[HWR_14]

> 500 gallon propane tank implies at least 7 days of runtime but much more if we conserved. I can’t believe we lived without this

How unreliable is your power grid? It's a lot easier having someone else manage the entire infrastructure. Unless you're in an area with common widespread natural disasters there's no reason to expect a 7 day outage ever.

[rsync]

"Unless you're in an area with common widespread natural disasters there's no reason to expect a 7 day outage ever."

We live on a ranch near San Francisco.

We have several 24 hour and 1 or 2 48 hour long outages every winter.

See, when your power goes out you are one of thousands affected and your utility will spend man hours and overtime, etc., to get it back on very quickly. When our power goes out we are one of five. Or one of ten. They'll get to us Monday. Monday afternoon, that is.

I forget what year it was (2017 ?) our area had a 7-ish day power outage ... related to fires and PG&E transmission shutoffs. In other recent years we have had multi-day outages for similar reasons.

We've always needed a generator because of how long it takes service crews to get to remote, rural, dead-end locations like ours - but in 2022 even people in town want them because of the administrative power shutoffs ...

[988747]

>> We have several 24 hour and 1 or 2 48 hour long outages every winter.

That makes the US seem like a third world country. In my apartment in central Europe I experienced only one, few hours long, power outage in over 10 years (not counting the few times when electricity was temporarily cut off because of unpaid bills :)

[rsync]

Yes and no.

On the one hand I do find it to be an example of civilizational inadequacy and I am critical of my state and local government as a result.

On the other hand, I have made a decision to live in a very, very rural place that has almost nothing at all in common with the very urban place you describe living in.

[lolsal]

> Unless you're in an area with common widespread natural disasters there's no reason to expect a 7 day outage ever.

Are thunderstorms considered a natural disaster (sincerely asking)? I've lived in a few states, in a few rural areas and sometimes storms would knock power lines down for a handful of days. I don't remember any 7 day stretches, but 2-4 days was not uncommon. Even more in the winter when I was in a snowy area.

[mbreese]

Not usually, but you’re absolutely right to think about it. My dad lives in a rural area in the Midwest and often has to deal with power outages lasting for a few days after particularly bad storms or ice. I think 7 days is probably on the long side of an expected outage, but not too crazy to plan for.

[nybble41]

> I've lived in a few states, in a few rural areas and sometimes storms would knock power lines down for a handful of days. I don't remember any 7 day stretches, but 2-4 days was not uncommon.

A derecho[0] hit in my area (eastern Iowa) in August of 2020. This is an urban & suburban area with fairly reliable power—even short outages are rare, and I can't think of any instances where power was out more than a few hours—but after that storm there were dozens of miles of high-voltage power lines in need of complete replacement, along with supporting structures in some cases, as well as issues with generators and substations. My own home was without power for at least four days and some of my friends didn't get their power back for almost two weeks.

I used my vehicle's 1kW alternator as a generator for the first two days to run a portable 12V refrigerator and to recharge devices & battery packs in combination with a 200W inverter. It used surprisingly little fuel, perhaps 1/3 gallon per hour at most, and it was quieter and had better-filtered exhaust than the portable generators some of my neighbors were using, though of course it wouldn't be able to handle higher-power appliances like residential refrigerators or A/C. After that I took an impromptu trip out of the affected area until the power was restored—we never actually reached a point where one couldn't find gasoline for vehicles or generators, but there were long lines are all the local gas stations and I didn't want to risk it when there was another choice.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_2020_Midwest_derecho

[HWR_14]

I wouldn't consider a standard thunderstorm a natural disaster in what I was referring to. A hurricane, earthquake or tornado would be (although a very severe thunderstorm could be). I've never seen a thunderstorm knock out power for a meaningful amount of time. But it could be because I don't live in a particularly rural area.

[rotifer]

I expect we mostly agree, but I disagree with your use of "ever". :-)

From the "January 1998 North American ice storm" Wikipedia article [1]:

    The area south of Montreal [...] was nicknamed the triangle noir ("dark or black triangle") [...] for the total lack of electricity for weeks.
    
    [...]
    
    In Quebec alone, 150,000 people were without electricity as of January 28.

(The storm started about Jan. 4.) The Montreal area is not prone to common natural disasters.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_1998_North_American_ic...

[doubled112]

Some Ottawa residents have been without power since May 21.

After the storm whipped through, I believe over 170K customers were without power.

That's not a time line I'd ever have considered possible in a major city in May.

