Originally Posted By: MartinFocazio
Anyone else noticing a less reliable grid?

I haven't noticed it where I am, but I worry a bit how things shake out in the coming years.

A combination of aging infrastructure, bad economic times that squeezes maintenance/replacement cycles, copper thieves, entering a higher sunspot activity phase, and apparently more frequent extreme weather events (Seems like more and more once-in-a-century type events occuring) makes me wonder if power will be a bit less reliable for a while.

These copper thieves really make me mad. And they must be mad to pull off some of the heists that they do, like stealing "hot" wires to street lamps or even to public transit (thieves pulled hot wires from the BART commuter train system in the San Francisco Bay Area over the holidays while I was visiting there). I'm surprised we don't find more people electrocuted.