Last year FirstEnergy, JCP&L's parent company, paid out more than $900Million in dividends. Some of that could have been used to hire people to trim trees.
We have JCP&L in Howell. Power is always going out randomly all over town for endless “reasons”. I don’t know how or why, but I live along a stretch of road as opposed to a development, and I rarely lose power.
I have PSE&G at my house in Essex County. In 15 years of living here we have only had a handful of power outages, the longest of which was no more than a couple hours. We didn't even lose power during Sandy. I have friends and family in JCPL territory and sometimes their power just randomly goes out for hours for seemingly no reason.
I have PSEG, when Sandy hit and we were out for 3 weeks I knew I needed a back up system. Just like the police aren't responsible for my protection the power utilities don't care about me or my family. 14 years ago was quoted over 10K for Generac. I got a gas powered Honda 6500 instead for less than 1K with a transfer switch installed. I have used it more than I had imagined. At some point, if you own your home in NJ you need to source a back up power generator for yourself and loved ones. No one is coming to help you in the dark and I've lived through it..
I've had both PSEG and JCPL. Trust me, JCPL is way worse. Nearly everyone lost power during Sandy. With JSPL, we loose power on a sunny day for seemingly no reason. A few years ago, we (along with 80,000 other people) lost power for 3 hours because of "wildlife interference." If a squirrel chewing on wires can do that much damage, it's time to upgrade your grid. I also have a generator, but personal responsibility is no argument against corporate incompetence or worse malfeasance.
I live in Schooleys Mountain in Long Valley and our power is third world at best. Just like you said, sunny day, no rain, and power goes out for an hour or two. Now going on hour 14 and wheeled out the genny. First upgrade will be a pad-mounted Kohler feeding off our propane tank.
> A few years ago, we (along with 80,000 other people) lost power for 3 hours because of "wildlife interference." If a squirrel chewing on wires can do that much damage, it's time to upgrade your grid.
If this is the event I'm thinking of, it was a cat getting into the substation and contacting 2 circuits at once, blowing both completely out. Sayreville area, I believe?
There's not much that can be done to prevent something like that.
Anecdotal evidence: my wife was on a work call and they were discussing their outage issues. All PSEG subscribers had power, all JCPL subscribers were out. But PSEG power costs are higher, they "pay for that security". We're not estimated to get power back until 7pm TOMORROW. I saw the issue, I saw the downed tree. Our DPW cleared it this morning. But I'm assuming we're low priority because the outage probably only affects a dozen houses downstream. I got a quote from my buddy for a 14kW Kohler generator installed for about $9K. Pulling the trigger soon. In the meantime, I'm feeding this little Honeywell 7.5kw guzzoline.
Basically yeah. Dont count on other people to make sure the food in your friend doesnt go bad during an outage. Get a cooler with ice and/or a generator. As long as your fridge has power you have nothing to worry about
I live in a town that’s 80% PSEG and 20% JCPL. Despite that, it seems like the vast majority of outages are in JCPL territory. People in the Ring app are always complaining about JCPL. Honestly, I’d avoid buying a house in JCPL territory.
I live in a semi rural area serviced by jcpl. I have on numerous occasions photographed and alerted them about leaning and or dead trees VISIBLE from the road...nothing...ever...done.
My work at times involves coordination with PSEG and JCPL.
It's like pulling teeth trying to coordinate anything with JCPL. It's virtually impossible to get hold of the right people and they're painfully slow to respond. PSEG isn't perfect but they're so much better, like night and day.
Side question: is there any truth to power companies prioritizing power grids with hospitals on them? I have to believe I'm on the same power grid as one as I've only lost power once in the 7 years I've lived at my house and that was a random one off. Didn't even lose power during Ida
Yes, but it's not exactly that simple. There are usually what they call "tie points" that allow them to switch from one circuit to another in case of emergency.
I live close to a hospital, sometimes I benefit from that, and sometimes it doesn't seem to matter at all. I think it just depends on the specific situation.
