Partial power outage...

That Sunday morning I get up early, goes into my office, turn on the switch, no light! My WiFi isn’t working either, all is dark, yet the furnace and the fridge are on, but there’s no light in the kitchen or elsewhere. I go downstairs and check the circuit breakers, nothing is tripped! 

I call Rocky Mountain Power and notify them of the situation, I’m told a technician will be sent to my place after 7 am. I check if we’ve gotten some new snow, turn on the outside switches and surprise they work and there’s more snow! 

I can’t understand what’s going on. Around 7:30 am my wife tells me the lights in the master bedroom and bath work. I bring the coffee machine there. Around 8 am the tech is on the ground, moving snow around to find out the location of the underground junction box, and explaining that this is a partial power outage caused by a missing phase in the circuitry. 

He works on it and reestablish the 130 V, not the 240 V supply, and tells me it’s either the cable to my house or the transformer that’s the problem. It later turns out that its the junction box serving both my house and my neighbor’s was completely soaked in water and in, large part, badly corroded.

The tech fixed that problem and the power was restored. I was impressed with the speed and quality of the service. We learn something new everyday!