Any PSO contacts?

[Ed W]

I've had a 'temporary' portable transformer in my yard since an outage back on Labor Day.  PSO seems to have forgotten about it.  I've tried navigating their voice menu system - and I won't go into that.  I've sent emails via their customer service page.  I even stopped a crew working on the street, and they said they'd put in a ticket on it.  Yeah, right.

Does anyone have a contact with a real, live person - you know, a carbon based life form that seems to inhabit this planet - a person I can talk to about this transformer?  I'm entertaining fantasies of disconnecting it myself and pushing it out in the middle of the street.

[Red Arrow]

I've had a 'temporary' portable transformer in my yard since an outage back on Labor Day.  PSO seems to have forgotten about it.  I've tried navigating their voice menu system - and I won't go into that.  I've sent emails via their customer service page.  I even stopped a crew working on the street, and they said they'd put in a ticket on it.  Yeah, right.

Does anyone have a contact with a real, live person - you know, a carbon based life form that seems to inhabit this planet - a person I can talk to about this transformer?  I'm entertaining fantasies of disconnecting it myself and pushing it out in the middle of the street.

During the ice storm of '07, we had a problem with a downed line and local transformer.   I got no response from PSO until I threatened to climb a pole and cut a line to a street light.  They were there within 2 hours.

Good Luck!

[Breadburner]

I've had a 'temporary' portable transformer in my yard since an outage back on Labor Day.  PSO seems to have forgotten about it.  I've tried navigating their voice menu system - and I won't go into that.  I've sent emails via their customer service page.  I even stopped a crew working on the street, and they said they'd put in a ticket on it.  Yeah, right.

Does anyone have a contact with a real, live person - you know, a carbon based life form that seems to inhabit this planet - a person I can talk to about this transformer?  I'm entertaining fantasies of disconnecting it myself and pushing it out in the middle of the street.

Tell them there is smoke coming from it.....

[nathanm]

What, there's a transformer sitting on the ground? Sounds like a downed power line to me!

[patric]

What, there's a transformer sitting on the ground? Sounds like a downed power line to me!

It sounds immensely dangerous.  Could the lines be touched by people or animals? (please don't try).
Can you post a picture?

[sgrizzle]

What, there's a transformer sitting on the ground? Sounds like a downed power line to me!

If you have underground service, your transformer is always on the ground.

[sgrizzle]

Does anyone have a contact with a real, live person - you know, a carbon based life form that seems to inhabit this planet - a person I can talk to about this transformer?  I'm entertaining fantasies of disconnecting it myself and pushing it out in the middle of the street.

*clears throat*

PM me your contact info.

[Ed W]

Long story short...the electrical service to the house comes in on two 'hot' legs and also has a neutral return line.  One leg went out, so the dryer turned but didn't heat.  Most of the kitchen was out, as was the AC.  It was Labor Day weekend.  When I finally figured out it was outside on the PSO line, I called them and a tech showed up in about an hour!

But it seems they've forgotten their equipment:

[patric]

So you have 480V going right to your meter can via the existing underground wiring?
I didnt know they did that, but it seems a much more elegant way than having a primary line just dangling there.

[nathanm]

I believe that it's actually an autotransformer that makes up the missing leg through some sort of electrical engineering magic.

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r24691376-So.-I-lost-a-110V-Leg-last-night-

Be glad it wasn't the neutral that failed. If your power usage happens to not be well balanced between the legs when that happens, the voltage rise on one of the hot legs can do a lot of damage. And when you're going around turning off breakers to stop all the electronics from smoking, you may just unbalance things the other way and fry the other half of your stuff.

[Ed W]

I didn't measure the voltage with my meter.  Instead, I used a voltage probe from Klein Tools.  It senses AC from 50 to 1000 volts.  This tool is about the size of a fat fountain pen and it's handy around the house.

[Red Arrow]

Long story short...the electrical service to the house comes in on two 'hot' legs and also has a neutral return line.  One leg went out, so the dryer turned but didn't heat.  Most of the kitchen was out, as was the AC.  It was Labor Day weekend.  When I finally figured out it was outside on the PSO line, I called them and a tech showed up in about an hour!

But it seems they've forgotten their equipment:

It's probably easier than fixing the real problem.

[Ed W]

It's probably easier than fixing the real problem.

But they did fix the real problem.  One of the hot legs was broken somewhere between the meter and the PSO transformer in a neighbor's yard.  A crew arrived to dig up the yard and the line a few days after the initial outage.  They did a lot of digging, eventually making a trench through the back yard.  It was deep enough that they released Godzilla and he wreaked havoc on Owasso. 

[Red Arrow]

But they did fix the real problem.  One of the hot legs was broken somewhere between the meter and the PSO transformer in a neighbor's yard.  A crew arrived to dig up the yard and the line a few days after the initial outage.  They did a lot of digging, eventually making a trench through the back yard.  It was deep enough that they released Godzilla and he wreaked havoc on Owasso. 

OK, I'm out of ideas.

[Hoss]

OK, I'm out of ideas.

Typical AEP BS.  Some of you have seen my rantings about how they handle tree maintenance.  Well, there was something else also.

In 2005, when I first moved back into my childhood home to help care for my mother, I arrived to a huge, gutted backyard and my north fence in the backyard torn down opening it to the property to the north.  What evidently happened was that AEP needed to replace a transformer in my backyard, but no-one was there at the time (my Dad, who was the former only resident in the house, by this time had essentially moved to his sisters).

In doing so, they gained access with the bucket truck to the neighbor to my north (who had frontage to the road from their backyard corner lot), and just took the fence down and rolled the truck into the yard to get to the faulty transfomer.  Fair enough, they corrected an issue that I was concerned with anyway (that transformer was old as I was and aerial lines as you know, suck).

What ensued was a nasty back and forth phone tag battle for about six months.  My neighbor's yard was torn up as well, but AEP within two weeks corrected that by putting down sod, and they did replace the section of fence they had taken down.  What the did not do was to repair my back yard.  I went round and round with these jackasses for six months to get them to come out and fix my damn lawn.  In the end, they wound up, instead of re-sodding the area, by turning over the dirt they'd jacked up and planting fescue seed!  I decided at that point I was going to let them have it.  I did wind up getting 50 dollars off one of my electric bills for that, but the principle of it really pi$$ed me off.

And the next two years was me fighting about the limb maintenance around the lines on the easement of the property.