Half A Million People Lost Electrical Power

Electrical power was out for several days this week for approximately half a million people in Maine, including the state capitol and state airport. Those of us who had no backup generators had no light, no heat, and no communication:  from Monday 12-18-23, 12:11 PM until Wednesday 12-20-23, 2:30 PM.

I spent fifty hours alone in my cold, dark, silent apartment wearing layers over my PJs, tee shirts, sweater, fluffy bathrobe, pairs of socks and hats (plural, one on top of the other), hunkered down under a pile of wool winter blankets with a couple of summer velour blankets tossed on top.  I read 2 1/2 books with a small clip-on, battery-powered book light.  My battery-charged lantern promptly failed and I forgot to light candles. I was not terribly uncomfortable even when my thermostat dropped to 54° Fahrenheit, but I was quite anxious.  How could it have been caused by broken tree limbs knocking down electrical wires all over Maine, especially considering that although there were some high winds for a couple of hours it was nothing out of the ordinary, and there was no ice and no snow?

Was it sabotage?  Do not know. Maybe an Act Of God? No, of course not, from what I have seen in my life God seems to have lost interest in us long ago.  Maybe mismanagement such as oops, someone threw the wrong switch or forgot to order spare transformers? Unbelievable. Maybe malfeasance which has happened before when power allocated to one region is sold off to a higher bidder?  The cause of this long power outage in Maine was never reported, even though it was very disruptive, uncomfortable, and a massive security risk.  And there are no reassurances that it will not happen again, sooner or later.

And then there is this bit in the news today:  "State regulators kill transmission line wind deal from northern Maine to New England grid".  Is it possible that some newfangled "green" energy source failed to feed energy into the power grid, and crashed the whole state of Maine's power grid?  Source:  central maine.com (Kennebec Journal | Morning Sentinel)

Half A Million People Lost Heat, Light, Communication

in The Maine Power Outage of December 2023

copyright by Annmarie Throckmorton 2023