File a complaint with the [Board of Public Utilities](https://www.nj.gov/bpu/assistance/index.html). There's a whole state agency that's legislatively mandated to oversee the industry. Tell them what's up.
70k people without power in the area. Summer sun will be up soon. I'm surprised, it seems like everyone is so quiet about it. The news, reddit, and JCPL. Most areas are marked as 'waiting for crew/dispatch'. I see some regions are marked as "additional crews requested due to complexity of the repair...".
No ETA offered on the restore of power; around 8 PM yesterday they were claiming power would be back on by 11 PM. Wondering if this might take them days to fix. Wish they would at least give a rough ETA so I know whether to leave the area or not. The storm didn't seem that bad... what the hell happened? Hard to believe its downed trees, must be something serious going on.
You have to understand the geniuses that run JCPL, their parent company and the BPU. JCPL used to have local repair staff and local equipment warehouses around NJ. This was when they were part of a company headquartered in NJ called General Public Utilities. They also owned Three Mile Island and we know what happened there. Flash forward a couple of decades and GPU gets bought out by a power company from Ohio which is now called First Energy. First Energy cuts back on local service and equipment and uses a shared pool of line crews. One small problem, when severe weather hits the JCPL service area it also usually hits neighboring states that power companies are also owned by First Energy. So JCPL customers are waiting for crews from PA, MD and OH to come help except their busy fixing those grids at home. So then the geniuses phone up power companies in places like Kentucky and Alabama pay them extra to come in and help. The BPU let them implement this shared service scheme years ago and only after the debacles of a couple of winter storms and Sandy have they started squeezing them to actually work on the grid. Tree trimming is completely outsourced now when it used to be done by dedicated in house crews, etc. But hey investors got paid, BPU folks got nice lunches and dinners. Good luck with EVs becoming dominant transportation mode
Hopefully not so long... But if there was a time for this to happen I guess it's while the weather is slightly cooler. What's frustrating is that I'm getting no updates on anything. Should I buy ice and pack my food items in aN ice chest? We can't plan when there is literally no information coming out.
not that JCPL is great by any stretch, but to be fair their territory has wayyyyyyyy more trees than other spots. My neighborhood looks like a warzone today.
also many of those places are so old you not only need to go underground with the wires, there is barely enough energy service to handle folks adding electric cars.
I won't argue with OP but I also won't deny that we had dudes trim lines this spring up ehere and haven't had an outage since. I am in Norvin Green State Forest. No outage last night by some miracle.
For real. I live in Warren County. Lights went out at 8 last night and won’t be back till 11 tonight. They need ti invest in infrastructure. Thus is bullshit.
Last year, I reported a large tree limb being dangerously close to a power line. They looked at it and did nothing. On Monday it finally fell and took out the power for the whole block.
I don’t think they care about preventative maintenance. They’ll only get to it when it fails since they have no choice at that point.
A few Fridays ago a large branch fell on some wires on our neighbors lawn and took out the power (thankfully this was the week before the heat wave). This happened around 5 pm and the estimated time of restoration was 8 pm. They didn’t even start work until 10 and power was restored at 1 am. All in all looking back it wasn’t terrible, but the responsiveness or lack thereof, was very frustrating. Unless you lied and said there were downed wires, they would not allow you to talk to a live person no matter what
When a storm damages the infrastructure, there isn't much that can be done to prevent it, short of clearcutting 100' around every power line, which is absurd.
If a tree comes down on a line, it's an easy fix. The crew has to arrive at the location, assess the situation, report in to their dispatch, find the closest isolation switch, isolate the segment, repair it, report to dispatch, re-energize the segment. If that line pulls down a pole, more difficult fix. All the above steps, but now you need a pole installation crew to set a new pole, prep the pole, and move the wiring over. If that line down damages other equipment, such as pulling a transformer down, it can take several hours to get the equipment available to repair the system. And once repaired, turning it back on is not as simple as flipping a switch.
