We Gonna Rock Down To

The local shopping malls conspired recently to get more customers by arranging for some thunderstorms to knock out power to a lot of homes in the region. They rightfully thought that, without power, people would flock to the malls to cool off and have something to do.

Of course, with Pepco, the utility serving most of the people in the Washington area, it doesn’t take much for the power to go out; usually, cloud cover is enough to knock out power in some areas.

I wrote a silly little ‘Letter to the Editor’ a couple years ago to a local weekly community newspaper complaining about how power goes out when somebody sneezes, and noting that I was suffering from a malady I dubbed ‘Pepco-Induced Stressed Disorder’ or PISD. Demonstrating just what low standards this paper has, they actually printed it.

A neighbor of mine had an interesting theory about the loss of power. Because of the extremely hot weather the area experienced in the days preceding the strong thunderstorms, the demand for electricity was very high, creating stress on the grid. My neighbor contended that as soon as the storms rolled through, Pepco imposed a rolling brownout to alleviate some of the stress.

If you are aware of some of the things utility companies lobby for in Washington, you certainly would not put it pass them to attempt something like this.

In addition to the loss of power, we had a bit of a scare involving our central air conditioning system in the house when it began leaking water last week. Visions of spending several thousand dollars on a new system were dancing in my checkbook. Thankfully, it was repaired easily and we were able to avoid a cruel, cruel summer.