Heat, Power and Blackouts

Whenever the local heat index creeps up to around 100 degrees, I come home to find all the clocks in my house flashing 12:00 and needing to reset my network gateway and wireless router. Once, last week, I walked through my front door to discover a dog who was thrilled beyond belief to see me, and an empty water bowl.

At Dog Day Afternoon in Leesburg, which provides dog day care, employee Helen Rapson, 64, said business was up because some owners were afraid to leave their dogs outside. The business, which typically cares for fewer than 20 dogs a day, had about 30 yesterday. Dog walking was canceled. The dogs "don't even want to go out and go the bathroom," Rapson said. "You're not doing the dogs any favors by walking them a half-mile" in this heat.
- The Washington Post

I take the clocks, computers and water bowl as anecdotal evidence that there's a correlation between a heat index of 100 and a power interruption to my house during the day.

In Leesburg, Kim Margaros, 42, a personal trainer, took her sons Nick, 12, and Jack, 7, to the indoor pool at Ida Lee Park Recreation Center. "It's too hot to go to my neighborhood [outdoor] pool," Margaros said. "We can stay here longer."
Neither Pepco nor Dominion Virginia Power reported weather-related outages yesterday, spokesmen said.
- The Washington Post

Could've fooled me, as when I came home yesterday, it was time to reset the clocks again.

I would be very interested to know whether specific neighborhoods are affected by these spot outages each day. The power never flashes in my office in Ashburn, even though we're basically in a residential area. My house in Leesburg is just north of the Lowenbach neighborhood and Crescent district. Many residents of these neighborhoods are extremely sensitive to heat, and suffer the most when their power is interrupted on a day like today. If my dog has issues when the power goes out during the day, how much worse is the discomfort of our neighbors on Plaza street?

I respect Dominion Power and the fact that they have to serve many interests. Not only are they a monopoly power utility with responsibility to provide power to all their customers, but they're also beholden to their shareholders to make a profit. Furthermore, they face competition, and would like to compete themselves. Atop all of this is the fact that improvements which might be necessary will always run into community opposition because they are considered ugly impositions on our idyllic paradise.

Underground lines may be an answer. The Loudoun Times-Mirror did a great job covering this issue. At its heart is a question of money. Raised transmission lines are cheaper, buried lines are more expensive. As a quasi-regulated monopoly, Dominion Power can best earn profit by minimizing costs and growing consumption, thus, their preference for more, new raised lines. As property owners and residents of Loudoun, we would prefer fewer, buried lines, and we don't want to pay anything extra for them.

(It shouldn't be arguable whether more transmission lines are necessary, if I have daily power outages when the heat index hits 100, there's either a supply or distribution problem. Since my house is affected, but my office 10 miles down the road isn't, that means distribution, not supply.)

There is a relationship between my power outages and the power line protests. And there is already a model for a solution in the region: Revenue Decoupling:

In a bid to cut energy use, Maryland yesterday became just the fourth state in the nation to approve a plan that removes the incentive for electric utilities to sell more power in order to make more money.
- The Washington Post

If we decouple additional revenue (and thus profit) for Dominion from increased usage, then we kill both problems (transmission and demand) with one stone. By creating incentives for Dominion Power to help their customers use less power, we decrease the need for more transmission lines in the future. By increasing the profit Dominion could get for reduced usage, Dominion would be able to afford burying the new power lines it does need in order to keep up with local demand.

Sounds like a win-win to me.

Even our elected representatives seem to agree:

May's press conference didn't have the feel of election-year theater. Democratic state Senator Mark Herring (D-33) sat in and listened as May gave a summation of his trip overseas. Both assemblymen agreed that transmission lines are a bipartisan issue. "I wanted to show that Del. May and I are working together in a bipartisan fashion to make sure power lines in our area go underground," Herring said.
-Leesburg Today

Of course, May is in the Republican Majority in the House, and with a partner in the Senate like Herring, and Governor Kaine's cooperation evidenced by his work on the energy legislation earlier this year, I would expect the swift introduction of Assembly legislation for a decoupling/burying solution.

Del. May's case for re-election has always been that he gets things done for us in Richmond, we will be watching to see if he does. Especially since Dominion Power is May's second-largest campaign contributor.

P.S. In the interest of learning more about the location and frequency of outages in Leesburg, I have emailed Dominion Power, I'll keep the site update with any response I get from them.

[update] You can't make this stuff up, folks:
-----Forwarded Message-----
From: Loudoun Sheriff
Sent: Aug 8, 2007 1:51 PM
To: RSAN
Subject: A Power Outage has Disrupted Several Traffic Lights in Loudoun
Treat All Intersections as 4-Way Stops

Power Outage has Disrupted Several Traffic Lights in Loudoun Treat All
Intersections as 4-Way Stops

Sent to Media Only, Loudoun Traffic/Road Closures - Sheriff (E-mail
accounts, Pagers, Cell phones) through Alert Loudoun

... powered by the Roam Secure Alert Network
---