What is with the power tonight?

[globaldesigns]

Here in Calgary, power keeps kicking off and on. Jeez, everything is being put through their paces. Come on Enmax, get your act together.

[Leah]

Did you pay your bill? :biggrin:

[Bloodasp]

I think the wind is causing this fluctuations.

[Bloodasp]

OMG i didn't even realize it's snowing. I just knew the winds were pretty strong a little while ago.

[saltynuts]

winds up to 75k right now. stony plain. we shut down the coal haul, to windy to much dust.
transalta told use to lock down everthing for the night.

[DiverDude]

At my gym, the power has been on and off a number of times. in my office, the UPS's are chirping almost non-stop !

[soapy]

I will be checking to see that all the pumps are working tonight before turning in. They have been stopping and starting for an hour now.

[Funky_Fish14]

As if the wind wont be enough of a worry today (cause im a country folk :P )... my power was off this morning for 1hr 40 mins cause a car on the highway took out a power pole and lit a field on fire :O (Near Hay Lakes).

[kien]

My lights have been flickering but so far no outage. There sure is a heck of a lot of snow though!

[the marine apprentice]

Red deer is freaking insane tonight. I'm a pizza delivery driver and I have been swamped all night and driving is horrible I'm just worried about my tanks right now

[i have crabs]

a friend of mine had his return pump fry from the poer going on and off, lucky for him i had a reddragon just sitting around lol

[P_mantis]

i had to turn all my lights off since they would shut off then on every minute or so and i dont think that could be good for them

[burtonpj48]

we had power out for about 45 min in our part of the city. i got so nervous. Thinking the power was goin to be out all night. i picked up a small generator, just in case hehehehe. Althou as far as we have been here, power outages are one in a million.

[nanoFX]

I live in the country by Brooks, totally insane storm. Power has been off and on now just off. Have my back up generator powering my laptop and tank. :biggrin:

[Funky_Fish14]

Well, was getting some blips earlier tonight out here... but none 'out' due to the weather yet. TV went 'half off' and back on several times earlier.

Yeah man, the snow! Wild! Its deep too! Its bare in some spots out here, and drifted to 15" in others! And perfect for snowballs, lol.

[Funky_Fish14]

Does everyone keep their generators close by/with extension cords/ready to go? We have one that can power an A/C unit... but its always sittin in the workshop away from the house... it takes us about half an hour to have it operating lights/furnace/tanks whatever.

We have a battery back-up on one of the desktops, but thats the only thing we really keep set-up for power outages.

[MitchM]

My wife wasn't able to make it home last night and got stranded in the whiteout between here and Calgary. She was able to pull into a field driveway but got stuck. The whiteout made it hard to tell where she was.
I was able to pinpoint her location using MobileMe and google maps to direct the tow truck driver to where she was.
She got pulled out and made her way back to a Calgary hotel.

Good thing she had an iPhone!

Re the generator - I keep ours outside by a plugin for a generator panel that I put in our house. Power outage season is coming!

Mitch

[DiverDude]

In Calgary, the power is amazingly good. Outages are rare and usually last only a minute or so -with the odd 20 minute event.

Given that reliability, it's hard to justify the cost of a generator if it's just for power outages.

When it gets like it did last night though, I turn off lights and unplug anything that's not on a UPS.

[globaldesigns]

Does everyone keep their generators close by/with extension cords/ready to go? We have one that can power an A/C unit... but its always sittin in the workshop away from the house... it takes us about half an hour to have it operating lights/furnace/tanks whatever.

We have a battery back-up on one of the desktops, but thats the only thing we really keep set-up for power outages.


HEHE, yup!!! As I have a data centre, I have a big generator that can power a small building. Was almost ready to switch it over.

[globaldesigns]

In Calgary, the power is amazingly good. Outages are rare and usually last only a minute or so -with the odd 20 minute event.

Given that reliability, it's hard to justify the cost of a generator if it's just for power outages.

When it gets like it did last night though, I turn off lights and unplug anything that's not on a UPS.

You are correct, Calgary power is usually good. Thing to worry about most is just the Brown Outs... But last night was ridiculous!

[Delphinus]

When it gets like it did last night though, I turn off lights and unplug anything that's not on a UPS.

Are your tank pumps on UPS? I was wondering about this myself. Didn't get a power failure down south but the lights were flickering all evening and the pumps were chattering a little on the bigger ones.

[brizzo]

DAMN power outages!! Wednesday there was a scheduled outage at my place for 10 hours, which Fortis was nice enough to go door to door handing out notice it was going to happen. No biggie, tank did fine.

Yesterday, power was out for 10 hours while I was at work with no warning. Then I went out for 6-7 hours right after work. Get home, single power head in the tank was stuck in reverse .. no flow with lights on!! :redface: .. Two nice acros started to STN a little :cry::cry:

More and more reason to get the new tank finished and cycling this weekend :mrgreen:

[DiverDude]

Are your tank pumps on UPS? I was wondering about this myself. Didn't get a power failure down south but the lights were flickering all evening and the pumps were chattering a little on the bigger ones.

None of my tank stuff is on UPS. My computers, TV's and other sensitive electronics are.

I think you'll find that for what all but the smallest tank would draw, even a fair-sized UPS wouldn't last very long (guessing here, but for, say, a Maxijet1200 and a Koralia 2, maybe an hour ?). The real kicker is that when the power goes out, it's no big deal for a while; it's when it's STILL out 4 hours later that you need to worry. A UPS would kick-in right away and run mission-critical pumps for maybe an hour and then die. What you really need is something that knows when the power goes out and then waits an hour or
2 and then comes on, stabilizes things and then shuts off for a few hours and then repeats the process so things don't get too out of hand.

Of course, that assumes that you have prolonged power outages.

The other way to look at it -and this makes more sense in a city with reliable power, like Calgary- is that the UPS would keep things running for the duration of the outage (not lights and 'extras', but at least a circulation and maybe a skimmer) which would be optimal.