Whitefang Posted August 15, 2021 Share Posted August 15, 2021 Yeah. Big whup! To clarify.... Last Wed. a huge storm ripped through my vicinity of Southeast Mich. and left not only some major flooding in some areas(not mine, thank goodness) and high winds caused an estimated 500,000 DTE(the big energy conglomerate in these parts) customers without power. One which was me. My power resumed around 6:00-7:00 pm last night. I was at a nearby sister in law's house(she didn't lose power) watching the Tigers game and hoping Miguel Cabrera would hit home run #500(didn't happen) when I decided to call my landline phone( connected through my cable service). I knew that if my home phone rang it would mean my electric power was resumed. So for basically three days I was unable to visit and communicate with all you good people here since my only iNet connection is through a desktop PC. And this morning was spent throwing out all the foods in my fridge and freezer section that was rendered useless due to the outage. Luckily, there wasn't really that much anyway as I was overdue for restocking to begin with. Just had to toss one chicken breast, a few ground sirloin patties and tilapia fillets. Stuff that once frozen can't be used if it gets thawed then refrozen. My frozen vegetables and pierogi will be OK though. Then in the fridge part I had to toss the fat free half and half, the 1/2 cup of milk that was all I had let and some salad I made Tues. , and the cantaloupe I cut up and put in a container and some turkey breakfast sausage. I'm pretty sure my fruit and salad dressings and condiments will be OK to use though. So I'm guessing maybe 60-70$$ and five or six bags of replacement groceries will do me. It was lucky that I could still cook a few things however. The gas still worked, and though my stove is an electric ignition kind, I, in the case of these situations, keep one of those long barreled barbecue starter lighters handy. And an old stove top percolator around the house too. And though I'm seriously considering contacting the Generac people soon, in case that's not an option I'm considering getting back into keeping oil lamps in the house( like I had in the '70's) for if or when this happens again. They came in handy back then when there was a power blackout 'round here in '79. Anyway, glad to be back. Whitefang 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mihcmac Posted August 15, 2021 Share Posted August 15, 2021 Glad to have you back.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdgm Posted August 15, 2021 Share Posted August 15, 2021 (edited) I remember power cuts (as we call them in the UK) but they are so rare now. I still have some candles - and 3-4 torches at strategic handy points around the house. However power cuts will come back no doubt due to the extreme weather conditions we are beginning to get now due to global warming. Best wishes - can you claim the cost of the food on your insurance? Edited August 15, 2021 by jdgm Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ksdaddy Posted August 16, 2021 Share Posted August 16, 2021 16 hours ago, jdgm said: Best wishes - can you claim the cost of the food on your insurance? All except the tilapia. That's not food. Glad all is well. Losing power preys on the mind. The longest I remember losing power was around 12 hours and I was seriously waiting for the zombie apocalypse. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NighthawkChris Posted August 16, 2021 Share Posted August 16, 2021 Get a generator. They are relatively inexpensive and help out when you need to run your fridge, light, fan, etc. Mine is 9kWh, holds 8gal of petrol - and can use propane if need be - and total cost was ~$900. You don't need to spend as much as I did to get some electricity as a 9kWh portable generator is pretty big. I mean, the thing has plug that can deliver 240V with 50A available. I only use the 30A plug which does everything in my house except my AC with the furnace. Just saying... They aren't that expensive and make a "crisis" easier to handle while you are waiting for the grid to come back to life. 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
