The explosions started at around 8:30 a.m. after a truck crashed into a utility pole, causing an electrical power surge.
The question of when the customers in more than 5,000 homes get their power back on will depend on how badly damaged their meters are."
My rule is that anything that is labeled "smart" is in fact just the opposite. It's either a marketing gimmick aimed at disguising a government grab on your freedom, or to disguise a private company doing the same thing. Usually, I've seen it as a way for a company to snag the money they think you owe them out of your bank account without your permission, or a way to avoid paying the costs of a customer service department. On the government side, it's normally a ruse to get you to agree to be "smart" and allow the power company, for example, to shut off your power any time their little electronic tattle tale reports you are using too much of it, say, during a heat wave to run your air conditioner. Later, they will penalize you by upping your rate for your misconduct.
Here, the darned things weren't apparently protected against a power surge and blew themselves up. That's certainly smart. I guess it wasn't foreseeable that a truck or car would hit a power pole - certainly that's never happened before, has it? Smarrrrtttt.
Good riddance to bad rubbish.
Military bases had these in family housing for years. They were indeed used to regulate the power you were getting and shut off your AC during heat waves.
ReplyDeleteI have resisted government efforts in my area to install one of those in my house.
ReplyDeleteDude, a 12 KV line was tied into the 1500V line after the truck brought a pole down. Lots of high voltage where there shouldn't have been.
ReplyDeleteNormal meters are, essentially, just electric motors. they just spun faster. Electronics of all kinds were fried. Lucky there were no fires in the homes affected.
I'd bet LOTS of electronics were fried.