[Chat] Partial power outage

[Stephen J Gewirtz]

I do not know how far it extended, but half of my electric circuits went 
out a bit after 11 a.m.  I was sitting at my computer, and it stayed on 
the whole time.  But the ceiling lights flickered, then went out in my 
middle bedroom where the computer is.  I called BGE, and their system (I 
did not speak to a live person) told me that there would be an $80 
charge if the problem was in my equipment and not theirs and I asked 
them to fix it.  Knowing that the problem was in their equipment, I went 
ahead and asked them to fix it.  Anyway, the lights came back a few 
minutes ago (about 4:15).  Since I did not see anyone working on the 
pole or lines over the back alley, I am guessing that the problem was 
more widespread than just my house or a few houses on the odd/east side 
of the 3000 block of Guilford.  I am curious whether the 3000 block of 
Abell was included in the outage.  I think that the even/west side of 
the 3000 block of Guilford is on a different BGE network, so I doubt 
that it was affected.

Three electric wires come to your house.  Two are hot, and one is 
grounded.  The hot ones are each 110 volts with opposite polarity.  For 
220 volts, you use power from both hot wires.  For 110 volts, you use 
one of the hot wires (and generally, half the circuits are connected to 
each) and the grounded wire.  So when half the circuits go out, it means 
that one of the hot wires coming into the house has gone dead.

Fortunately, my refrigerator was on one of the live circuits.  The 
freezer in the basement was on a dead circuit, so I ran an extension 
cord to it from a live circuit.  If people were affected by the outage 
for the 5 hours it lasted and were at work, the outage probably was not 
long enough to cause real problems with food spoiling in refrigerators 
and freezers.  But you may need to reset clocks.

Steve.