badbluesplayer Posted August 16, 2021 Share Posted August 16, 2021 +1 on the generator. I've had one since the eighties. I've used it maybe 10 or 15 times. Paid $400. for it. Starts on the first pull every time. I plug it into an extra breaker in my shop panel and it feeds back into the house panel. It puts out about 30A at 240V. Enough to run everything except the heat pump and water heater. I can run the water heater if I turn everything else off. Works pretty well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DanvillRob Posted August 16, 2021 Share Posted August 16, 2021 I put in a 22 kW home generator a couple of years ago. Really haven't used it much, but we had 5 outages just prior to us putting it in. Anyway, it had to be approved by PG&E (our power company) to be sure we're not putting power back in the lines when power is shut off, (so as not to electrocute the line workers). It's (<- now I know that's the CORRECT 'It's'!) perfect for outages that are short in duration, and 22 kW will run out entire house (including all the air conditioners, refrigerators, etc.). It does NOT help if the outage takes down the phone lines too...unless we can get a cell signal (which sucks around here). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NighthawkChris Posted August 16, 2021 Share Posted August 16, 2021 (edited) Here's a TLDR if you're not interested in off-grid, solar energy ideas. We started talking about electricity, so I'm side-tracking here. Anyhow... enjoy! Lately, I have been interested in how to build a solar powered home battery setup. It looks like something that I could get into. Even understanding how to size batteries and solar panels for certain applications is not difficult if one understands the basics about electrical power and elementary algebra. If you don't and try to DIY, probably not a good idea if you haven't spent the time to learn about these. Maybe we lose some people at electrical calculations, perhaps at elementary algebra, you decide which is too difficult, haha! Powering a whole-home takes a pretty big battery by today's standards - that and pretty expensive if say I want to power my home for 3 days off the grid (probably using something like @DanvillRob where you can get ~22kWh for a couple days off-grid). I've researched that the battery is half the cost of the solar-battery system. I think I get that there needs to be a battery, inverter (DC-to-AC), and of course panels (not to mention the BMS, correct wiring, terminals, fuses, and other assortment components). Yeah, it takes some patience to work with, but it isn't rocket science to understand a little bit about electricity. Being where I live, I could probably only get use out of this to be off-grid mostly for the spring/summer months. Not sure how a MI winter will be in terms of how much sun-power I can harness on certain days. There are "(long) moments" in winter where we have cloudy day after cloudy day, so the system would be doing nothing in terms of solar power delivery I would have to think. But again, I can see this working fine in the summer where power demand is very high - especially on those blazing hot, cloudless sunny days. Heck, even if there's a power outage in the winter, I could configure the system to be controllable somehow to charge the battery when I am on the grid - ultimately not needing to ever use a gas-powered generator once the grid shuts down. I would like the system on a sunny day to be able to charge up in 5 hours. These 5 hours collect enough energy to be off-grid for 3 days or so. To me, this would be a properly sized (very expensive) system for great energy independence from the grid. Even if a grid outage happened say in the summer months, I could still be running along with less concern when it comes back online. Generating say 22kWh for 3 days before complete discharge of the system (battery) is a lot of energy being consumed... A lot... Overall, thinking of building a small "test" solar powered, HD battery to get the idea of the components to scale up later. I would like to understand how to instrument the system so once an issue comes up, not going to panic. Also, want to be VERY CAREFUL when working with batteries that can deliver extremely high Ampere-hours. Remember it is not the voltage that kills you, it is the current that moves through you if a fatal accident were to occur. Even damaging the system can happen if negligence takes play... So not selling people to start playing with electricity here as it is very dangerous if you just start winging things around mindlessly, but if given proper care and time spent to learn, it's again, not rocket science. And one other thing, when sizing up a system, don't forget to take into account your amp that burns up that extra hundred watts of energy every hour, haha! Time to go full-stack when the power goes, haha! Edited August 16, 2021 by NighthawkChris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Whitefang Posted August 16, 2021 Author Share Posted August 16, 2021 1st.---- I won't really bother my insurance about what's likely only $50 worth of food. 2nd.