The window she is broken and the rain is comin’ in
If someone doesn’t fix it I’ll be soaking to my skin
But if we wait a day or two the rain may go away
And we don’t need a window on such a sunny day
Mañana, mañana, mañana is soon enough for me!
     —“Mañana” by Peggy Lee and Dave Barbour

Last year at this time, storms were hitting the fan. Year before that, ditto. In fact I’m trying to remember a year in which some area or another wasn’t getting clobbered by something with vile headlines screaming “Disaster!” and prominent in the lead paragraph a statement about the loss of power. Later in the postmortems, mention inevitably is made about the vulnerability of the electrical grid to these misanthropic behaviors of nature and the need to do something before the next time, but...well, it seems that Mañana is good enough for a lot of us.

I live in an area renowned for its temperate climate and gentle disposition: a prime year-around tourist destination where rain is measured in millimeters, butter won’t melt in July, and snowflakes have made it to earth but three times since Juan Rodriquez Cabrillo’s small Portuguese flotilla entered the Santa Barbara Channel in 1542. But when nature decides to remind us who’s boss, she does so with storms that topple power lines, floods that inundate the lower half of the town, and landslides that isolate entire areas...and in 2004 turned killer. Add to these the wildfires and earthquakes that make their occasional visits, and of course the weekly arrival of a fall-asleep driver who unerringly whacks down a power pole, and you see that not even paradise escapes its share of ravishings.

Is it any different where you live, or is nature so benign, or your utilities so bulletproof, or you’re so isolated from the vulnerabilities of those whose grid experience is not so fortunate as yours that you’re not concerned with power loss? If so, how about e-mailing me your location?

I’m against the use of gratuitous scare tactics—that ”It’s flu season again” makes me gag and wish for a power outage—but if you look at the record, the transition time from summer to fall is where we find the lion’s share of bad-weather things occurring...no surprise there. Nor should we be surprised that some of these occurrences go beyond anything we can prepare for in any immediately effective way. But to continue to rebuild systems that have just failed (other than as stop-gaps pending their replacement by distributed systems) makes no sense to me.

When Peggy Lee took her song to the top of the charts, there were hurricanes, tornadoes, williwaws, earthquakes, bad drivers, and even screw-ups at the power station. Yes, these things hurt individuals and businesses alike, but not in the same way as they do today where we are so absolutely dependent on computers, communications, and the control of all the little details that allow us to function fully and meet schedules. The bottom line is that even a momentary power loss can be disastrous.

Far be it from my purpose here to tell utilities how to run their businesses. Instead, I wish only to suggest to those dependent on at-risk utility systems that it’s high time you recognize the situation and take effective action.

The trouble—as you have already discovered if you’ve done some snooping around in the past—is that determining what to do is anything but trivial. It’s not, for instance like going down to the auto dealership and picking out a car. There is, as you know, a lot more than choosing an engine, generator, and a bunch mysterious electronics gear...and that’s my point. The lead-time to complete the analysis of what’s needed, then select and purchase the equipment, get the approvals, and prepare your site can be daunting. Then to see to the myriad details of the installation itself, well, it’s almost enough to make you want to say Mañana ...

...Only now’s the time for taking the steps necessary to making sure your business has a whole bunch of Mañanas. 

Send John an E-mail

DE - September/October 2006