Power Outage in December

 A few days ago our power went out at midnight due to heavy rain and wind. That is not a good omen really, what will happen if and when we get a heavy, wet snow? 

 I woke up at 0500 hours and noticed the night light in the bathroom was out and it was a bit chilly in the house. At that point, I did not know how long the power had been out but I figured it had been a couple hours.

 First order of business was to get some light so I could move around the house to get other stuff done. 

 We have an all-electric house and so  emergency lighting is critical. We have a number of battery-powered lamps in a bathroom closet as well as an oil lamp. There are flashlights stashed a round the house so we can grab a light no matter where we are when the power goes out. I have a light hanging from the headboard of my bed, for example.

 Next, get some heat going. We have a woodstove insert in our living room and I got a good fire going. The wood stove has a blower than moves air around the firebox and then blows it out into the room, but that needs electricity.

I bought this from Northern Tools almost twenty years ago. It will heat my entire house and keep it above 60 degrees as long as I can run some fans to move the air around.

 

 I bought am Ecoflow Delta 1,300 "Solar Generator" a few years ago and this was the first time we really needed to use it for back-up power. It was charged to 100% using the four 100-watt solar panels that came with it. The battery capacity is 1.3 kilo watts and it can power anything up to 3,000 watts.

 I hooked up the wood stove fan, a second fan at the end of the room to move heat out into the rest of the house, a recliner, and we charged our phones using this Ecoflow unit. The two fans ran continuously for five hours and ran the unit down to 85%. At that rate, I could easily run the fans for a bit more than 30 hours without a recharge. That would normally be enough for downed power lines. But I do have the ability to recharge the batteries via solar panels or with my gas generator. The generator will charge the system to 100% in 30 minutes. Solar charging is 100% dependent on how much sun there is.

 I have a larger Ecoflow Delta Pro system in the basement that has a capacity of 7.2 kilowatt hours. It will eventually be wired into my home's circuits through a transfer panel. But for this outage, I had to run an extension cord upstairs. I connected the refrigerator and the modem/WiFi router to have internet. After five hours I used 10% of the available power so I could potentially go for just under 50 hours if needed without recharging. I will have 1,800 watts of solar panels set up soon to recharge the system and I can also hook up the gas generator if needed.

You can buy a refurbished system for $1,999. They are repaired at the factory. This single unit is a 3.6 kilowatt hours system. I added an additional battery to bump it up to 7.2 kilowatt hours.

 

 We keep 20 gallons of water in Jerry cans at all times so cooking and flushing toilets is covered. We also generally have a case of bottled water on hand.

 This outage was only ten and a half hours and it was a good drill to practice our preparations and tweak anything that needs to be altered. But, truthfully, everything went as planned so other than getting my larger solar generator wired into the house's circuits, I don't see anything that needs to change. 

Spend a little money to ensure your safety and comfort.