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Our power was out for 24 hours, I used my 2000 Honda generator to keep my first freezer working went out to Costco as they had $200 off a big generator. By the time I assembled and figured it out the power came back on. I will try to read through he threads today and catch up.

How frequently does the power grid go down in your area?

Where I live it normally goes down every month.

Forest Beekeeper wrote: ↑Tue Jul 16, 2024 4:37 pm How frequently does the power grid go down in your area?

Where I live it normally goes down every month.

At my last place it was out every couple of months for infrastructure repairs . But everytime it rained , we’d loose it due to trees on lines or poles slipping down hills . Longest was 2.5days .

Since I moved to the burbs , not had a single outage so far . Mind you we have underground Mains around here .Seems much more reliable .

My neighbor is Canadas handyest man. Utube page and everything. He just got me a 9500 Watt generator and switch for power outages for free. I just shoot an install video for the company and it's free. Sorry to say I'm waiting for an outage to try it out.

We had a couple bad power poles that they had to replace. Years ago our power went out on a regular basis but since they trimmed trees around the power lines and even gone underground in places it has improved dramatically.

I live in a fairly small town, which by chance is very close to the electric substation for distribution in our area, and it seems we rarely have outages. One of the longest was when a transformer caught fire down the street and shut down our whole segment of the local grid. Still fixed same day.

I sat for 4 days without power after hurricane Charlie. In the Florida heat. Never owned a generator before then and never been without one since.

The worst outage I’ve experienced was a little over a week. Unusually bad ice storms combined with lax maintenance and excessive reliance on overhead power lines means that the entire region was without power for some time. In rural areas, no power means no water, so I’ve never been without a generator since then. I also spent about a week helping to care for my bedridden mother after the tornadoes in Alabama knocked the entire northern half of the state out for days.

The power grid seems less reliable than it used to be. Maybe that’s just me being a pessimist, but there’s no way I’d live without some kind of backup these days.

I believe that Texas has its own grid – that is not connected or shared with other states. I would have expected someone from Texas to have chimed in about this subject by now. Hurricane Beryl knocked out power for about 2.2 million people last week. One of the following stories says that even after 4 days, that some 1.3 million around Houston, still remained without power... And then there is some news in the wind about linemen coming in from other states to help; but being attacked and made unwelcome. Just 3 years before (2021) Texas was hit with a power outage in the cold of winter, that left 7 million without heat or drinking water, for a week or so.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/10/us/h ... -grid.html

Anger mounts in southeast Texas as crippling power outages and heat turn deadly
https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/11/weather/ ... index.html

Linemen
https://x.com/i/status/1813075190445699466

Some podcast type media says that China is actively pursuing means to defeat the American power grid, before it invades Taiwan. The electrical grid really is any modern society's Achilles heel. The status quo would change immediately, in the face of a continent wide loss of power. And yet most people don't think or talk bout it...

Surprisingly the only time we went without power for more then a couple of hours here in Mexico was Hurricane Patricia. That was the most powerful hurricane ever recorded in the world. No deaths, power was out less than 24 hours. When we drove down the road after it was so surreal. I live in a dense tropical land, the trees standing didn't have one leaf on them for 20 miles. Living in the big cities here power goes out a lot. Just the opposite of most countries.
Tōtō

We had a hugely embarrassing power outage here in NZ last week - an entire region went down when the massive pylon that carries the only lines in fell over. Like a tree. Turns out someone decided to take all the big ground bolts off at once. Might get away with that on a straight line, but this was on a bend. Bad day on the job. Probably get quite thirsty processing that one.

contrahead wrote: ↑Wed Jul 17, 2024 6:28 amThe electrical grid really is any modern society's Achilles heel. The status quo would change immediately, in the face of a continent wide loss of power. And yet most people don't think or talk bout it...

This is the absolute truth. Turn the power off for 48 hours and people revert to cavemen. Post Hurricane Charlie, I learned a lot. Solar for rudimentary lights, cell phone and small electronics charging, pitcher pump for water in a pinch, septic runs down hill anyway. Always prepared to bunker in for 30 days at home.

At the start of 2012, we spent more than two weeks without power in near record low temperatures. Then a few months later, we spent another couple of weeks without power in near record high temperatures. We made getting a generator a priority and have not regretted the money we spent on it.

sweeps wrote: ↑Thu Jul 18, 2024 12:53 pm At the start of 2012, we spent more than two weeks without power in near record low temperatures. Then a few months later, we spent another couple of weeks without power in near record high temperatures. We made getting a generator a priority and have not regretted the money we spent on it.

Yep, now that I live up in the northern woods, in addition to the generators, I have wood for one of my multiple heat sources. These are lessons you don't forget.