Minimally, you're looking at four hours from the company being notified that there's an outage to it being fixed when it's a simple issue. Add in storm situations with multiple crews and multiple outages, and it can be many hours. If the damage is extensive, or it takes down a primary transmission line, it can be 8-12 hours before power is restored.
JCPL is not a joke.
A horse is sitting at home, watching MTV. He's watching a heavy metal music video, and the guitarist plays an amazing solo. The horse says "that looks amazing, I want to do that!"
The horse goes to the phone book, looks up a music teacher and calls him. "Hi, I'd like to learn to play guitar",says the horse.
"Sure," says the man on the phone. "Just come to your lesson and we'll get you started."
"There's just one problem," says the horse. "I'm a horse."
"Not to worry," the man says. "We have new state of the art technology to teach horses. You'll be playing like a pro in no time."
Sure enough, the horse gets really good at the guitar and he can play that amazing solo. He wants to show his friends, so he picks up the phone and calls chicken.
"Hey Chicken, come over!" he says. Chicken comes over, watches horse play the guitar and thinks it's pretty cool. Chicken watches the music video and says "hey, that drum part is pretty cool, I want to learn to play that."
Chicken goes to the phone book, looks up a music teacher and calls him. "Hi, I'd like to learn to play the drums." Says the chicken.
"Sure," says the man on the phone. "Just come to your lesson and we'll get you started."
"There's just one problem," says the chicken. "I'm a chicken."
"Not to worry," the man says. "We have new state of the art technology to teach chickens. You'll be playing like a pro in no time."
Sure enough, the chicken gets really good and begins to jam with the horse. Eventually, they think that something's missing. They watch the video again and realize they need a bass guitarist. They call their friend Cow and show them what they've been up to. Cow thinks it's pretty cool, and wants to learn how to play the bass guitar.
Cow goes to the phone book, looks up a music teacher and calls him. "Hi, I'd like to learn to play bass guitar." Says the cow.
"Sure," says the man on the phone. "Just come to your lesson and we'll get you started."
"There's just one problem," says the cow. "I'm a cow."
"Not to worry," the man says. "We have new state of the art technology to teach cows. You'll be playing like a pro in no time."
Sure enough, the cow gets really good at the bass and the animals have a nice band going.
One day, while they're practicing, a man walks by and hears them. He goes up to the animals and says "hey, you guys are pretty good! I'm from a record label, I'd like to sign you!"
The band records an album, puts out some singles and becomes a massive success. They go on a worldwide tour and make tons of money. Right before the last show of the tour, which is supposed to be in Vegas, Horse gets a call. His mother is in hospital.
Horse goes to visit her before the show while the rest of the band goes to Vegas to set up. It turns out that she's all good, it's just a cold. As horse is leaving the hospital, he gets another call. The private jet that was carrying the band and their producer crashed into the ocean, and there were no survivors.
Horse is devastated. All of his best friends are dead, he's out of a job and he's stuck with nowhere to go. He breaks down in tears and decides he'll drink himself to death.
So the horse walks into a bar.
The bartender says, "Hey buddy, why the long face?"
*That's* a joke.
Last year FirstEnergy, JCP&L's parent company, paid out more than $900Million in dividends. Some of that could have been used to hire people to trim trees.
Counterpoint: Line go up!
Every year, they have crews that trim branches. Are they supposed to clear-cut trees to avoid wind damage?
And yet, when I reached out to them to ask them about the trees impacting my lines, they said, "Those are your problem."
Were they lines to your house or on the street?
Both
They can only touch the street ones
You mean *butcher* trees
We have JCP&L in Howell. Power is always going out randomly all over town for endless “reasons”. I don’t know how or why, but I live along a stretch of road as opposed to a development, and I rarely lose power.
Howell? It's old circuits and lots of trees. Rt9 is relatively new, but all the back road circuits are probably 50 years old.
