Comments on: “Ay, Brownout!”

By: friedneurons

friedneurons — Tue, 25 Mar 2014 07:12:23 +0000

I’ve lived in California for 24 years, and I’ve never, ever heard anybody refer to a power outage as a “brownout”. Well, not counting Filipinos who are recent immigrants, that is. Most of the time everybody just says “power outage”. Or something like, “Crap, the power went out.” People seem to reserve the word “blackout” for really widespread power outages that affect whole cities or metropolitan areas at one time. So in that sense, I’ve only experienced one blackout in my 24 years here, when the entire western United States (except for a few pockets here and there) lost power sometime in the early 1990s. I forget the reason why.

By: Getter Dragon 1

Getter Dragon 1 — Thu, 20 Mar 2014 17:38:32 +0000

I always thought of ‘brownout’ as one of those words that made it into the American lexicon like ‘boonies’ or ‘boondocks’.

By: Catherine

Catherine — Thu, 20 Mar 2014 16:37:55 +0000

La Emperor and kasseopeia: A community off the grid will make the work of maintaining its own power source easier. Just sayin’…

By: Thel from Florida

Thel from Florida — Thu, 20 Mar 2014 15:30:33 +0000

I’ll go crazy if there’s a brownout or blackout so when we built our Florida retirement home in 2009, we had a “whole house” generator installed (20 kilowatt). It was the best ten thousand dollars we spent–worth every penny.

By: MP

MP — Thu, 20 Mar 2014 15:22:19 +0000

With the alarming power rates, I hope the Houze company (makers of zero energy houses) based in Texas will consider building houses here!

By: EJ

EJ — Thu, 20 Mar 2014 10:05:49 +0000

Brownout is the Filipino euphemism for blackout, simple as that. ;-)

By: Marketman

Marketman — Thu, 20 Mar 2014 04:52:35 +0000

Ed B, good one, I like that explanation. And it would have been used appropriately used at that time. But now, it is not accurately used…

By: Ed B.

Ed B. — Thu, 20 Mar 2014 04:40:01 +0000

Supposedly the term brownout originated in WW II. During bombing raids the electric company/companies would lower the voltage on purpose to dim the lights in buildings (and houses) to make them more difficult to identify/see from the air. Because of the lower voltage the light emitted by the bulbs would have a brownish hue. Hence the term brownout. Pinoys, over time, may have lost track of the original meaning of the term, and so ended up using it to pertain to any sort of power/electricity-related aberration.

By: La Emperor

La Emperor — Wed, 19 Mar 2014 16:52:15 +0000

Funny, two posters ahead of me have the same plan I have in mind. “Baka maging magkakapitbahay tayo”. hahaha nothing wrong with that except how can we post at marketmanila if we’re off the grid. ;)

I always tell my spouse as long as I have good internet connection, I’m happy to retire as a farmer, partially off the grid.

And on topic, yeah I grew up with the same concept as per Mimi.

By: ab

ab — Wed, 19 Mar 2014 15:47:41 +0000

I think of “brownout” as Filipino English for “blackout”.