3 ms·
This is a lot isn't it?
by martinsnow 2y ago
This is a lot isn't it?
- bearjaws 2y agoNot really, 100k homes in Georgia is roughly 3% of homes.
- lillecarl 2y agoIf 3% of Sweden was without power it would be ground breaking news, a media shitstorm and remediations to not let it happen again. We're further north so power is more essential to human life here, but 3% is a huge number to me when we're talking something as fundamental as electricity.
- hhh 2y agoPower outages are pretty common at least where I have lived in America. It's not uncommon to lose power for 20-30 minutes and sometimes up to a few hours. Outages with storms are extremely common. More rare act-of-god scenarios like the 2009 ice storm[1] left my family without power for 2 weeks. I'm sure there was some action taken, but I continued to lose power at that house at least 2-3 times a month easily. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_2009_North_American_ice_storm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_2009_North_American_ic...
- ossobuco 2y agoIn Italy I think I had a single power outage in the last 10 years and it was planned ahead of time for maintenance work.
- WrongAssumption 2y agoThat's cool that you haven't been affected, but they happen frequently in Italy. https://www.thelocal.it/20230719/blackouts-hit-italian-cities-as-heatwave-drives-energy-use https://www.thelocal.it/20230719/blackouts-hit-italian-citie...
- Symbiote 2y agoI posted it already in this discussion, but [1] shows a power outage once a year or more is typical in Italy. People in France, South Korea, Switzerland and the United Kingdom can go 5 or more years between power outages. [1] https://reports.electricinsights.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/191202_Drax_Q3_Report.pdf https://reports.electricinsights.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/20...
- ossobuco 2y agoThe article you posted reports about "hundreds of people in the dark for hours on end". That makes the news, compared to hundreds of thousands of customers in the dark in the US not making any sensation.
- alsoforgotmypwd 2y agoCompared to other countries, America has normalized a different level of deviancy. Perhaps 5 things are worse in America while 3 things are better when making a single country comparison. It's important to understand the tolerance and need for service varies. For example, single family homes without fireplaces and firewood storage areas and also lacking natural gas service and off-gridable power storage are completely reliant on grid electricity power for heat.
- omoikane 2y agoI live in California and have had at least one power outage every year, usually lasting a few hours. Somehow we just got used to it, I think it's an example of normalization of deviance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalization_of_deviance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalization_of_deviance
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- WrongAssumption 2y agoI mean, here is pretty much 2% of Stockholm losing power a few days ago. Barely a blurb, and there wasn't even a good weather related reason for it. It was just an "accident" https://ground.news/article/power-outages-in-stockholm-more-than-16-000-affected https://ground.news/article/power-outages-in-stockholm-more-...
- 0xbadcafebee 2y agoAlaska, North Dakota, Minnesota, and Maine all get weather colder than Sweden. Other northern states hover at around Sweden-ish levels during winter, varying based on elevation and lake effect. We just don't really give much of a shit about our people or infrastructure. So we all just make do. When my power goes out every winter, my furnace doesn't work, so I break out the portable propane heater, sleeping bag, extra blankets, winter gear. I keep telling myself I'll buy a generator, but the expense and complexity aren't really worth it for a few days. A bunch of my neighbors have wood stoves.
- kalleboo 2y agoAfter the 2005 Cyclone Gudrun in Sweden (730,000 households without power) there was a huge push to make power and telecoms infrastructure more resilient by burying it underground https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclone_Gudrun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclone_Gudrun
- ben_w 2y agoIf power to 3% of the population was lost around here, it would be considered a heads-will-roll catastrophe. If I understand right, the largest power failure in the UK (not counting the coal miner strikes) was the 1987 storm, and that didn't reach 3% in the UK*, more like 1.15%. I can't find exact figures for the percentage affected by the 2006 European blackout, but assuming the region boundaries and population hasn't shifted too much since then, that was also a bit less than 3%. * nor did it reach 3% in France, which was affected worse; but a quick search didn't give me a list of French power failures to compare sizes of.
- karaterobot 2y agoRemember that 3% of Georgia is not 3% of the entire U.S.
- ben_w 2y agoAnd? 3% of the UK isn't 3% of Europe. Georgia is big enough that percentages is the right measure. If this had been Rhode Island or Hawaii then law of large numbers no longer applies and correlation of failures means that seeing even 30% affected isn't crazy. But Georgia is 11 million people, doesn't get that excuse, 3% is still a lot.
- karaterobot 2y agoYou said that the 1987 outage didn't reach 3% of the UK. The 2025 outage in Georgia didn't reach 3% of the US, either. You compared a state with a major power outage to multiple countries, as though it were a meaningful comparison—I don't see how it is.
- ben_w 2y agoUS states may not be sovreign like EU states are, but they're similar in a lot of other ways.
- WrongAssumption 2y ago
- luxuryballs 2y ago100,000 is a lot of homes... they say there are a lot of people on earth today but it's only 6-7% of the total of people who ever lived :)