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My electrical utility does not hit 4 nines, maybe not even 3. Water and sewer? Definitely.

by uxp100 3y ago

ghaff 3y ago
I don't have town sewer but being without water is very rare. Being without electricity for maybe the total of day a year? Not rare. (Though semi-rural albeit on a major road.) ADDED: I don't. But people having backup generators in snow country is not a weird thing.
jltsiren 3y ago
5 nines is reasonable for electricity, if you live in an urban area with no extreme weather or other major natural hazards. When I was still living in Helsinki, blackouts were basically an once-in-a-decade thing, and they didn't last long. Today in California, I'm getting 3 nines in an urban area. Those living a couple of blocks further towards the suburbs are not so lucky. And many people in the mountains don't get even 2 nines.
- nucleardog 3y ago
  Hey, 3 nines ain’t too bad! In 2023 our availability only had one nine. We had power ~96% of the year. And it wasn’t like it was a lot of hour long outages that added up or something. Longest was 8 days. I am not in a dense urban area, but I am connected directly to a line connecting a couple of larger towns along a major highway, so we’re generally restored fairly quickly. During the 8 day outage, quite a few people in the major city nearby were actually still without power when mine was restored. Maybe unsurprisingly, my internet has actually been vastly _more_ reliable.
  - fy20 3y ago
    That's sounds pretty terrible... In my Eastern European country the SLA from the (state owned) power company is no more than 6 hours of down time per event, after which they need to pay compensation. Within highly populated areas it's shorter. Admitidely the most remote place is less than 1.5 hours from the nearest reasonable sized town, so we aren't as remote as some parts of the US. The purpose of this was to force them to make their network more reliable by upgrading old equipment, burying overhead lines (lots of trees used to fall on lines during winter) and ensuring redundancy.
maxerickson 3y ago
If they have to do maintenance on a water main, you'll easily get an hour of downtime, likely followed by a boil water advisory. They replaced several hydrants near me a couple years ago and there were disruptions on a couple of days.

My electrical utility does not hit 4 nines, maybe not even 3. Water and sewer? Definitely.

by uxp100 3y ago

My electrical utility does not hit 4 nines, maybe not even 3. Water and sewer? Definitely.

I don't have town sewer but being without water is very rare. Being without electricity for maybe the total of day a year? Not rare. (Though semi-rural albeit on a major road.) ADDED: I don't. But people having backup generators in snow country is not a weird thing.

jltsiren 3y ago

5 nines is reasonable for electricity, if you live in an urban area with no extreme weather or other major natural hazards. When I was still living in Helsinki, blackouts were basically an once-in-a-decade thing, and they didn't last long. Today in California, I'm getting 3 nines in an urban area. Those living a couple of blocks further towards the suburbs are not so lucky. And many people in the mountains don't get even 2 nines.

nucleardog 3y ago
Hey, 3 nines ain’t too bad! In 2023 our availability only had one nine. We had power ~96% of the year. And it wasn’t like it was a lot of hour long outages that added up or something. Longest was 8 days. I am not in a dense urban area, but I am connected directly to a line connecting a couple of larger towns along a major highway, so we’re generally restored fairly quickly. During the 8 day outage, quite a few people in the major city nearby were actually still without power when mine was restored. Maybe unsurprisingly, my internet has actually been vastly _more_ reliable.
- fy20 3y ago
  That's sounds pretty terrible... In my Eastern European country the SLA from the (state owned) power company is no more than 6 hours of down time per event, after which they need to pay compensation. Within highly populated areas it's shorter. Admitidely the most remote place is less than 1.5 hours from the nearest reasonable sized town, so we aren't as remote as some parts of the US. The purpose of this was to force them to make their network more reliable by upgrading old equipment, burying overhead lines (lots of trees used to fall on lines during winter) and ensuring redundancy.

maxerickson 3y ago

If they have to do maintenance on a water main, you'll easily get an hour of downtime, likely followed by a boil water advisory. They replaced several hydrants near me a couple years ago and there were disruptions on a couple of days.