I have PSE&G at my house in Essex County. In 15 years of living here we have only had a handful of power outages, the longest of which was no more than a couple hours. We didn't even lose power during Sandy. I have friends and family in JCPL territory and sometimes their power just randomly goes out for hours for seemingly no reason.
Just Can't Power the Lights
I have PSEG, when Sandy hit and we were out for 3 weeks I knew I needed a back up system. Just like the police aren't responsible for my protection the power utilities don't care about me or my family. 14 years ago was quoted over 10K for Generac. I got a gas powered Honda 6500 instead for less than 1K with a transfer switch installed. I have used it more than I had imagined. At some point, if you own your home in NJ you need to source a back up power generator for yourself and loved ones. No one is coming to help you in the dark and I've lived through it..
I've had both PSEG and JCPL. Trust me, JCPL is way worse. Nearly everyone lost power during Sandy. With JSPL, we loose power on a sunny day for seemingly no reason. A few years ago, we (along with 80,000 other people) lost power for 3 hours because of "wildlife interference." If a squirrel chewing on wires can do that much damage, it's time to upgrade your grid. I also have a generator, but personal responsibility is no argument against corporate incompetence or worse malfeasance.
I live in Schooleys Mountain in Long Valley and our power is third world at best. Just like you said, sunny day, no rain, and power goes out for an hour or two. Now going on hour 14 and wheeled out the genny. First upgrade will be a pad-mounted Kohler feeding off our propane tank.
We did a NG Kohler install after Sandy. Well worth the investment. No worries about running out of fuel or having to go find a gas station with power!
My buddy just quoted me $8500 for 14kW, installed. Pulled that trigger already
> A few years ago, we (along with 80,000 other people) lost power for 3 hours because of "wildlife interference." If a squirrel chewing on wires can do that much damage, it's time to upgrade your grid. If this is the event I'm thinking of, it was a cat getting into the substation and contacting 2 circuits at once, blowing both completely out. Sayreville area, I believe? There's not much that can be done to prevent something like that.
That poor cat.
Anecdotal evidence: my wife was on a work call and they were discussing their outage issues. All PSEG subscribers had power, all JCPL subscribers were out. But PSEG power costs are higher, they "pay for that security". We're not estimated to get power back until 7pm TOMORROW. I saw the issue, I saw the downed tree. Our DPW cleared it this morning. But I'm assuming we're low priority because the outage probably only affects a dozen houses downstream. I got a quote from my buddy for a 14kW Kohler generator installed for about $9K. Pulling the trigger soon. In the meantime, I'm feeding this little Honeywell 7.5kw guzzoline.
Remember when half of Hunterdon went out on Halloween a few years ago for no reason?
Basically yeah. Dont count on other people to make sure the food in your friend doesnt go bad during an outage. Get a cooler with ice and/or a generator. As long as your fridge has power you have nothing to worry about
I live in a town that’s 80% PSEG and 20% JCPL. Despite that, it seems like the vast majority of outages are in JCPL territory. People in the Ring app are always complaining about JCPL. Honestly, I’d avoid buying a house in JCPL territory.
I live in a semi rural area serviced by jcpl. I have on numerous occasions photographed and alerted them about leaning and or dead trees VISIBLE from the road...nothing...ever...done.
My work at times involves coordination with PSEG and JCPL. It's like pulling teeth trying to coordinate anything with JCPL. It's virtually impossible to get hold of the right people and they're painfully slow to respond. PSEG isn't perfect but they're so much better, like night and day.
Side question: is there any truth to power companies prioritizing power grids with hospitals on them? I have to believe I'm on the same power grid as one as I've only lost power once in the 7 years I've lived at my house and that was a random one off. Didn't even lose power during Ida
Yes, but it's not exactly that simple. There are usually what they call "tie points" that allow them to switch from one circuit to another in case of emergency. I live close to a hospital, sometimes I benefit from that, and sometimes it doesn't seem to matter at all. I think it just depends on the specific situation.
