On Sun, 20 Jan 2008 05:35:53 -0600, Steve IA wrote:
Neon John wrote:
...
It's most likely a combination of all the above. It is effectively
impossible to determine the exact cause after the fact. The co-op
person that you talk to will tell you that same thing, couched in
consumer-friendly verbiage.

Well, maybe a combination, but we still feel there's something we're not
being told. Maybe I better get my tin-foil hat out.

Thanks again.

Steve

Did you have your main breaker(s) off all during the outage? Soon after
I moved here, there a super-brownout (incandescent light bulbs just barely
glowed) that went on for hours. After that, I'm careful to disconnect
anything that might be damaged by low voltage whenever the power gets
squirrely.

There is some validity to the "recovery" thing. A common example is the
household water heater. The savings achieved by shutting off a modern,
well insulated heater set at 120F - say, while occupants are away
during the day - are disappointing. It doesn't take that much energy
to maintain the standby temperature. Your wood stove maintained the
temperature in some of your house, but not all of it. Assuming you ran
your furnace after the power came on and before the meter was read, a
house is a lot of mass to warm back up to its standby temperature in the
winter.