In the middle of last Saturday’s glorious and sunny afternoon, an extensive Cleveland Public Power outage left a huge swath of the west side without electricity.
That outage, which was received with the usual frustration and anger enjoyed by CPP customers, was caused by a “failed lightning arrester at the Division Avenue substation,” a CPP spokesperson told Scene Tuesday.
Initially, CPP estimated there were 4,500 customers affected, but eventually said that it was far more extensive than that. (CPP’s spokesperson has not yet responded to a follow-up inquiry on how many customers were actually affected, or for specifics on the geographic area of the outage.)
What’s a lightning arrester? Good question.
Basically it’s a surge protector that works to divert power to the ground, whether the surge comes from a lightning strike or from a surge somewhere in the line.
This article appears in Sep 18-24, 2019.
Lol it’s always something with CPP. I’m not an expert on the intricacies of an electric grid, but it doesn’t take one to realize how pathetic it is that a major city experiences this many outages.
I thought one of the best parts of the Amazon proposal in Cleveland was the promise of their own electrical grid. Like, “Hey, you might have heard we can’t keep the power flowing around here, especially if you subscribe to Rocco’s twitter feed. But don’t worry. Along with giant piles of cash we’re handing you, we’ll build you your own power system. What’s that? What about the employees, their houses, and every other business here who’s been paying their electric bills for decades? Yeah, they can fuck off. The rest of you go buy a generator”.
More sleek boxes housing scores of millennials using enough electricity to power a nuclear submarine in the footprint of 2 bedroom ranches with electrical service suited to handle 6 lights and 4 outlets….Pleeeeeasssseeee.
I heard the system was overloaded by the Bird Scooter Chargers.
Not to worry, this is nothing another hefty rate increase wont solve!!!