Emergency Power

[travelover]

https://www.amazon.com/Xantrex-802-...=UTF8&qid=1498749113&sr=8-10&keywords=xantrex



And here's a pricier, but more capable option:
https://www.amazon.com/Xantrex-802-...=UTF8&qid=1498749113&sr=8-10&keywords=xantrex

They are handy, but battery replacement runs about $225 for the set.

This only has a 51 amp hour battery and discharging a lead acid battery more than 50% damages it, so effectively it is only 25 amp hours. The wet cell battery I linked earlier is 100 amp hours and much less expensive.

 

[NW-Bound]

Nope, fuel won't flow through the pump.
Pull out the pump you say? Have to drop the tank for that.

I need to get some emergency fuel from my cars a few times. Here's how to do it.

The fuel line from the tank to the engine compartment is a steel tube that runs under the chassis. Working under the hood, find the flexible hose that connects from the end of that tube to the fuel manifold. Disconnect the end of that hose, and hopefully it's long enough to drop into a container. Or you can find a way to extend it.

Now, the fuel pump must be running for the fuel to flow. To do that, disconnect the starter solenoid wire. This allows you to turn the ignition to "Start" and hold it there, yet the engine will not crank. The fuel pump will however run, and will get you a quart or even a gallon in not much time at all.

Then, reverse all the disconnects that you did. Make very sure the fuel hose is re-attached correctly. If it comes off later, very very bad news. Don't say that you have not been warned. This is to do in emergency situations only.

 

[FIREd]

I have a small Yamaha 2000 generator for my house. It is portable and pretty quiet.

For my condo, I have a Goal Zero portable recharger (which can be charged up before an emergency and recharged with portable solar panels).

Our only "need" during a power outage is to keep our electronics charged up as we have gas heaters/cookers which we can use. Long power outages are pretty frequent at our house, and very rare in our condo.

 

[GravitySucks]

Re: my comment on emergency cell phone service... which in many ways is more critical than power failure.

I have done some research and have come to the conclusion that Communications Service Providers have no legal obligation, or liability for their failure to provide services.

Taken to the logical conclusion, whether it's me, you, your mom or dad or your aunt Nellie... who has a critical life threatening crisis and is unable to use emergency services due to communications failure... it doesn't matter if the failure happens due to an act of nature, human error, or neglect. Furthermore, there is no penalty for failure to make efforts to restore the service in reasonable time... or at all.

We have stronger rules regarding Video Gaming, here in Illinois.

You can complain to your PUC
https://www.icc.illinois.gov/complaints/

In reality 13 hours to repair what I'm assuming is a rural / semi rural outage is not un realistic.
Also, just because no one saw anyone at the tower means nothing. It could have been a fiber or cable failure miles from the site causing the outage. It might not have even been an ATT outage that caused their service to go down, but services they contract for.

 

[imoldernu]

You can complain to your PUC
https://www.icc.illinois.gov/complaints/

In reality 13 hours to repair what I'm assuming is a rural / semi rural outage is not un realistic.
Also, just because no one saw anyone at the tower means nothing. It could have been a fiber or cable failure miles from the site causing the outage. It might not have even been an ATT outage that caused their service to go down, but services they contract for.

Thanks you for your reply... Am in the process of working with Woodhaven and neighbors, of putting together a formal complaint... though... with the current number of layoffs in our soon to be the Nation's first bankrupt state, don't know if there will be anyone there.

BTW... we do know, and did know where the problem was from the very beginning. Was just far down on the list of priorities I guess, as they did show up at 10PM that night.

In thinking this through... the question comes up... in an emergency, which would you rather lose... your electricity, or your contact with the outside world by phone or computer?

 

[zedd]

Power outage - First World Problem

Problem from living in a wealthy, industrialized nation that third worlders would probably roll their eyes at.

 

[Rustic23]

We were stationed near Cape Canaveral in the 80's when hurricane David came up the east coast. While the pilots took the aircraft north to SC, the wives evacuated to Orlando, and had no problem finding rooms. If a storm comes up one coast, generally you can evacuate to the other. If they come across the state, going north works. Orlando works in most cases due to the number of available rooms, but there are large cities in all directions.

As stated earlier, our plan is similar to Aerides. Within a days drive from our home is Dallas/Ft Worth, Lubbock, El Paso, and a whole lot of motels in between. The current thinking with storms is to shelter in place for wind, and evacuate for storm surge. With many folks having to go back to work after the storm, room availability is not as bad as one would think. Staying put during the storm, if that is an option, means your are traveling against the traffic when you leave.

