Power to the People

08:38 Monday, 24 August 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 55.54°F Pressure: 1012hPa Humidity: 88% Wind: 7.4mph
Words: 337

Lots of activity this morning. And it's chilly!

"Winter is coming..."

Ken's here digging the trench for the power line. My plan to do just one dig didn't survive contact with reality. Different depths, dirt's gotta go someplace, not enough room to do it once, so it's going to be two digs. Same path though, so that's some, small, comfort.

We're doing power first, then he'll come back and dig a deeper trench alongside for the water line. The electrician is supposed to be here this week to lay the conduit and the cable. We don't know when NYSEG will get here to put in the new transformer, so it's all going to be inert for some time.

We're also burying conduit for the future garage and a piece for a future ground-mounted array.

But once the power line is buried, we can do the water line.

Concrete wasn't supposed to be available this week, but Brad the Builder spoke to the owner and we're getting it poured on Wednesday, which is great news. But it means we have to really nail down where the penetrations go for the ERV, the makeup air vent, and the range hood. I was just up there and we think we know what we're going to do, but we've got until tomorrow to think about it, because that's when they'll be cut.

Speaking of power, I have a Ting electrical arcing sensor plugged into an outlet here. It's never detected any arcing, but it does detect undervoltage episodes that we probably wouldn't notice, and there are a lot of them.

But the app also has a little news section, and this report from last month caught my eye. 3 gigawatts of demand vanished from the grid instantly because an issue with a, wait for it, data center in northern Virginia. The grid held up, but the effects were reported by Ting sensors everywhere east of the Mississippi (and a little west) and they made a nice little video about it.

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