Tuesday June 4, 2024 Guerneville CA.
Watering
It was going to be a warm day, so I put some watering sprinklers on.
I put this frog sprinkler on a cherry tree.
Cherries
And then I stuffed a bunch of cherries into me.
Power out
The power went out. It seems our power company has a monitor on their lines that tell them when a limb falls across the lines and shuts the line down until they clear it. It’s to prevent forest fires and they just put it in place this fire season. This is the third one we’ve had in about a week, so it seems the power system is no longer a reliable source of power.
Anyway, this chopper flew by checking the power lines by our houses. Living in a forest, it seems we our going to have quit a few outages.
The power came on shortly after the chopper went by.
Tom’s Skiddy lesson
Tom’s been wanting a lesson on running Skiddy so when he came by I got him in the machine and went through what all the buttons and joysticks do and how things work. He practiced a bit in the yard and seems to be getting the hang of it.
Tom’s electrical
Then we went over to his place and looked at some electrical stuff he’s working on. I just had to give him some advice on how to do it.
More water
I watered my avocado trees and then these citrus trees.
Van work
I’m trying to organize some kind of storage in the van so I’m studying things to figure out what to do. I think some plastic storage containers might help out the problem. I took measurements of each space in the van where I could put boxes. Now I need to shop for something that will serve the purpose.
Puttering
I spent a good part of the day just puttering around the yard, pruning back berry vines and tidying up here and there.
Nice day.
So, which would you rather have, occasional power outages, or have a forest fire burn you out? What they have probably done is bypassed the “reclosers”, which ordinarily will try to restore power if there is a momentary problem caused by a limb or something touching the lines. A lot of times the problem is transitory and the “recloser” turns the juice back on and all is well. It will try a couple of times, and if the problem persists, will then shut everything off. With the high fire danger in the summer, they have adjusted them to turn everything off the first time there is a fault.
It takes a while to turn things back on as all the lines controlled by that “recloser” need to be patrolled for what caused the original fault, make repairs if necessary, and then turn things back on. When available, they use helicopters for patrolling, as it is quicker.
Now, if you don’t like this, then maybe you would like our great state government to take over the power system. Think how much you like dealing with, say the DMV, before you go down this route. Myself, I have a 13kw generator that comes on automatically when one of these happens.
Hi Kenny,
I think I’d rather have the forest fires as they are not likely to burn me out. Fact is, I had a blast riding around helping out on the last forest fire. :O)
Oh, realisticly, I wasn’t ranting about the power, but just stating a fact. We do have a generator but it’s not automatic. Just goes to show you what I was stating, that’s why we now need our own generators.
For years the power system has worked without these percoustions without too many big forest fires from the power stuff. So what has changed? Liablity and California’s not managing their forests?
Bob