Power Outage

That power outage that looked likely did occur. No grid power for about six days.

The Good

The pile of candles, the boxes of matches, the oil lamp, the propane camp stove, flashlights, piles of blankets, refilled water bottles, rain barrels all worked as they needed to.

The Bad

As soon as the power when out, I ran to the local Big Box Store™ for an inverter. I had previously heard about the inverter on car battery trick from The Survival Podcast, but never got around to picking one up. By the time I made it to the store, exactly one inverter remained, a 750W. The store had price tags for 1500W and 400W versions, but none left.

Recent measurements of electrical devices in my home (275W for the furnace) led me to think I could power them. I completely forgot about inrush current for large motor loads, over 800W for the deep freeze, or the electric ignition for the furnace. The fridge’s startup power was just low enough that the inverter could power it, so at least the most perishable food didn’t spoil. I didn’t even try the electric range.

The electric chainsaw I recently picked up (1000W minimum) was useless until a generator arrived. The large downed limbs just to wait, but the manual limb loppers worked well. There is not much use in getting anything besides a small one-handed pruner and a large compound action limb lopper for dealing with branches. Everything else is either too bulky or under-powered.

Better Next Time

The largest complaint I had from the wife was with the electric range. Doesn’t work at all in a power outage. So we are looking to replace it with a natural gas range that can be lit with a match. The water heater and the furnace are both natural gas, so I’m not adding a new dependency, just expanding an existing one. Natural gas tends to be available even when the electrical grid is down, so this increases resilience. From a peak oil perspective, the process of making synthetic methane is straightforward and the principle chemical process, methanization, is routinely performed in the chemical industry, primarily to protect catalysts that get poisoned by carbon monoxide but not methane.

The inverter, while it worked, was under powered. A 1500W inverter would have been better and I plan on procuring one once things settle down a bit. The new inverter will need to be tested against the freezer and the furnace to ensure they can be powered off the car battery/alternator.

While I had plenty of potable water in the form of refilled plastic water bottles and plenty of non-potable water for flushing toilets, there was only a few gallons of water in the pressure water tank for washing hands. While we never ran out of pressurized water, that we could was constantly on our minds. The well pump requires 240V power and will not drive off an inverter. I’m looking at getting a second well pump, a low power DC version in the 50-100W range, that I can run in parallel with the existing pump that should allow me to have water pressure under emergency power situations.

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