 

[Blue Collar Guy]

I got a courtesy call from our electric company a few days ago. It was an electronic voice saying (my version)we think you will lose your power today, have a good day. I told the bride ok call up a dog friendly hotel , get 2 rooms make sure they have a generator and make sure we can cancel. About an hour later i go for my stroll to the gym. I see about 10 emergency electrical trucks all over the place. I go home , look at the website for the outage map. 210 houses are without power all around me. The lights flickered a few times and every time I said "OK thats it lets go: ", hahahah. We got spared this time.

 

[Just_Steve]

I need to get some emergency fuel from my cars a few times. Here's how to do it.

The fuel line from the tank to the engine compartment is a steel tube that runs under the chassis. Working under the hood, find the flexible hose that connects from the end of that tube to the fuel manifold. Disconnect the end of that hose, and hopefully it's long enough to drop into a container. Or you can find a way to extend it.

Now, the fuel pump must be running for the fuel to flow. To do that, disconnect the starter solenoid wire. This allows you to turn the ignition to "Start" and hold it there, yet the engine will not crank. The fuel pump will however run, and will get you a quart or even a gallon in not much time at all.

Then, reverse all the disconnects that you did. Make very sure the fuel hose is re-attached correctly. If it comes off later, very very bad news. Don't say that you have not been warned. This is to do in emergency situations only.

Good idea, thanks. But it sure will be a SHTF before I do it.

 

[Aerides]

Originally Posted by Aerides
Here in S Fla, our plan for Hurricane's is to stay in the house during the storm, then assuming it's secure afterwards - we leave to the nearest hotel, which is likely several hours drive.



Yes, finding a hotel within 200 miles can be tough, but 500 miles from Miami gets you almost to Atlanta, so there are plenty of options. Florida does a good job of clearing roads, and has one of the best (maybe THE best) emergency management systems for natural disasters of any state.

After Wilma hit S.FL. in 2005, my wife and kids bailed out for Disney World 2 days after it hit while I dealt with the local situation until power was restored 2 weeks later. Would have joined them but for work obligations

I'm in a different part of FL now, and my plan is the same as Aerides. No reason to be inconvenienced as long as your dwelling survives intact and can be secured.

I did the same. We spent the day after Wilma doing initial clean up and hoping for good news. The 2nd day DH suggested we GTFO and we spent a few days up in Orlando. Driving up there took about 3x as long as normal, but was well worth it!

 

[Redbugdave]

I have siphoned gas from my newer model vehicles using a 10 foot length of vinyl hose with the end cut off at an angle. As you push the hose in the filler hole, rotate the hose and push. Sometimes you have to back up and push again. These newer vehicles have a check ball valve to stop gas from draining out in case of a rollover. The smaller size hose and it's limpness helps it snake by the valve. Gas siphons slower with the smaller hose but I occasionally fill my gas cans anyways for my mower and ATV.

 

[Music Lover]

You realize how quickly things go downhill when gas stations run out, the lights are off everywhere, and the grocery stores only take cash.

YMMV

Being prepared for an emergency should include having a reasonable stash of cash on hand. Credit and debit cards are useless in a power failure, but cash always works.

 

[NW-Bound]

A car battery might be ~ 100 Amp-hours, so at ~ 12V that's 1200 watt hours (but be conservative, you need to be able to start your car to recharge it!)...

This only has a 51 amp hour battery and discharging a lead acid battery more than 50% damages it, so effectively it is only 25 amp hours. The wet cell battery I linked earlier is 100 amp hours and much less expensive.

On top of being able to use only 1/2 of a lead-acid battery capacity, there's a further reduction due to the Peukert effect. If you double the current you draw from a battery, you would expect the duration to be halved, but in real life it is shorter than that.

Lead-acid batteries have their capacity rated at a 20-hr discharge rate. So for a 100Ah battery, that capacity is measured at a 5A drain. Now, suppose you run a microwave oven through an inverter, and let's say the current drawn is 100A. Will that battery last 1 hour? No! Any RV'er who ever runs such a heavy load on a battery will tell you that the battery will be drained in minutes, not 1 hour.

Peukert alpha factor for a flooded battery is around 0.33. That means when you increase the current 20x (5A to 100A), its capacity is reduced by 20^0.33 = 2.7X. This means your 100Ah battery is now 37Ah. And then, you can only use 1/2 of that, so it is now 18.5Ah.

Worse, the lead-acid battery voltage drops off when under such a heavy load. So, in order to get 1.2kW out of the battery, the inverter will draw even higher than 100A because the battery voltage may sag down to less than 11V. One can see how he only gets about 5 min out of the battery instead of that 1 hour, when running a load as heavy as a microwave.

