{"id":1366,"date":"2018-09-12T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-09-12T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/?p=1366"},"modified":"2025-07-10T16:35:48","modified_gmt":"2025-07-10T22:35:48","slug":"electrical-outages-improvement-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/electrical-outages-improvement-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Electrical Outages Improvement Story"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n<p>Jeremy Singer-Vine publishes a Data Is Plural newsletter about available data sets. I took the U.S. &amp; Canada\u00a0power outage data from 2018<\/a> and used it with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/data-mining-analysis-excel\/data-mining-wizard\/\">QI Macros Data Mining Wizard<\/a> to create an improvement project.<\/p>\r\n<p>I used a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/control-chart\/g-chart-template\/\">g Chart<\/a> of time between power outages. Averaging a little over 3 days between outages.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1367\" src=\"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Days-between-power-outages.png\" alt=\"days between power outages\" width=\"650\" height=\"395\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Days-between-power-outages.png 650w, https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Days-between-power-outages-300x182.png 300w, https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Days-between-power-outages-115x70.png 115w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 650px) 100vw, 650px\" \/><\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Then, the Data Mining Wizard found the most common cause of outages to be weather. But look at number two: operations. That&#8217;s something that could be fixed. Vandalism could also be prevented.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1368\" src=\"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/power-outages-by-event.png\" alt=\"power outages by event\" width=\"650\" height=\"380\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/power-outages-by-event.png 650w, https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/power-outages-by-event-300x175.png 300w, https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/power-outages-by-event-115x67.png 115w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 650px) 100vw, 650px\" \/><\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Next, where are outages most likely to occur:<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1369\" src=\"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/power-outages-by-region.png\" alt=\"power outages by region\" width=\"650\" height=\"386\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/power-outages-by-region.png 650w, https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/power-outages-by-region-300x178.png 300w, https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/power-outages-by-region-115x68.png 115w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 650px) 100vw, 650px\" \/><\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>And what month? Readiness months: March-July.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1372\" src=\"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/power-outages-by-month-1.png\" alt=\"power outages by month 1\" width=\"650\" height=\"370\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/power-outages-by-month-1.png 650w, https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/power-outages-by-month-1-300x171.png 300w, https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/power-outages-by-month-1-115x65.png 115w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 650px) 100vw, 650px\" \/><\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>What about by state? No Pareto pattern here, but interesting.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1371\" src=\"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/power-outages-by-state.png\" alt=\"power outages by state\" width=\"650\" height=\"394\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/power-outages-by-state.png 650w, https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/power-outages-by-state-300x182.png 300w, https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/power-outages-by-state-115x70.png 115w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 650px) 100vw, 650px\" \/><\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Who knows? There might even be a way to prevent all kinds of outages.<\/p>\r\n<p>When I was trained by Florida Power and Light, they mentioned that they had found ways to waterproof connections (important in Florida). Tree frogs got into transformers and fried them during the wet season. Putting screens in the transformers kept the frogs out and the air in.<\/p>\r\n<p>Transmission poles on back country curves tended to be knocked down repeatedly on Friday or Saturday nights after the bars closed.Moving the poles to the\u00a0<em>inside<\/em> of the curve instead of the outside solved the problem.<\/p>\r\n<p>Power outages are a hassle for everyone. Let&#8217;s create a Hassle-Free America.<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jeremy Singer-Vine publishes a Data Is Plural newsletter about available data sets. I took the U.S. &amp; Canada&nbsp;power outage data from 2018 and used it with QI Macros Data Mining Wizard to create an improvement project. I used a g Chart of time between power outages. Averaging a little over 3 days between outages. Then, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[211,1,5,7],"tags":[168,170],"class_list":["post-1366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-data-mining","category-jay-arthur-blog","category-qi-macros","category-six-sigma","tag-qi-macros","tag-six-sigma"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1366"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1366\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7827,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1366\/revisions\/7827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}