#PacificPower's grid is broken in NE PDX, something in a substation broke. It was something big, since 15,000 people don't have service, probably one of those bus-sized transformers.
Incidentally, most of the substations on the west coast are really old, like 50 years or more. They last a long time, but they don't get replaced if they aren't broken.
Unfortunately all of the electricity price increases lately have gone into wildfire insurance, not grid maintenance, so expect more outages.
feld
in reply to ̶s̶e̶t̶h̶ ̶ ̶ • • •> They last a long time, but they don't get replaced if they aren't broken.
DoE has reports about our aging transformers. They're supposed to be getting replaced like *NOW* but they're not. They can cause a regional outage from 6 months to 5 years if we can't reconfigure the grid in that area.
>> It is estimated that over 90 percent of the nation’s consumed power passes through an LPT (Office of Electricity, 2021). The average age of installed LPTs in the Unites States is ~40 years (U.S. Department of Energy, 2014), which is the end of their expected life time. Aging LPTs cause higher failure risk. This fact combined with challenges in the LPT supply chain and potential bottlenecks to rapid grid expansion raised concern about the vulnerability of the domestic electric grid.
osti.gov/servlets/purl/1871501