Generators: the new AC system
When I was a child, few people had air conditioners or systems to cool their houses. The windows were open with screens and we had fans to circulate air out and into the house. There were many nights when we just sweated it out. We were lucky if we had large shade trees to help keep the heat at bay.
To comment on this letter, click on “Comments” below
Then in the late 50's people bought noisy window units that cooled parts of the house. In the 60's, home heating and cooling systems were being put into new homes and older homes began to retrofit their old monster octopus heaters with smaller units.
Air conditoners and systems are commonplace these days and more energy efficent than ever. However, Met- Ed, now owned by First Energy, seems to be overwhelmed by power outages that last for days. I don't recall long outages in the 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's and even 90's. We would lose power for a couple of hours and Met Ed had it back on before our food spoiled or we were greatly inconvenienced. Met-Ed's reputation has been diminished since being taken over by First Energy. Cost cutting has resulted in big problems when service is disrupted. So we have to begin to cover our own assets by installing generators.
We have lived in the same house since 1980. Our longest time without power was maybe 4 or 5 hours until a few years ago over Christmas when we had an ice storm and we lost power for 28 hours. That inspired my mechanically minded husband to buy a house generator for the next outage. We installed it, hooking into our gas line and forgot about it except for the weekly 15 minute automatic check the generator ran.
The following Fall brought Isabel. That October storm took out power in our area for more than 4 days. But the sweet sound of the generator kicking on after 30 seconds kept us out of trouble. Our neighbors brought food to put in our refrigerators and freezers, we ran a power chord down to another neighbor's fishpond just as the fish were beginning to lay on their sides, gasping for air and we had lights, TV and computer usage. The only thing I couldn't do was use the electric stove (I could grill and microwave) and I couldn't vacuum. (DARN!)
Our neighbor with the fish now has a house generator, we talked about how generators will someday be listed on properties for sale like air conditioners were 40 years ago.
This last storm took out our power Sunday morning around 4:30. It is almost 5PM on Monday evening as I write this. I've called Met- Ed several times so that they know we still are without their services. They called last night at 10:47PM and woke me up to ask if we had power. Guess they don't know who has what. Another neighbor stopped down to get our generator literature yesterday, saying they were installing one this week. But then their power went on yesterday evening. Funny how when you have power you don't feel the necessity of spending money on something you may or may not need. But we've used ours on several occasions and it's nice to have the lights go on when the utilities leave you in the dark.
Here's a tip: buy stock in whatever company maufactures generators. They're going to be selling a lot of them.
Marg Gotwald
Springettsbury Township
I agree. Now see if you can get our property tax reduced so we can afford them. Installing a generator is an improvement that will get you re-asessed and your property tax will go up.
I completely agree. My company has introduced a line of home generator systems recently and the interest in them has been higher than anticipated. I am planning on getting one for my own home.