Power blackouts 3 times in 3 months in my area, how's your service ?
Living in the MOST lightning-prone area of the entire United States, I am accustomed to my power going out occasionally. It's been, in my experience, usually once a year, twice at the very most.My power has blacked out 3 times now in the last 3 months, which is the most I can ever recall in my ancient 56 years. My cable internet even went down completely last night, and yes, it was the ISP's fault because I called them. It came back on about 4 hours later.
I know, I know, first world problem, but it is a tad annoying. Have a lovely summer day, wherever you may be.
Steve, hailing from the lightning paradise of Central Florida ("The corridor from Tampa Bay, FL to Titusville, FL (a.k.a. "Lightning Alley"
receives the most lightning in the United States on an annual basis", from link above)
= new reply since forum marked as read
we are at risk all year round. We've had long, extended blackouts in winter from ice storms
and shorter thunderstorm season blackouts from lightning strikes.
It's somewhat unpredictable, although if a tree goes down on Franklin Street (Chapel Hill, NC),
we usually lose power.
Our last power outage was from a car accident taking down a utility pole on Franklin Street and it took all day
for them to replace it. Bad curve in the road, speeding (probably drunk) late at night. It was about a week
after we had a 3 hour power loss from downed lines in a thunderstorm.
Five or six trucks were working to replace the utility pole and had the 4 lane main street blocked off--just outside
the entrance to our neighborhood.
I'm glad your electrician prowess was appropriately hailed by the local hoi polloi and gentry 
When the lights come on, we're not as handsome as we were when it was dark.
Beautiful sunny day, not a cloud in the sky and the power will sputter. I read or heard somewhere (?) that the power companies no longer trim the trees, and that is a big part of the problem. They haven't cut back our trees along the road in years.
Longest it was ever out was 3 days during a blizzard a few years ago. We lived huddled around the fireplace. We fared better than many people whose power was out for a week! After that storm, we bought a generator. Fortunately we haven't used it yet! I think of it as an "insurance policy"!
Don't like replacing components ahead of time. I've lived in a couple of places that had increasingly frequent power outages. Each time it was not until the utility company finally replaced the garbage can looking thing on a nearby utility pole that the outages stopped. I can't imagine that those things cost so much but each time they would wait until the outages became monthly before doing the maintenance, then no more problems for years afterwards.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_pole
Yea we get explosions of those occasionally, kinda freaks you out a tad.
