3 ms·

I never knew this before and this is fascinating. Gives me a huge sense of appreciation for these people. Would love to learn more about the life of a utility w

by warent 7y ago

I never knew this before and this is fascinating. Gives me a huge sense of appreciation for these people. Would love to learn more about the life of a utility worker in a disaster situation.

taylodl 7y ago
I'm an IT guy but what's interesting is how they handle events known in the industry as mutual assist. You all have seen this in the news: a huge storm does severe damage to the local utility infrastructure and crews from other utilities, oftentimes from other states, come to assist (sometimes they stay for weeks on end). The logistics of feeding and housing these folks is one logistical nightmare that I don't know much about, I'm involved with their getting their work orders from our work management system. Imagine you just hired several hundred or several thousand contractors all at once and suddenly they all need access to some of your internal systems. The other interesting challenge we have is keeping our distribution models up-to-date. You'd think we'd know exactly what circuit you were on and what phase(s) were serving you. Generally we do but the information isn't 100% correct. When you have big outages and are doing mutual assist the guys' primary concern is getting the lights back on. Maybe they put you on a different circuit. Maybe they switched which phase of the transformer you connect to. Who know? In normal circumstances these kinds of changes are back-propagated to our distribution modelling system. But during big outages with mutual assist? No. The emphasis is on restoring power. Now I'm on a team trying to alert you when we believe your power is out. This is where these discrepancies in the distribution model come back to haunt you. If you inform someone you believe their power is out and it's not then they're usually pretty cool about it. It's when you've informed someone you believe you've restored their power and they're sitting there in the dark that they get pretty upset. Anyway, now you have a little more insight into the problems we face and some of the work we do. We don't use the sexiest technology stack in the world, but it's more than made up for by being able to see the importance of the work I do. Electricity is the foundation of modern civilization and I'm a part of it - cool!
- dillonmckay 7y ago
  I have a good friend that works as a contracted lineman on traveling crews. Usually, they are given a hotel or motel room, and a per-diem for food in cash or a Visa giftcard. For food, it is usually buying whatever at the local Walmart and heating it up in the hotelroom microwave. It is mostly brute-force and there is alot of money paid out, but you work alot of hours. It is not uncommon for my friend to work a 70 to 80 hour week.

by warent 7y ago

I never knew this before and this is fascinating. Gives me a huge sense of appreciation for these people. Would love to learn more about the life of a utility worker in a disaster situation.

taylodl 7y ago

I'm an IT guy but what's interesting is how they handle events known in the industry as mutual assist. You all have seen this in the news: a huge storm does severe damage to the local utility infrastructure and crews from other utilities, oftentimes from other states, come to assist (sometimes they stay for weeks on end). The logistics of feeding and housing these folks is one logistical nightmare that I don't know much about, I'm involved with their getting their work orders from our work management system. Imagine you just hired several hundred or several thousand contractors all at once and suddenly they all need access to some of your internal systems. The other interesting challenge we have is keeping our distribution models up-to-date. You'd think we'd know exactly what circuit you were on and what phase(s) were serving you. Generally we do but the information isn't 100% correct. When you have big outages and are doing mutual assist the guys' primary concern is getting the lights back on. Maybe they put you on a different circuit. Maybe they switched which phase of the transformer you connect to. Who know? In normal circumstances these kinds of changes are back-propagated to our distribution modelling system. But during big outages with mutual assist? No. The emphasis is on restoring power. Now I'm on a team trying to alert you when we believe your power is out. This is where these discrepancies in the distribution model come back to haunt you. If you inform someone you believe their power is out and it's not then they're usually pretty cool about it. It's when you've informed someone you believe you've restored their power and they're sitting there in the dark that they get pretty upset. Anyway, now you have a little more insight into the problems we face and some of the work we do. We don't use the sexiest technology stack in the world, but it's more than made up for by being able to see the importance of the work I do. Electricity is the foundation of modern civilization and I'm a part of it - cool!

dillonmckay 7y ago
I have a good friend that works as a contracted lineman on traveling crews. Usually, they are given a hotel or motel room, and a per-diem for food in cash or a Visa giftcard. For food, it is usually buying whatever at the local Walmart and heating it up in the hotelroom microwave. It is mostly brute-force and there is alot of money paid out, but you work alot of hours. It is not uncommon for my friend to work a 70 to 80 hour week.