...because BGE can't get its shit together.
Yesterday afternoon a weather front moved through the mid-Atlantic, bringing with it high windows that last 15 minutes. So from 1:45 to 2:00 we had some wind gusts of up to 50mph. EVERYTHING was fine until normal returned at 2:01.
At 2:03, the power went out. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
BGE, aka Baltimore Gas and Electric, has some serious reliability issues so I called it in and the woman said power will be restored by 4:15PM.
So I started looking for things to do in the dimming light. I washed woodwork, folded clothes, made the bed, made some files, and at 4:15, nada. Still no power.
So I grabbed my laptop, called my husband and headed for the favored watering hole for the neighborhood. I hunkered down and waited for the husband.
At 5:00 PM BGE has shut off its electric customer service phone center, and was playing a message that essentially said "You need to be quiet and use the online service." But the online service wasn't working either. There were no updates, no nothing.
So we ate dinner, hung out until 6:30, went home, in the dark, got out the lanterns, found the fresh batteries, and noticed the people across the way had electric, so we headed down to our friend Trixie's house and hung out with her, which is always a blast. We took the dogs so they could play with their buddies Buddy and Roscoe, so everyone was a winner.
I again called BGE who told me they could be out until morning. Well, fuck me running.
FINALLY, at 9PM, the lights come up,
Well miracles of fucking miracles. So we trudged home and spent a half an hour resetting clocks, timers, the battery on the security system - all of it.
Now today, the winds have been howling, and so far so good.
Still, it annoys the fuck out of me that 1) I need electricity this much and 2) A multi million dollar utility can't get it's shit together for a 15 minute fucking windstorm that knows out electricity to 2,000 homes.
Fuck you very much, BGE. Fuck you.
And when we do our addition, its going to have a heavy duty generator built in.
we didn't lose power, but we DID have a tree fall across our busy street early this morning. by the time spouse and I had to leave for work, it was all cleaned up.
ReplyDeleteit hit the CLE too. In 18 hours we went from 59 degrees, cloudy, to sunshine, to high winds, to thunderstorms, tornado warnings, torrential rain and then snow.
ReplyDelete" You need to be quiet and use the online service." Seriously??? How rude is that???? Same you have no other options for a electric company. That is ridiculous.
ReplyDeleteSweetie, in Baltimore that is polite. They don't give a rats ass at the electric company.
DeleteWe grow more and more dependent on constant power. When I lived in Moreland Hills, we had an outage if there was even one drop of rain--Taipei, on the other hand, is very dependable, even with frequent typhoons.
ReplyDeleteThat's why we have a nice big generator on the top floor of this house, a six cylinder diesel engine, ever maintained, rarely used.
ReplyDelete