We had some excitement, if that is what you’d like to call it, behind our house today at about 4:30PM. Apparently, the neighborhood electrical grid wasn’t ‘upsized’ appropriately when the duplexes that previously occupied our lots were replaced by the new homes on our street. I learned from the electricity delivery provider that we had 9 homes being powered from a transformer designed to only supply 4 homes our size. It’s amazing that it lasted this long – and actually it ended up only melting the wiring past the load it could handle.
It started a fire in the neighbor’s yard across the alley, and the fire department was here within 10 minutes to put it out (incredible response time!)
Oncor came out late this evening and installed a brand new additional transformer, and split the load across three transformers (rewiring the service delivery to all 9 homes). They said we’d have power restored by 9:30 – and by 9:29, we did. Pretty amazing stuff and I watched them orchestrate two large bucket trucks in the service-way through the whole thing.