![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Welcome to the corporate Third World
Jan. 29th, 2009 12:53 pmThe power is still off at the house, which means that the central heat is also no longer on either. Nor do the main telephones still work, and the cell phones are all on borrowed time as well.
I do not recall any 24+ hour power outages in the 1970s or early 1980s. I do not remember any from the time when our power company was Public Service Indiana. I do not remember any when PSI merged with Cincinnati Power and Light to form Cinergy. But they seem to be routine now that we have been absorbed into Duke Energy.
Duke Energy has no local phone number to report outages: only an 800 number. Their crews are apparently all dispatched out of North Carolina, which of course means a minimum outage of around eight to ten hours. And being a publicly traded and politically connected business, nobody is going to require them to maintain any of that stuff. Maintaining power restoration crews is not a profit center. It would require zeal and attention on the part of the government to hold their feet to the fire and demand that local crews be on standby at all times. And that political will is unfortunately lacking.
I do not recall any 24+ hour power outages in the 1970s or early 1980s. I do not remember any from the time when our power company was Public Service Indiana. I do not remember any when PSI merged with Cincinnati Power and Light to form Cinergy. But they seem to be routine now that we have been absorbed into Duke Energy.
Duke Energy has no local phone number to report outages: only an 800 number. Their crews are apparently all dispatched out of North Carolina, which of course means a minimum outage of around eight to ten hours. And being a publicly traded and politically connected business, nobody is going to require them to maintain any of that stuff. Maintaining power restoration crews is not a profit center. It would require zeal and attention on the part of the government to hold their feet to the fire and demand that local crews be on standby at all times. And that political will is unfortunately lacking.