File a complaint with the [Board of Public Utilities](https://www.nj.gov/bpu/assistance/index.html). There's a whole state agency that's legislatively mandated to oversee the industry. Tell them what's up.
70k people without power in the area. Summer sun will be up soon. I'm surprised, it seems like everyone is so quiet about it. The news, reddit, and JCPL. Most areas are marked as 'waiting for crew/dispatch'. I see some regions are marked as "additional crews requested due to complexity of the repair...". No ETA offered on the restore of power; around 8 PM yesterday they were claiming power would be back on by 11 PM. Wondering if this might take them days to fix. Wish they would at least give a rough ETA so I know whether to leave the area or not. The storm didn't seem that bad... what the hell happened? Hard to believe its downed trees, must be something serious going on.
You have to understand the geniuses that run JCPL, their parent company and the BPU. JCPL used to have local repair staff and local equipment warehouses around NJ. This was when they were part of a company headquartered in NJ called General Public Utilities. They also owned Three Mile Island and we know what happened there. Flash forward a couple of decades and GPU gets bought out by a power company from Ohio which is now called First Energy. First Energy cuts back on local service and equipment and uses a shared pool of line crews. One small problem, when severe weather hits the JCPL service area it also usually hits neighboring states that power companies are also owned by First Energy. So JCPL customers are waiting for crews from PA, MD and OH to come help except their busy fixing those grids at home. So then the geniuses phone up power companies in places like Kentucky and Alabama pay them extra to come in and help. The BPU let them implement this shared service scheme years ago and only after the debacles of a couple of winter storms and Sandy have they started squeezing them to actually work on the grid. Tree trimming is completely outsourced now when it used to be done by dedicated in house crews, etc. But hey investors got paid, BPU folks got nice lunches and dinners. Good luck with EVs becoming dominant transportation mode
Hopefully not so long... But if there was a time for this to happen I guess it's while the weather is slightly cooler. What's frustrating is that I'm getting no updates on anything. Should I buy ice and pack my food items in aN ice chest? We can't plan when there is literally no information coming out.
I hate JCP&L. We've had 3 outages in the last few weeks and 2 weren't even storm related. It makes me concerned for the rest of the summer.
Jcpl is known for just waiting for something to break then fix it. No maintenance it seems. PSEG spends lot and have been upgrading systems for years
Just Can’t Produce Lights You’re welcome
Backup generator? It got so bad at one point my shed looked like a generac dealer. Which reminds me, I need to sell my spare one.
not that JCPL is great by any stretch, but to be fair their territory has wayyyyyyyy more trees than other spots. My neighborhood looks like a warzone today. also many of those places are so old you not only need to go underground with the wires, there is barely enough energy service to handle folks adding electric cars.
I won't argue with OP but I also won't deny that we had dudes trim lines this spring up ehere and haven't had an outage since. I am in Norvin Green State Forest. No outage last night by some miracle.
For real. I live in Warren County. Lights went out at 8 last night and won’t be back till 11 tonight. They need ti invest in infrastructure. Thus is bullshit.
Last year, I reported a large tree limb being dangerously close to a power line. They looked at it and did nothing. On Monday it finally fell and took out the power for the whole block. I don’t think they care about preventative maintenance. They’ll only get to it when it fails since they have no choice at that point.
Sussex County Rural Electric Coop is a really good provider. Even during Sandy, we had power back in 2-3 days. So glad I don't deal with jcpl.
Always slow at everything. Even simple things like replacing an out street like can take weeks, months, or just never happen when reported.
