Taking electricity for granted
Friday, April 15, 2011 at 7:00AM The Van Kalkers Last week, I got a phone call at 3 am from my Dad saying the power had gone out at our Chicago Heights location. I live at our Grant Park location. This obviously isn't good since it was about 20 degrees outside, and no electric means no heat in the greenhouses.
By the time I got there, a worker from ComEd was there. He had pulled the meter to stop electric from coming to our farm from the grid and was looking at the main panel. The main 200 amp breaker had partially melted and pulled away from the panel. This was caused by one of the electric feed lines getting wet and oxidizing, causing greater resistance and therefore heat. The protective coating had fallen off, and the line and the terminal connection was corroded from the moisture too. The ComEd employee was able to bend the corroded line away from the panel and reset the breaker temporarily, but he said it would last 10 minutes to 10 hours and had to be fixed. Luckily my friend Mark works for a local electric company and was able to be there at 7 am and had the whole panel changed out by 11am. The breaker held, though it was buzzing, until he pulled the meter to replace the panel, so luckily no damage was done as the greenhouses were only without power for about an hour. We used a generator to power the water pumps while the panel was being replaced.
So I'd just like to say thanks to D&G Electric for their quick emergency repair and to ComEd for the response time of less than 25 minutes at 3 am. As with all things, it's really easy to take things for granted until they are taken away. Luckily this happened in the early morning, and nothing caught fire or froze from the lack of heat.
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