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Comment by pacaro | Hacker News Reader

> but I will note it is a lot easier to keep spares and change out a small transformer.

In my neighborhood, about once a year there's a loud pop, or quiet bang, and a bunch of houses lose power. The electric company will fix it pretty quickly.

I think that it's performing selection pressure on the unlicensed squirrel electrician population.

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Growing up in the sticks, I'm pretty sure there was an unlicensed trade school for squirrels in the area. Pretty much once a year, we'd need a replaced transformer from one of these unlicensed squirrel electricians. I never charted the timing of the year this would happen, but now I wonder if aligned with the start of a new class.

Here in the UK I think some of those unlicensed squirrel electricians are beginning to retain in fibre broadband installations. My neighbour was ‘disconnected’ last week.

The next time a friendly representative from the international brotherhood squirrel electrical (IBSE) union stops by to discuss joining their service protection plan, they should reconsider. "This a real nice connection you have here. It'd be shame if something were to happen to it"

Edit: or would that be the Free Mesons

I was a little surprised that my neighborhood must have some redundancy. A year or so ago a transformer on a pole two doors down from us popped, and our power actually didn't go out.

The transformer likely served the houses further down the block - yours was served by one upstream.

It isn’t terribly hard to track it back if the wires are above ground.

Depending on where you live, they age out too. The one behind my house exploded a year or two ago.

It was manufactured in 1959!

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