The lights went out
The weather forecast does not always forecast the weather. Yesterday we had our first little storm of the winter. Not enough to cause any serious difficulties but we did lose the electricity. I say the electricity because there is only one with multiple sources. For us, the generator came on line just the way it was supposed to and hummed quietly in the background for the next six or seven hours. The forecast had not even given that as a possibility. I tried to imagine life before Jenny. Back in the days when the weather would come up and the lights would go out. Our houses depend more an more I’m being connected to the grid. You will lose your heat and your cooling and your water supply and who knows what else unless you have a Plan B. Right now our electrical utility is campaigning to buy a new generating source. I have heard numbers like $500 million which is a cost that would be borne by the user eventually and I have to wonder given that there was no word of this storm coming up and no forecast of a long term outage, was this more of an advertising benefits for the utility? Was this their subtle way of telling us that they are still very important. When all was said and done the lights came back on and the snowfall was of a minimum amount. But the utility people are not going to talk about that when six months from now they go back before the legislature to protest that they do need us to pay for them. What kind of generator do they want to buy? Ours cost nothing near that amount. In fact if they bought a new generator for everyone here on the island they still would not meet that $500 million threshold. Is this the kind of dream that comes up in a shareholders meeting? I want to know more.
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