With two marine batteries in parallel feeding a 2kW pure sinewave inverter, I usually run the RV microwave oven for about 10 min before the voltage sags badly and the inverter cuts off. But 10 min is more than I need to reheat some dishes.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peukert's_law

 

[Cat-tirement]

We just had a residential solar system installed on our house. Many (most?) grid-tied solar systems do not operate during a power failure. However, we chose an inverter which will supply emergency power to a special outlet after flipping a switch (as long as the sun is shining). There seems to be only one company that provides this. Up to 2000W is provided, if the panels are producing that much. This will easily keep various batteries charged, and I figure it will also power the freezer for a few hours a day, which should be enough to keep it cold for an extended period. If there is an extended outage during cold weather, I can run power to the gas fireplace.

We did not buy the solar system for emergency purposes, but there really wasn't any significant extra cost for the emergency power outlet. At some point we could still add a battery system, but they are too expensive for now.

 

[Scubamax]

Like others have mentioned, we have a small Yamaha inverter generator which can be run on propane or gasoline, and always have a couple of propane tanks mostly full. You can keep the fridge going as well as charge up your phone, and a couple of lights. On top of that our RV allows us some optionality as well as a bug out buggy.

 

[ls99]

A year or two ago had a manual transfer switch installed at the house, moved a 12KW gen set to the house from the mancave which runs 90% of the time on solar/deep cycle batteries.

Best investment recently. No power failures save a few minutes of occasional interruptions since.

Do run the gen set occasionally.

 

[youbet]

DW and I do quite a bit of dry camping in our little hard-sided pop-up. So, doing without commercial power for a few days wouldn't really be an issue. We'd use the same gear for some lighting, radio, Internet, phone, etc., we use when we're camping and is right in the garage.

There are, however, issues with keeping the house secure and running I need to take care of:

1. Heat if the outage occurs in the winter.

2. Sump pump if the outage occurs outside of deep winter.

3. Refrigeration if the outage occurs in the warm months.

We've been in our home 40+ years and, although we've had a handful of under 24 hour outages, have always gotten through without an issue. So, our urgency to upgrade our emergency power provisions hasn't been too keen.

1. Heat - We have a woodstove in the finished basement and as long as we're home to stoke it, would keep things warm enough to prevent the pipes from freezing. We know how to shut off the water and drain the pipes if needed. If we're not home and lose power during a winter deep freeze situation, there would be an issue. Although, we do shut off the water when we leave for cold weather trips of more than a day or two.

2. Sump pump - We do have a high tier, battery operated back-up pump. In the event of a power outage during times of low sump pump activity, we'd be fine. A power outage lasting for days during a monsoon could be trouble. At a minimum, we'd have to exchange sump pump batteries (we have two) charging them alternately from the car.

3. Refrigeration - No back-up currently exists. An extended, warm weather power outage might mean losing 20 - 30 lbs of walleye (and sometimes some other species) filets. Ouch! An inconvenience more than a disaster, I'd still rather avoid it. Our son lives 20 miles away and if they had power, we could move things over there.

It seems like the ultimate answer is a NG powered, whole house generator. Problems all solved whether we're home or not. But that would cost several kilobux and in 40 years, we've yet to have a situation where we would have needed it other than a matter of convenience during a short outage.

Solutions that would work while we're home to implement them seem inexpensive and easy. Solutions that take care of the issues automatically while we're away seem expensive and complicated.

 

[MRG]

3. Refrigeration - No back-up currently exists. An extended, warm weather power outage might mean losing 20 - 30 lbs of walleye (and sometimes some other species) filets. Ouch! An inconvenience more than a disaster, I'd still rather avoid it. Our son lives 20 miles away and if they had power, we could move things over there.

I agree and wanted to share a fish experience.

Back in the '70's FIL/MIL went on a trip for several weeks. They asked us to check on the place and we did once.

When they returned the stand up freezer had died, it was full of fish! It had been well over a week since we'd checked on the house and it was really, really bad. FUL was pretty upset, but it was OK... eventually.

I don't have any different answers, enjoy the walleye.

 

[Koolau]

We lose power quite often. Fortunately, our condo has a diesel generator which will operate the elevators and the hall lighting - no power for individual apartments. The only critical equipment we have is the fridge/freezer. It will keep stuff frozen/cold for several hours if we don't open it. We have LED flashlights/lanterns for light and also battery powered radios.

Our condo does not allow us to use fuel powered generators. There's no place to install any significant solar array. I've looked into battery powered inverters but as pointed out by other posters, storing enough power in lead acid (even deep cycle batteries) would not provide enough energy to run a fridge freezer for any length of time (without a massive bank of batteries.)

At one time I thought I could charge batteries with the car and transport them back to the apartment. I've kind of given up on that idea as impractical.

So far our longest power outage was 18 hours and we did not lose any food. Lots of people did and HECO reimbursed many of the losses. Should a hurricane hit, all bets would be off and there would be significant losses due to power outages. "Routine" high winds knock power out all the time. Our "grid" is not very robust either as we found out when the Island lost power.

