Power Outages-

[mattl]

Had one last night about 11pm. power out till after 1 pm.Hate being without internet. It was a minor outage, only 3 homes total were out, rest of sub was lit as per normal.

Anyway, what do you do when the power goes out? I flip the main breaker quickly, then turn all the individual breakers off.After the power comes back on I turn on each circuit one by one. Trying to avoid a power surge, plus it exercises the breakers, something an electrician once told me was a good idea from time to time.

Had a bit of a problem, my VOIP phone was acting up and my main computer did an update and lost the kernel, took about an hour to get things back to normal.

 

[rp2813]

Don't move to California.  PG&E has made a real mess of things here.

 

[qsd-dan]

PG&E has made a real mess of things here.

Very understated comment. A whole house generator with an auto transfer switch may be a decent investment for the future.

 

[wayupnorth]

I have a whole house generator and it takes 10-15 seconds and it starts,
and everything is fine. When the power is back on, the transfer switch gives a LOUD snap, generator powers down and its like nothing ever happened.

 

[warmsecondrinse]

When the power goes I turn off the tv, laptops, dehumidifiers, & dishwasher if any of them are running. If it's daylight, I turn on one light so I'll know when the power comes back.

 

[maytag85]

When the power goes out I usually will go for a drive. Doesn’t make sense being at home having nothing to do since there is no power.

Reply #1 PG&E from what I heard has terrible service even more so than SoCal Edison. Last power outage I remember was last summer and this wasn’t during a heatwave but a planned power outage to do maintenance on the power lines in my area and that’s the last time it’s been out within the past year.

 

[mattl]

I do have a genny but it's used so infrequently it's buried in the shed. I worry about "dirty" power and modern electronics which is in everything.Luckily years go by without an outage for me.

 

[circlew]

There hasn't been one on my street for a couple months, at least while I was home. The neighbor kid mentioned it being off briefly a couple weeks ago, though. Two of my neighbors have generators that run on natural gas, and start automatically, as does the nearby school. I have a portable gas powered unit, but haven't used it for a couple years. It needs to be serviced before further use. I bought it when doing construction on my house until the new electric service was installed.

The permanently installed gen sets such as the larger Kohler, Cummins, etc. put out very clean power, with good frequency and voltage regulation. There shouldn't be any issues with operating electronics with these. My Aunt Doris had a 60 KW Kohler diesel that kept everything in her house operating as normal for five days after hurricane Katrina.

 

[iowabear]

Just had an 11 day power outage here beginning at noon on August 10th and lasting until late evening on August 21st.  Cable internet took an additional week to repair and some nearby neighbors are still without cable and internet.

 

11 days without power is really enough to try your last nerve.  We were all cutting up tree debris day after day so I tell people it felt like a bad camping trip.

 

 

 

[beehiveboy]

Maybe it’s a UK/US thing, but it has absolutely never occurred to me to do anything in a power-cut other than wait for the power to come back on. I didn’t realise it could cause problems.

 

[estesguy]

I usually at least turn off the central air conditioner, if its summer time. By the time power has been restored, I'm sure most everyones AC thermostat is calling for cooling. I've always been amazed that the power grid can handle all those LRA (locked rotor amps) compressors coming on at the same time, but I guess it does.

 

[qsd-dan]

My Aunt Doris had a 60 KW Kohler diesel

Does she own a castle? I've seen 30KW natural gas generator power 3 large A/C units all running at the same time and full power to a 4000 sq house with 2 80 gallon electric water heaters.

 

[ea56]

We Are Facing Power Outages

thru Thursday morning due to the Red Flag warning for wildfire because of the excessive heat, high winds and extremely dry condition of the terrain.  Last night the power was turned off for over 18,000 Sonoma county residents, and the cutoff for the shutoffs was just about 3 miles north of us.

 

I’ve got our freezer packed with ice in case I have to put everything perishable into an ice chest.  Since the pandemic I’ve only been grocery shopping once a week on Wednesday morning.  Anticipating the fire season I’ve been using all the frozen meat and vegetables.  Tomorrow, I’m only going to buy what we can use in a week.

 

We are going to live with the threat of wildfires and power outages every Summer and Fall for the foreseeable future.

 

Eddie

 

[hobbyapocalypse]

First thing I do when the power goes out is unplug the fridge. I asked my elderly dad to please do the same and he scoffed. "I'm not moving the fridge to pull the plug blah blah blah...." I said, you have a circuit breaker labeled FRIDGE don't you? Yeah. Well flip it off. Of course he never did, til he heard from one of his FRIENDS that they had to replace a fridge after a power outage.

 

[chachp]

Reply #9

 

<span style="font-family: helvetica;">DITTO!  I never thought of it either.  We just sit and wait for it to come back and usually it's so fast that we wouldn't get all these things done before it came back on and we'd be reversing it all.</span>

 

<span style="font-family: helvetica;">We've been in this house about 2 1/2 years and I think the power has gone off once.  The last house was 13 years and I don't think the power went out more than a few times.  The only thing I did on one occasion was try to open the garage door which I was unable to do.  I didn't know we had an issue with the door spring and the door was too heavy to open.  When we moved into this house we had the openers replaced with those that have a battery backup but I think it was a waste of money because we haven't had to use it.</span>

 

<span style="font-family: helvetica;">The whole house generators are a scarcity around here.  You mostly see them where there is a medical need for consistent power.</span>

 

[mattl]

The issue is a large power spike can damage electronics. Most have some sort of built in protection, but do not want to risk it. one of these days I'll get around to installing a whole house surge protector, odds are after I need it.

 

[dermacie]

We lost power a week ago Thursday into Friday for 15 hours, it was torture.

 

[sfh074]

I can't stand to be without Internet as well .....

so I put the modem and Ooma box on a UPS I bought from Costco. Power goes out and I'm good for Internet and landline for at least 8 hours. Had power go out about 3 months ago. Had Internet for most of the day. Laptop died after 4 hours so I plugged laptop into the UPS and kept going. It also keeps the modem from rebooting when the power glitches ...... which happens several times a year here.

 

[twintubdexter]

<span style="font-size: 14pt; color: #008000;">These horror stories really scare me. In the almost 20 years  I've lived here, I've only had the power go off twice. Once when a vehicle hit a major power pole (utilities are underground in my area) and once when a small junction box near the sidewalk started smoking. Edison has turned the power off a couple of times for a few hours for maintenance but they let you know weeks in advance. Other than that service has been very good. I go ballistic when the cable and internet go out. I'd need to be tranquilized if the power went off during a super-heat wave like we're having now. I'm going to finally have solar installed in the fall/winter, but of course if the regular power goes out your solar goes with it. My house is one of the last in the neighborhood to be solar-less. People are starting to talk.</span>

 

<span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">Ralph...that's sad to hear about PG&E. When I was growing up in SJ they were the envy of utility companies everywhere, well managed with very reasonable rates. Almost all of the electric power generated was hydroelectric. The more electricity you used the lower your rate was. See how that would fly today anywhere. What happened is too many people...way too many.</span>

 

<span style="font-size: 14pt; color: #008000;">Even though I get a 30% discount on my electric and gas (negligible even in winter) I got the highest electric bill ever last month. Every day except 3 were above average for August and 3 records were set. On Sunday it was 121 degrees in Woodland Hills. This was the highest temperature ever recorded in all of Los Angeles County...ever! The weather...it's a changin. Something's blowing in the wind. Today it happens to be wild-fire smoke.</span>

[this post was last edited: 9/8/2020-19:06]