Worst it's ever been, supposedly. Topped the 1998 ice storm and the tornado in 2018 for number of people in the dark.

[HWR_14]

That was 4 million people in an event that was so rare that it's the standout example of the last 40 years. The majority of people in North America seem unlikely to experience such an outage.

[SomewhatLikely]

I would have thought the same until I moved to a suburb of Seattle. We've had two 5+ day periods of power outage in the last couple years. And it's not like we're exactly in the boonies. Houses in our neighborhood are densely packed and regularly go for $2+ million. But there's lots of trees in the Pacific Northwest and when the wind blows hard it knocks down branches across the whole region, so 50k+ people lose power all on the same day due to many downed lines and it takes a week to get to everyone.

[reactjavascript]

>> How unreliable is your power grid?

With climate change, I believe a lot of formerly reliable power grids will become less so in the future. Investments in distributed power generation and local storage will likely lead to a higher quality of life outcome for more people.

[_carbyau_]

I heartily agree. Climate change isn't about a gentle 2 degree rise in temperatures. It is about 2 degrees over the whole damn planet being a LOT of energy and it isn't distributed evenly. This means more extreme weather events - both cold and hot - than we have been historically used to.

Electrical distribution will have to get better to keep expected reliability. Or if you are cynical about the prospects of that actually occurring, you cover your own needs.

[Raptor22]

> How unreliable is your power grid?

If you live in Puerto Rico, extremely unreliable [0, 1]

> It's a lot easier having someone else manage the entire infrastructure

Indeed it is, if they're competent [2, 3]

> Unless you're in an area with common widespread natural disasters there's no reason to expect a 7 day outage ever

Puerto Rico, along with the mid to southern east coast of the US, along with coasts on the Gulf of Mexico, are not strangers to powerful hurricanes. As climate change gets worse, the impacts of these phenomena may increase. After Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico in September of 2017, it took *months* for power to be restored to most of the island [4]

[0] (Island-wide outage in 2016, before Hurricane Maria): https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-37436392

[1] (Island-wide outage in April of this year): https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2022/04/07/major-...

[2] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/businesses-puerto-rico-f...

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/09/us/puerto-rico-power-outa...

[4] https://www.npr.org/2018/08/15/638739819/nearly-a-year-after...

[HWR_14]

Yeah, PR (and TX and CA) seem to have poor power grids.

PR (and parts of TX) at least have the excuse of hurricanes. Although TX failing because of the unexpected people turning on their ACs in the summer is a bit much.

[kube-system]

You can be on a very reliable grid, and lose power for an extended period of time due to issues with local distribution lines. This is common in areas with above ground distribution lines that experience storms.

[empyrrhicist]

Here in Iowa many would have previously said the same thing, but the Derecho a few years ago proved otherwise. Never hurts to be prepared - we now have a generator and a dc-ac converter for my Volt PHEV.

[HWR_14]

The Derecho destroyed 2/3 of the trees in the affected area. By definition, it was a uniquely bad experience as no future storm could cause that much tree damage (well, in decades if enough regrow.) Planning for a repeat seems like a mistake based on a traumatic experience with an outlier.

[empyrrhicist]

Maybe in the hardest hit areas. We did not lose 2/3 by a long shot but were still out for a week. If we experienced those winds again we'd absolutely have similar devastation. Not to mention, disaster preparedness is about flexibility. Tornados, solar flares, cyber attacks on the grid, regional cascading failures... All of these are nice times to have access to secondary power sources. Plus the one in my Volt is obviously super mobile.

[speg]

Never say ever. We just lost power for 5 days, and some are still without power today (day 9) after high winds (130km/h) ripped apart our local infrastructure. This is in Ottawa, Canada.

[technothrasher]

We've had two >7 day electricity outages in the past 15 years here in central Massachusetts due to snow storms.

[bell-cot]

Assume that there's both a lead time and a fixed cost to having the local propane supplier come out and top up your "7 day" tank. And that such tanks are readily available only in a few specific sizes, and ...

[imwillofficial]

What an inexperienced comment. Stuff happens and it pays to be prepared

[Cd00d]

Above ground power in areas with large trees is a recipe for longer power outages.

I was in northern NJ when Superstorm Sandy hit, and that suburb had many houses with multi-week outages.

[HWR_14]

Yes, a coastal region that could be exposed to hurricanes would be an area with natural disasters. And Superstorm Sandy was, IIRC, a hurricane that went so far north because of global warming.