Con Ed to UWS: You Should Power Down Too, Please!

It's not just Brooklyn that's being urged to shut off all non-essential appliances (and yes, that includes air conditioners!). Residents on the Upper West Side are being asked to shut off everything except the fridge "until problems on the area electrical cables can be resolved." In a statement, Con Ed says:

There are no outages in the area at this time and this conservation request is precautionary, designed to take pressure off the electrical system in these neighborhoods while crews are repairing equipment.
The affected area includes approximately 78,000 customers, and is bounded by 111th Street on the north, Central Park West on the east, 71st Street on the south, and the Hudson River on the west.

Company crews are working to repair the problem. Con Edison has asked customers in these neighborhoods not to use appliances such as washers, dryers, air conditioners and other energy-intensive equipment, and to turn off lights and televisions when not needed until the cable equipment problems are resolved.

Con Ed is making this recommendation in hopes of avoiding a brownout on the hottest day of the summer so far. We'd be interested to know how many customers are complying with the request and shutting off the A.C., and how many are cranking it up to 11 and soaking up as much cool air as possible until the whole grid goes down.

Contact the author of this article or email tips@gothamist.com with further questions, comments or tips.

By John Del Signore in News on June 28, 2010 9:14 PM

Comments [rss]

wow 14th street

Bloomy and his pals from dah hood like to build

hi rise buildings everywhere they can in this city ,I don't see Bloomy and Co. worried about more electric consumption.

ur doing it rong

Everything is a conspiracy, all corporations are malicious and Bloomberg sits all day in a dark room smoking and laughing at the plebs.

Have I got it right?

pal

our grid can't handle our consumption but we keep building high-rise condos and increasing the denisty past the point of comfort throughout this city. horrible planning!

edward_g_robincat

Yep. And the MTA can't handle the increasing number of people either. Calling it "horrible planning" is giving the city too much credit. There doesn't seem to be any planning at all.

r1b2

They want you to reduce consumption because if you increase they'll have to build new facilities. Of course they'd love you to use more, because then they'd be paid more, but first they'd have to invest millions to increase capacity, and they're cheap f**kers.

r1b2

They want you to reduce consumption because if you increase they'll have to build new facilities. Of course they'd love you to use more, because then they'd be paid more, but first they'd have to invest millions to increase capacity, and they're cheap f**kers.

Stevennnn

This is useful. Coned has 12,000 outages as of 1:00am.

http://apps.coned.com/weboutageinfo/stormcenter/default.aspx

ed_Extinct

I live in a studio in Columbus Circle and without the A/C my monthly bill is over $60 (That's a 200% increase since 2001). Where the hell is this money going and what investments has Con Edison made since the '03 Black Out? Seems to me like they have made zero infrastructure improvements—this is unacceptable.

It has been 7 years since the Black Out and the issue with power seems to be getting worse. Why is this?

jaycjay

Comparisons to the 2006 issues in Queens might make sense, as that -- like this -- was a ConEd issue. But the 2003 issue had no connection to anything ConEd did or does.

ohhleary

The root of the 2003 blackout was out of ConEd's control, but the slow restoration of power (in my neighborhood's case, 26 hours) certainly wasn't.

edward_g_robincat

Funny that they don't mention all the offices throughout the city that leave computers and lights on all night long. I don't know how many computers it takes to match one A/C unit, but still, there's an awful lot of wasted power in midtown.

nicemarmot

It doesn't take that many computers to match a modern AC unit for power usage. But God forbid we ever tell the lazy-ass office managers in the city to shut the lights off before they leave. Because apparently their mothers never taught them that basic life lesson.

(I'm sure they leave the AC on too)

laisla

True that.

Crapola

Imminent blackouts and MTA service cuts; it's going to be a fun summer.

laisla

And it's only June.

justthinkin

For a split second, I thought some of you brainiacs had figured it out. But, apparently, the pretense of being cool requires that you actually be cool. If you want to screw Con Ed, do what they're telling you to do...it's not a trick. The more you ignore it, the more you'll pay.

kchu

I live in BK. I actually complied all evening, but could not lay in bed with the heat. Went to turn my air conditioner on and its barely sputtering out warm air.

Guest

i have stated this before and i'll state it again: a monopoly is the biggest nightmare of capitalism.

when there's a monopoly (whether it be government-owned or otherwise), there's no need for progress because there's no competition. look at our mta system, and look at other industries where there's no competition. doesn't even feel like a first-world country, does it?

having a monopoly -- even in a capitalistic society -- is essentially the same as running communism.

y'see, there's this neat thing called metro pcs where you only pay $40 for unlimited talk and text. although i'm satisfied with my phone service, it's making other bargain cell-phone companies like t-mobile really scared. and t-mobile now offers their own cheaper services in order to compete with metro pcs.

i don't know what the solution is, yet. sufficed to say, we need to get away from monopolizing any and all forms of business altogether.

lawgrlnyc

So what form should utilities take? Have a bunch of competing utilities running infrastructure all over the place? Well regulated monopolies are what works for utilities.

Guest

So what form should utilities take?

i have stated already that i do not know the real solution yet.

Well regulated monopolies are what works for utilities.

you may state that it is one way, and just how irregulated is con-ed? i also know that there may be better ways. and i hope that you think that there're better ways than this. settling for what seemingly works and never even trying to improve -- even when situations call for it -- is nothing more than ignorance in its literal sense.

unless, of course, you're a representative of CONnED. ;)