July 20, 2008
2,000 Without Power in Brooklyn Neighborhoods
Con Ed is asking residents in some parts of Brooklyn to stop using "non-essential appliances" (including air-conditioning) because of power line issues. The issues have left around 2,000 customers--and keep in mind a customer can be an entire apartment building--without power in Sunset Park, Bay Ridge, Borough Park, and Park Slope.
Per MyFoxNY, the "affected area includes approximately 89,000 customers, and is bounded by 3rd and 4th Streets on the north, the Gowanus Canal on the west, and south and Fort Hamilton Parkway on the east." Other non-essential appliances include washers, dryers, etc.
Somehow, Con Ed wants customers to tell them about power or service issues online at www.ConEd.com but customers can also call 1-800-75-CON ED (1-800-752-6633). Also, if you have your account number, that'd be handy for ConEd, too.
Update: About 1,000 customers are still affected by the outages. NY 1 reports Con Ed is handing out dry ice at 41st Street and 10th Avenue in Borough Park and 3rd Avenue between 48th and 49th Streets in Sunset Park.
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We pay the most for power and get crappy service like this. :-/
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Somehow, Con Ed wants customers to tell them about power or service issues online
Many if not most people have laptops nowadays, so they have a few hours of battery life and don't need AC power to go online. At least if they're jacked in to the cable or DSL modem directly rather than using a wireless router. Cable service probably runs on the company's own emergency generators and DSL should be unaffected if phone service isn't affected. Ditto for FiOS.
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Oops. Forgot the modems also need power. Well, if they have a UPS, they're safe.
What do you mean most people don't have UPS units?
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In one of the hottest plus extremely high humidity let's turn off the AC. Let the AC collect dust.
The internet doesn't work when the power is out, since the modem and/or router need to be plug in.
I suppose you can use your PDA phone to tell them about the outages.
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I'm curious about how the number 89,000 was arrived at.
I don't think 89000 people are without power.
But thats the way the Gothamist version of it seems to read.
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I got the 89K number from MyFoxNY. But it's not totally unrealistic, because if a customer can equal an entire apartment building, that could be 50+ people.
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It COULD be 50 people, not IS 50 people. Thats not an average, thats an 'at most' number. So the actual number is somewhere between 2,000 and 100,000.
The MyFoxNY number is referring to the total number of people who live in an area where there are electrical issues. It does not say that is THE EXACT NUMBER of people WITHOUT power.
I think the number of buildings where only one person is a ConEd customer would be extraordinarily low. And MyFoxNY does NOT use the same reasoning as you- they report 2000 customers without pwer, which leads me to believe you're overstating the truth.
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Ah, gotcha, fixed and corrected--my mistake.
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Maybe I read that wrong.
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maybe you fucks should stp using so much electricity and stop using the air conditioner every second
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People don't realize that Con Ed's performance record is way ABOVE that of most areas of the country. Drive 45 minutes beyond Con Ed's boundaries in any direction, and you'll find people losing power for reasons as petty as a rainstorm. We don't get that here.
also keep in midnthat the old NYC infrastrucutre is the toughest in the US to maintain. There's so much, it's old and becuase of everything built on top of shit, they simply just can't get to the areas that need maintenence with ease.
Hot day or not, you don't NEED AC. Go for a walk, go to the beach, go shopping (stores have AC), or just sit there and use a fan to reduce electrcity usage.
The city's full of spoiled fuckin brats.
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cuntry? losing it in the heat?
turn on your AC!
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What's crazy is that last night around 11:50 pm, two manholes exploded in flames on 32nd St in Sunset Park and then burned for about 5 minutes. ConEd isn't bringing that up at all. It's not on NY1's website either. It could have been extremely dangerous if a car or pedestrian were nearby! Even nearby parked cars could have sustained damage, or, God forbid, caught fire! And it's not even mentioned in the news or by ConEd.
I went back and asked ConEd what had happened at bout 1:30 am today, well after the flames and smoke had ceased, and they said that because it was so hot, electrical lines melted, wires crossed and electrical cables caught fire. They told me that the electricity should be back to normal. We're only experiencing brown-out type symptoms here.
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novanglus makes a good point. how many blackouts and brownouts occur each year in Con Ed's service area? 1, 2, maybe 3. I am a PECO Energy customer in Eastern Pennsylvania and during every rainstorm, lightning storm or wind storm, we lose electricity for hours. Minimum of a dozen times a year.
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[4] Already addressed that. Read post [3]. You do know what a UPS is, don't you? It's an uninterruptible power supply. Even a small UPS would be able to run a cable modem for a couple of hours. You can get one at any decent computer store starting at about $40.
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sunset, why would ConEd bring up the manhole cover issue? In what forum would they be broadcasting this? It doesn't make sense, and is an unrelated incident.
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"Also, if you have your account number, that'd handy for ConEd, too."
Also, if can has cheezburger, that'd handy for nom nom nom.
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We got a robocall to conserve power this morning around 8:00 or 9:00 and they sent a loudspeaker truck around about 1:00. Guess they are still working on it. Hope this is not a repeat of Queens.
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Man, Why am I always in the vicinity of a Gothamist newsflash? this sucks balls!
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"and is bounded by 3rd and 4th Streets on the north, the Gowanus Canal on the west, and south and Fort Hamilton Parkway on the east."
On the west, comma, and south?