customers on lung machines

[reppy007]

Dont ask me how or if they are still doing this.....but years ago we sometimes would be sent to an address where a critical customer lived,we would sometimes hook our generator up to the machine till they would make other arrangements,or till we restored the service...usually being a feeder lock-out.....the dispatchers knew where these customers were located and sometimes we would know if there was a red placard with a white cross on the pole on which the linefuse was located....sometimes it would be on the transformer pole....and on urd x-formers there would be a sticker placed on the outside of the trans......with inverters more common,who are still carrying around generators in the well of the trucks?

[BigClive]

Surely in this day and age there would be a backup system built into the machine? Otherwise common power outages would be a bit of an issue.

[Special ED]

Most these days have battery backups for that reason. Some backups are better than others though.. If I have to have an outage for a pole change out of transformer change out I will make contact with all homes involved then check with dispatch whom has names and addresses of those critical customers. If there's any on the can I'm working on they will be called and a second attempt to knock on their door will be made. Once we get the OK then we will shut the power off for the work.

They used to use the red crosses on the poles but not so much anymore. And also many folks on breathing machines don't know to register with the power company as a critical customer.

[Pootnaigle]

Ummmmmmmmm round these parts we used a special seal on the metercan. It wassa white seal n hadda red cross onnit. But to get one the customer hadda have a letter frum a doctor guy. In any case nobody wuz spozta cut them folks off for any reason. It ran into trubble when folks moved from one apt to anudder or died off n nobody took the service outta their name. Seems like they hadda get recertified ever year or sumpin like that.

[Special ED]

Ummmmmmmmm round these parts we used a special seal on the metercan. It wassa white seal n hadda red cross onnit. But to get one the customer hadda have a letter frum a doctor guy. In any case nobody wuz spozta cut them folks off for any reason. It ran into trubble when folks moved from one apt to anudder or died off n nobody took the service outta their name. Seems like they hadda get recertified ever year or sumpin like that.

Got those seals too. Not very effective except for the non payment cutoffs. For this po-co its not a big ordeal to get on the list. Folks just don't do it.

[Swamprat]

Actually had a "situation" like that. Was up a pole...a serious changeout pole in a backlot, when the birddog, came up and asked us,
"Why didn't you inform this person the power was going to be out for 2 hours?"

Only thing I could tell him was....

"Sorry man, We got the job oder, it had no special restrictions or considerations listed on the job order...we put out the door knocker information that the power was gonna be off of 2-3 hrs, 2 days ago, for the whole neighborhood."

There's only so much you can do....
And no. The Gentleman had no problem. He just transfered to his portable battery backup air machine.

We did try to speed up the restoration a bit, when we heard about him though.

[Squizzy]

We are going through all this over here at the moment with "Life Support Customers" normally when you ring them up their partner tells you that they are dead which is a good start to the day. We have to check all out our switching programs to make sure all the open points are where they are supposed to be etc etc. A life support customer is now considered to include anyone with a sleep apnea machine so its a right royal pain in the ass.