Machine, consumer electronics, and walls all have different color codes.
Posted on 07/03/2012 7:20:35 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
D.C. Council members planned to meet face-to-face with officials from Pepco as soon as Tuesday to address the “unacceptable” pace of the utility’s recovery efforts after Friday night’s fierce storm swept through the region and left hundreds of thousands without power in stifling heat.
Their stern response to a third day of widespread outages builds on years of skepticism aimed at the utility that serves nearly 800,000 customers in the District and Maryland.
Several city lawmakers could empathize with their constituents’ plight, because they, too, lacked power in their homes. They wondered aloud whether Pepco gave “short shrift” to the District; if its crews followed the prescribed priority list of downed wires, intersections and nursing homes; and if anyone had seen crews out and about in the immediate aftermath of the knockout punch.
“This was not an admirable approach on their part,” council member Mary M. Cheh, Ward 3 Democrat, said during an afternoon briefing at the John A. Wilson Building. “And I’m furious about it, actually.”
Such complaints are not new, nor are they limited to the District. A July 2011 report found Pepco ranked dead-last in customer satisfaction among U.S. companies.
The findings by the American Customer Satisfaction Index group echoed a refrain among lawmakers in Maryland and the District. Last year, both jurisdictions revisited reliability standards at the utility and potential fines for unreasonable outages.
The fallout from Friday’s sudden storm is doing little to quell their concerns.
Joining the chorus was Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, who described the storm’s aftermath as “the largest nonhurricane-related power outage in Virginia history.”
Yet it was Pepco that has been dogged by vitriol from government leaders and irate residents.
Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley told reporters this weekend that “nobody will have their boot further up Pepco’s backside than I will.”
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
The ability to run the refrigerator (furnace in winter), have a few lights on and fire up the computer make life not so tough for a few days.
Lots of electronics is run by "connecting" the ground. Turns out that house electricians like to do the same thing.
SHTF isn’t anywhere close to as likely as more prosaic storm events, yet a lot of people don’t plan for storm events.
It’s still likely that you will have internet after a storm that kills the power. Power for the modem (broadband or otherwise) and computer is usually the only problem. Phone companies have their own power backups. A little car-type inverter can feed a modem and computer unless your computer is a humongous kilowatt gaming unit.
Gack, a switch in the neutral is an egregious breach of both all code and common sense. But the DIY crowd cares not, so long as it works and blows no fuse.
Years after one particular DIY job (by a smart-@$$ relative the identity of whom I will not divulge) I discovered that touching the medicine cabinet and the faucet together with bathroom light off would shock you. Connecting the two with a jumper lead turned the bathroom light on. Yup, way before GFCIs.
I guess in the USA white is cold, whereas in Europe blue is cold. In the USA it would be OK to use blue for hot, or any color other than white, grey, or green. Globetrotting electricians should be careful.
You don’t have to go anywhere, US factories are full of (IEC) euro coded machinery.
For extra fun, with age the (Euro neutral) blue turns (US hot) black...
If you’re talking about the innards of dedicated equipment, all bets are off. I mean house and building wiring.
And the Euros picked a lousy blue dye for their neutrals that blackens? That’s worse than pale red M&Ms.
In our case, we bundle. So the storm knocked out cable: no TV, Computer, Phone. But maybe my hubby knows what an inverter is, I don’t. Ha. I just heard thunder and it’s suddenly dark out. Here we go again. Thanks for the advice.
Better description of my photos than I could have done myself.
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