By the Daily Post staff
A mylar balloon that became entangled with power lines caused a short circuit that has knocked out power to 4,500 city of Palo alto electric customers in the southeast part of the city for about an hour this afternoon.
The lights came back on at 2:55 p.m.
The city Utilities Department said on Twitter: “Please consider alternatives to mylar balloons! They are a major cause of power outages and should always be kept away from overhead power lines and utility equipment.”.
And this comes at a time when the City is planning to remove our natural gas hookups and force us to switch to an unreliable electric system. Glad they’re thinking ahead on the City Council.
Removing our natural gas hookups AND spending $23,000,000 to build a fiber-to-the-home system to compete with AT&T!
Let’s not forget that PA Utilities continues to overcharge us $20,000,000 to supplement the General Fund WHILE refusing to pay us back the court-ordered settlement for some of the overcharges AND making us fund their appeal.
Can we say chutzpah aka NERVE?
And don’t forget that the state has banned gas generators. Now when our third-world-style power grid goes down because of some unstoppable force, like a child’s balloon or a tiny birdie sitting on a wire somewhere, we can at least be thankful nobody’s cooking on an evil gas stove.
And hence I’m building solar backed by batteries into my remodel… I’m not quite clear that I want 4000 people suddenly kicking on their once a year gas generators … what could go wrong? We should be investing in a more robust grid. Finally, America has really slow internet. Yes, we should be driving towards 100x speed up.
Why do they continue to sell those balloons?
Boy, if only everyone had an extra $100,000 dollars laying around like Richie Rich Seer, we could all go solar. And then in 10 years, 4,000 people will dump their 300lbs lithium batteries. 1 million+ pounds of discarded toxic lithium. What could go wrong??
Or we can keep using that $300 dollar generator that’ll outlast you.