Any Generators, Power Banks, Solar Panels, etc…?
Edit: So I’m gonna answer my own question. I’ll probably freak out and would have zero generators to deal with it. Heater is Gas, but I don’t know if gas would work during power outage. Cooking, well there’s a butane burner stove. I have 3 10000mah batteries, but they have 60% efficiency due to power loss during transfer, so its effectively 6000mah, enough to roughly charge my 5000mah battery once, 3 batteries is 3-4 charges. Then I’d be bored with zero entertainment, along with all the food melting and going bad, very not fun 🙃
Solar power on the roof, powerwall battery backup, and 3100 gallons of rainwater. All electric appliances here. We could go weeks without power.
Same. 14kW system on the roof, 2800 gallons of water storage refilled from well with electric pump. 4xPowerwall batteries for storage/backup, all electric appliances/hvac.
We can theoretically go for weeks as well, assuming moderate sun.
Central Texas, 260+ days of sun here.
I take it you live somewhere that’s fairly sunny year round? We had a visit from a door to door solar salesperson stop be recently, so I dug in a little. We get a little over 6 peek solar hours in the summer, but come winter we’re down to around 2. Our energy use last month was about 25 kwh/day. There’s basically no chance of us generating all of that :( Add in a third of that being my plugin Volt, which charges at night, and it’s really not looking good for generating all our own power.
San Diego, so yeah except for " winter."
I can probably survive as long as water is available. I assume, heating (gas) will fail, but then the house temperature will only drop slowly and a sleeping bag with some blankets should keep us alive. Food? Tough, I don’t keep much food and most of what i have is refrigerated. But then things don’t spoil instantly. I would first eat what’s in the fridge, then from the freezer, then whatever is kept at room temperature.
I guess two weeks. The real problem is all the other people and no functioning police, fire brigade, ambulance. I don’t grow my own food or hunt, so this will be practical problem, but I’m more afraid of all the other people who are also desperate.
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I… um… What’s the spring for? 🤨
Water spring, not metal spring.
Oh! Hahaha that makes a lot more sense 😄
I’m literally dead in about a week. All of my heating, cooking, and refrigeration are electric, and I have no backup supply or the means to safely add a backup. So I’d have no food, very little water, and I’d freeze to death.
Try downloading this guide and following some of the advice in it. It’s Sweden’s emergency preparedness guide.
https://www.msb.se/sv/publikationer/om-krisen-eller-kriget-kommer-pa-engelska/
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I’m on the grid, but I didn’t come from it.
If anything hits me too bad, I’m not beyond living in a car or just straight leaving the area entirely.
That’s how cities work - a 300-home apartment building isn’t going to have 300 generators on the balconies and expect each family to maintain one - it has a single grid connection with specialists to maintain the electric.
Solar + home battery, might need to ration it occasionally, but I’d be pretty OK.
If you’re going to be in your home for ~10 years and you have a roof that can reasonably accommodate, solar is worth looking into. Especially if you already have investments and you don’t want to put everything you have in the stock market.
No problem, happens all the time here. We have had “loadshedding” and random outages for years, so we are well prepared. All the lights in the house is solar, and I have two solar charged power banks (2kw units) for the computers and fridge (if required, the fridge can last two days or so without power, but this is only a problem on overcast days, which is not too often here (South Africa, near Hammanskraal)) recently we have been without water for days at a time, but for that I have 5000 liters of water and solar pressure pump, gas geyser in one of the bathrooms.
Former communist country, business as usual even though it’s been a while since.
Even in the US if you grew up in a rural area, power outages were a part of life and being a distance from a city meant you kept what you needed on hand.
I spent many summer nights playing board games by candle light.
Why is no one talking about water?
I got a generator and some fuel, some rice and beans. Should last a couple if weeks. I feel like it us unrealistic to plan for longer. If there is a society wide collapse, it really doesn’t matter how much gas you have in your generator.
I’ve got beer. The legend is all those IPAs were originally created to survive months long voyages
Tons of food in the fridge that would do fine outside with current temps. House is gas heated. I’d say we’d be good until we ran out of food. Probably a month or two including stuff from the pantry. Stove top and oven is also gas.
Very little electricity though, but you dont need that to survive. I’ll play with my tools if I get bored. Would suck without much light
My house has a gas-fired boiler. In theory, I should keep heat during a power outage, right?
In practice, the circulation pump needs electricity, so the house gets kinda chilly during power outages.
Hmm, I should see about getting a backup battery for the boiler.
We have 2 cars so could load up everyone human, dog, and cat and go somewhere else, so I guess theoretically a lifetime.
Longest blackout I’ve experienced was 2 weeks and my WHOLE house was electric, well pump included. It was getting sketchy by the end, so I guess at least a couple of weeks here, longer if there is safe water.
I could go up to six weeks without power or if there was some event that caused significant social unrest, provided I’m not murdered. I made it a habit during the first Trump admin to have an emergency food and water supply, largely because he really isn’t a terribly competent leader, and then when COVID hit and people bought out everything everywhere, it just reinforced the importance of having supplies on-hand.
Probably pretty long. There’s plenty of wood and propane, dry food, and salt to preserve things.
checks camping and hunting gear in closet
Yeah I’m good.
Did two weeks after Helene. Generators, UPSs, and self-hosted services kept us entertained and the security cams powered up. There was some rationing for three or four days until the gas stations got power but we were ready. By the second day we were running the air conditioner at night to sleep and didn’t miss any football games on tv.
I have a small 2kw military surplus generator that’s big enough to power my fridge, oil fired heating system and my computers. If I need to power a microwave or toaster oven, I can unplug the fridge or turn off the heating for a few minutes without an issues. The generator only uses about 3 gallons a day and with the heating oil tank, I have enough fuel for around 100 days. For those that don’t know, diesel fuel and home heating oil are the same thing. Heating oil and offroad diesel have a dye added to indicate that it has no onroad tax applied.
A bunch of macho men gave me shit for only getting a 2kw generator when they had 10 to 15kw generators, but I know what I need and will enjoy not having to wait in line for fuel at the gas stations when there’s a wide area blackout.
