Meeting with ComEd
The reliability of power in our neighborhood has been terrible. In the past 16 months, we have had more than 13 outages that have lasted more than one minute. That doesn't take into account the number of "blips" that last less than a minute. I'd bet we're in the 20's of those.
The most recent notable outage was during a large storm and lasted 15 hours. It is the one that left me with 3 inches of water in my basement and NUMEROUS other neighbors with flooded basements and water damage as well. After this outage, our neighborhood (led by our alderman) took the issue to the city council and got a meeting with Com Ed on the issue.
We had the meeting with Com Ed a few days ago. About 100-150 people from our neighborhood were there - and several of them were pissed. Com Ed presented a plan to mitigate our problem, but it didn't seem like it would be a resolution. Their plan is to switch us to a more reliable feeder until they can get an automated diverter in place. Once that's done, we'll go back to our old power source and when we lose power then, the diverter will switch us over to the more reliable power source within a minute. So, their proposal was not so much a solution as it is a mitigation of power outage duration.
I had a question to that affect and stood up to be recognized to ask it. The question for Com Ed was "When your plan is in place, we will continue to see the same number of power outages, but the duration of those outages should be shorter - is that correct?" I thought it was a pretty good summation of the situation AND one that hadn't sunk in to the crowd yet. About 3 people before it was my turn to speak, a guy asked the exact same question (although, admittedly, he did ask it in a slightly better way). The enitre audience applauded heartily.
He stole my thunder! He stole my applause! Those were MY applause!
Anyway, the main man for Com Ed tried to side step the question by saying something like "I can't predict what's going to happen in the future in terms of outages..." I HATE WHEN PEOPLE DO THAT. You know damn well what the question is and we know damn well you cannot predict the future. As soon as he was finished I blurted out "The historical average for the past 15 months has been 1 outage per month. Assuming that average continues, what is the answer?" He tried to side step it again by saying something like "I don't want to assume what the" and I interrupted him this time because I knew the rest was crap. I tossed in a final comment of "You stated earlier in this meeting that one of your goals in this meeting was to gain our confidence that Com Ed would address this issue. If you don't answer simple and direct questions like this, you will NOT gain our confidence that you will address our problem." He mumbled something that I'm sure meant "F%#$ you - next question" and we moved on.
When it came to my question, I asked Com Ed and/or our city council to make specific and clear communications to our neighborhood as to what the steps of the plan would be, when they were expected to happen and most specifically when they DID happen. I followed with something like "as you can see, this is an issue that our neighborhood is VERY interested in following up on.
Overall, I think it went well. Com Ed came in with an action plan even if it wasn't 100% of what we want or desire. They could have told us to bite the big one and we would have only had the recourse to slash their tires or kick their asses - which I'm sure at least one dude wanted to do. It remains to be seen if they'll follow through and if their plan mitigates or fixes our problem.
The most recent notable outage was during a large storm and lasted 15 hours. It is the one that left me with 3 inches of water in my basement and NUMEROUS other neighbors with flooded basements and water damage as well. After this outage, our neighborhood (led by our alderman) took the issue to the city council and got a meeting with Com Ed on the issue.
We had the meeting with Com Ed a few days ago. About 100-150 people from our neighborhood were there - and several of them were pissed. Com Ed presented a plan to mitigate our problem, but it didn't seem like it would be a resolution. Their plan is to switch us to a more reliable feeder until they can get an automated diverter in place. Once that's done, we'll go back to our old power source and when we lose power then, the diverter will switch us over to the more reliable power source within a minute. So, their proposal was not so much a solution as it is a mitigation of power outage duration.
I had a question to that affect and stood up to be recognized to ask it. The question for Com Ed was "When your plan is in place, we will continue to see the same number of power outages, but the duration of those outages should be shorter - is that correct?" I thought it was a pretty good summation of the situation AND one that hadn't sunk in to the crowd yet. About 3 people before it was my turn to speak, a guy asked the exact same question (although, admittedly, he did ask it in a slightly better way). The enitre audience applauded heartily.
He stole my thunder! He stole my applause! Those were MY applause!
Anyway, the main man for Com Ed tried to side step the question by saying something like "I can't predict what's going to happen in the future in terms of outages..." I HATE WHEN PEOPLE DO THAT. You know damn well what the question is and we know damn well you cannot predict the future. As soon as he was finished I blurted out "The historical average for the past 15 months has been 1 outage per month. Assuming that average continues, what is the answer?" He tried to side step it again by saying something like "I don't want to assume what the" and I interrupted him this time because I knew the rest was crap. I tossed in a final comment of "You stated earlier in this meeting that one of your goals in this meeting was to gain our confidence that Com Ed would address this issue. If you don't answer simple and direct questions like this, you will NOT gain our confidence that you will address our problem." He mumbled something that I'm sure meant "F%#$ you - next question" and we moved on.
When it came to my question, I asked Com Ed and/or our city council to make specific and clear communications to our neighborhood as to what the steps of the plan would be, when they were expected to happen and most specifically when they DID happen. I followed with something like "as you can see, this is an issue that our neighborhood is VERY interested in following up on.
Overall, I think it went well. Com Ed came in with an action plan even if it wasn't 100% of what we want or desire. They could have told us to bite the big one and we would have only had the recourse to slash their tires or kick their asses - which I'm sure at least one dude wanted to do. It remains to be seen if they'll follow through and if their plan mitigates or fixes our problem.