1-Year Update: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMBeUJ8BVIk

In this video, I discuss how EnergyUnited fixed a long occurring problem with the power lines in the neighborhood behind me. I also happen to get power from these lines, while my neighbor received his electricity directly from the main three-phase feeder line that follows the main road. Every time the cutout fuse blew for whatever reason, I lost power while my neighbor still had electricity. Sometimes, kudzu would grow up a pole back in the neighborhood and cause a fault, blowing the fuse as a result, yet this year that pole has been kept clean and there are no trees touching any of the lines behind the fused cutout, yet it still would blow for unknown reasons, causing a loss of service for 28 EnergyUnited members. Since my father was getting upset about these unnecessary outages and since I happened to know about reclosers, we voiced our concerns to EnergyUnited. I explained to a lineman that had came out to replace the fuse that he should consider installing a recloser since the lines in the neighborhood were known to go through fuses for mysterious reasons. Days later, crews started making improvements to the lines by replacing all the old lightning arrestors and installing cutouts at every “branch” of the line. A couple of days afterwards, the linemen got approval from the supervisor and a recloser was installed. Reclosers are more reliable since they try to restore service after a fault by attempting reclose operations about 3 or so times before locking out like a blown fuse. This may be something to consider calling the power company about if you live in an older neighborhood that…

1. has frequent outages and
2. there are no tree limbs or kudzu growing into the lines creating potential faults and
3. there is a good number of customers affected by the outages (reclosers are expensive and fused cutouts are much cheaper, so the power company may only consider a recloser when the conditions are favorable).