to a hospital until the power was restored, but as long as he was allowed to keep his air conditioner on for the bulk of this episode, he was OK.

You don't realize how very important electricity is to your life except when you lose it, and without it yesterday, we were really sunk, and honestly, it could have been a life and death situation for us.

But everything appears to be fine now, so thank goodness for the repairman; he earned our kudos last night, and for the electrician, who first pointed out exactly what the problem was, and called the electric company so he could pinpoint to them exactly what that problem was.

Yes, the night could have even been hotter than it was last night for my family and I, but it all turned out fine.

I am going to work tomorrow, but I will be going in late, as I have another dreadful appointment to fulfill, so I am going to skip my Rant tomorrow.

I will speak to you again on Monday, and may the power be with you during this dreadfully hot weekend.

Speak to you then.