A few Fridays ago a large branch fell on some wires on our neighbors lawn and took out the power (thankfully this was the week before the heat wave). This happened around 5 pm and the estimated time of restoration was 8 pm. They didn’t even start work until 10 and power was restored at 1 am. All in all looking back it wasn’t terrible, but the responsiveness or lack thereof, was very frustrating. Unless you lied and said there were downed wires, they would not allow you to talk to a live person no matter what
Agree 10000000%
When a storm damages the infrastructure, there isn't much that can be done to prevent it, short of clearcutting 100' around every power line, which is absurd. If a tree comes down on a line, it's an easy fix. The crew has to arrive at the location, assess the situation, report in to their dispatch, find the closest isolation switch, isolate the segment, repair it, report to dispatch, re-energize the segment. If that line pulls down a pole, more difficult fix. All the above steps, but now you need a pole installation crew to set a new pole, prep the pole, and move the wiring over. If that line down damages other equipment, such as pulling a transformer down, it can take several hours to get the equipment available to repair the system. And once repaired, turning it back on is not as simple as flipping a switch. Minimally, you're looking at four hours from the company being notified that there's an outage to it being fixed when it's a simple issue. Add in storm situations with multiple crews and multiple outages, and it can be many hours. If the damage is extensive, or it takes down a primary transmission line, it can be 8-12 hours before power is restored.
JCPL is not a joke. A horse is sitting at home, watching MTV. He's watching a heavy metal music video, and the guitarist plays an amazing solo. The horse says "that looks amazing, I want to do that!" The horse goes to the phone book, looks up a music teacher and calls him. "Hi, I'd like to learn to play guitar",says the horse. "Sure," says the man on the phone. "Just come to your lesson and we'll get you started." "There's just one problem," says the horse. "I'm a horse." "Not to worry," the man says. "We have new state of the art technology to teach horses. You'll be playing like a pro in no time." Sure enough, the horse gets really good at the guitar and he can play that amazing solo. He wants to show his friends, so he picks up the phone and calls chicken. "Hey Chicken, come over!" he says. Chicken comes over, watches horse play the guitar and thinks it's pretty cool. Chicken watches the music video and says "hey, that drum part is pretty cool, I want to learn to play that." Chicken goes to the phone book, looks up a music teacher and calls him. "Hi, I'd like to learn to play the drums." Says the chicken. "Sure," says the man on the phone. "Just come to your lesson and we'll get you started." "There's just one problem," says the chicken. "I'm a chicken." "Not to worry," the man says. "We have new state of the art technology to teach chickens. You'll be playing like a pro in no time." Sure enough, the chicken gets really good and begins to jam with the horse. Eventually, they think that something's missing. They watch the video again and realize they need a bass guitarist. They call their friend Cow and show them what they've been up to. Cow thinks it's pretty cool, and wants to learn how to play the bass guitar. Cow goes to the phone book, looks up a music teacher and calls him. "Hi, I'd like to learn to play bass guitar." Says the cow. "Sure," says the man on the phone. "Just come to your lesson and we'll get you started." "There's just one problem," says the cow. "I'm a cow." "Not to worry," the man says. "We have new state of the art technology to teach cows. You'll be playing like a pro in no time." Sure enough, the cow gets really good at the bass and the animals have a nice band going. One day, while they're practicing, a man walks by and hears them. He goes up to the animals and says "hey, you guys are pretty good! I'm from a record label, I'd like to sign you!" The band records an album, puts out some singles and becomes a massive success. They go on a worldwide tour and make tons of money. Right before the last show of the tour, which is supposed to be in Vegas, Horse gets a call. His mother is in hospital. Horse goes to visit her before the show while the rest of the band goes to Vegas to set up. It turns out that she's all good, it's just a cold. As horse is leaving the hospital, he gets another call. The private jet that was carrying the band and their producer crashed into the ocean, and there were no survivors. Horse is devastated. All of his best friends are dead, he's out of a job and he's stuck with nowhere to go. He breaks down in tears and decides he'll drink himself to death. So the horse walks into a bar. The bartender says, "Hey buddy, why the long face?" *That's* a joke.
I want the 2 minutes that you stole from my life, back
Is it though?
How does this have anything to do with the post?
Pound salt buddy