We kind of look at the vulnerability as part of the price of Paradise. YMMV

 

[youbet]

, enjoy the walleye.

Thanks! Locally, we'd have to pay up to $15/lb for walleye filets (usually Canadian sourced) at the market. By spending the first week of June and the first week of Sept at our favorite lake in far NW Minnesota, we get walleye filets for only $50/lb! (Cost of the trip / lbs of filets brought home.) Quite a savings, eh?

 

[Telly]

I decided NOT to go the Natural Gas big backup generator route, as there is a reasonable chance we will move from this house.

Went with the Honda 2,000 watt inverter generator. Created a pass-through on the side of the house near where the generator would be set up. The pass-through is a NEMA box with a locking connector in it to plug the generator into. From this outside box is a conduit connection straight through the wall to the back of a 4" box set into the inside wall, with a commercial 4 x 20 Amp receptacle on it. All the wiring is vastly over-rated as compared to the Honda's output, but that's OK.

From the inside outlet plate, can run an extension cord to the refrigerator, one to lighting and box fans, etc. Can run a small old microwave we have (the big one is built-in, and I'm not taking it out to get to the plug!).

Thought about our two gas furnaces, decided that the capability to run the smaller one was best, as we can distribute air to the bigger part of the house by opening doors and using a box fan to circulate air through in a big circle. So an extension cord can be run to the smaller furnace, where I installed a Reliance TF151W furnace transfer box (from Amazon). Easy to install, easy to use.

Also installed a small pass-through setup into the garage, a 15 Amp input box outside, with a regular duplex receptacle inside. So another cord from the generator to this pass-through can power the garage door opener, and the FIOS box, or any other 120 volt load in the garage. I decided I wanted to do it this way with a second pass-through, as the door between the house and garage could then remain closed, not running a cord through the doorway.

Having light, full communication, a cold refrigerator, microwave, heat if needed, box fans if need to be cool, is like a luxury!

I have cords all made up and ready, so setting it up and getting it going is not a long process, just follow the steps. I do not let gas sit in it for over a few weeks, as it seems the #1 way to have trouble with them is to let gas go bad in them.

The generator has an Eco-Throttle mode on it, that throttles it down to an idle with no/light load, and increases engine speed as load increases, so it is pretty quiet, not like the typical generators that run loudly at constant RPM to hold 60 Hz., no matter what the load is.

Using my "Kill A Watt" meter (learned about it many years ago here on E-R.Org), I created a list of wattages for devices most likely to be used in a power outage, and have marked some with tape.

The only thing I can't run, is Air Conditioning. But after having a 2 1/2 day power outage one hot late May some years ago, the ability to have a fan or more, keep food cool and cook with microwave is great!

 

[Morricol61]

We too have all the gear for self sufficient camping and a few days without power wouldn't be a problem. I always have 3 x 5 litre frozen bottles of water in the chest freezer which will help keep everything cold for a few days plus a 65 litre Esky (Ice Box) which will keep the perishables fresh for a few days with just one of the 5 litre freezer blocks.

We have a gas BBQ and stove, a 2 burner gas camping stove and single burner spirit stove should we need it.

Our pantry has a good supply of non-perishables. No we are not doomsday preppers but I do like a well stocked pantry.

We have gravity feed rainwater tanks, several battery operated LED torches and a kerosene lantern. We have a camping shower, porta potti, hot water bottles and wood burning stove.

The car can be used to charge phones and laptops and for the radio. We used to have a generator but sold it several years ago as we'd never used it in the 10 years we'd owned it.

When you think about what you would lose in the event of a severe power outage, it is unlikely that it would make the cost of a whole of house generating system a worthwhile purchase. Our insurance would compensate us for any financial loss, without us needing to spend $thousands on generators or a stand alone solar systems.

 

[Blueskies123]

Telly said "The only thing I can't run, is Air Conditioning. But after having a 2 1/2 day power outage one hot late May some years ago, the ability to have a fan or more, keep food cool and cook with microwave is great!
__________________"
I waited for a nice sale on a 10KBTU window AC until, I think it was a little over $100. My medium size generator can run that for a few hours at night before we go to bed.

 

[Chuckanut]

Wow! Plenty of great suggestions. Thanks.

And, now I know what an inverter is.

 

[SteveNU]

I have a Honda 2kw generator that I bought to use when we go camping but it also serves as a backup for the house. I have a connection for it outside and it powers up my entire distribution panel using a simple generator interlock kit. That way I can power up any load I want without having to have an expensive transfer switch installed which would only be able to supply certain selected loads.

We've been without power numerous times for many days and I can keep the freezer and fridge cold, lights, heat, a/c etc. Just have to rotate the loads. The only thing I can't power up is my well pump but we've always been able to work around that limitation.