---- Since when is fish(tilapia) not food? As for the generator, I did mention in the OP that I'm considering giving the Generac folks a call. Or even maybe the Kholer folks. Expensive, sure. But added value to the house. I'm not going to live forever, and my kids when I'm gone, will have to sell the place and items like that only help hike up the price. Which is also why I'm looking into redoing both the kitchen and bath. I mentioned elsewhere that the worst part of this outage was it happened during the three hottest(so far) days of the month. Reached the mid to high 90's. Now that I've got power back and can use my A/C, it's not predicted to get any higher than mid to upper 70's. Bugger! Whitefang 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DanvillRob Posted August 16, 2021 Share Posted August 16, 2021 11 minutes ago, Whitefang said: 1st.---- I won't really bother my insurance about what's likely only $50 worth of food. 2nd.---- Since when is fish(tilapia) not food? As for the generator, I did mention in the OP that I'm considering giving the Generac folks a call. Or even maybe the Kholer folks. Expensive, sure. But added value to the house. I'm not going to live forever, and my kids when I'm gone, will have to sell the place and items like that only help hike up the price. Which is also why I'm looking into redoing both the kitchen and bath. I mentioned elsewhere that the worst part of this outage was it happened during the three hottest(so far) days of the month. Reached the mid to high 90's. Now that I've got power back and can use my A/C, it's not predicted to get any higher than mid to upper 70's. Bugger! Whitefang Fang, (I actually recently talked with Phil Volk...."Fang" in Paul Revere & The Raiders), we're fortunate to have an average of 300 sunny days per year. Several years ago I put in a 12 kW Solar Panel System, (brought my summer electric bills down from over $1K per month to virtually zero). Our generator is a Generac system....and so far it's been flawless....I know little about the Kohler system, except I have one in the motor home...but the home generators would be completely different. Chris' idea of building a complete off-the-grid system is WAY too ambitious for me! 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
merciful-evans Posted August 17, 2021 Share Posted August 17, 2021 Welcome back WF. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Whitefang Posted August 17, 2021 Author Share Posted August 17, 2021 On 8/16/2021 at 11:25 AM, DanvillRob said: Fang, (I actually recently talked with Phil Volk...."Fang" in Paul Revere & The Raiders), we're fortunate to have an average of 300 sunny days per year. Several years ago I put in a 12 kW Solar Panel System, (brought my summer electric bills down from over $1K per month to virtually zero). Our generator is a Generac system....and so far it's been flawless....I know little about the Kohler system, except I have one in the motor home...but the home generators would be completely different. Chris' idea of building a complete off-the-grid system is WAY too ambitious for me! Well, Chris might well know that Generac offers a solar/battery combo( which he might have been referring to) And the Kohler generator is pretty much the same as Generac's. Operates the same(off natural gas) and as close in price. You are fortunate in having 300 sunny days a year in your state. But here in Mich. we can go anywhere without the risk of being burnt to a crisp. But there's drawbacks to everything and every place. Whitefang Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DanvillRob Posted August 17, 2021 Share Posted August 17, 2021 25 minutes ago, Whitefang said: Well, Chris might well know that Generac offers a solar/battery combo( which he might have been referring to) And the Kohler generator is pretty much the same as Generac's. Operates the same(off natural gas) and as close in price. You are fortunate in having 300 sunny days a year in your state. But here in Mich. we can go anywhere without the risk of being burnt to a crisp. But there's drawbacks to everything and every place. Whitefang California is great for weather...but it IS the "Land Of Fruits & Nuts". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NighthawkChris Posted August 17, 2021 Share Posted August 17, 2021 25 minutes ago, DanvillRob said: California is great for weather...but it IS the "Land Of Fruits & Nuts". lol we must have a lot of Cali visitors over here in MI. Wondering when they are going to go back home 😁 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DanvillRob Posted August 17, 2021 Share Posted August 17, 2021 (edited) 37 minutes ago, NighthawkChris said: lol we must have a lot of Cali visitors over here in MI. Wondering when they are going to go back home 😁 You can sell out and leave California....you just can't come back! (too expensive to buy a house once you leave). I think you're stuck with 'em! Edited August 17, 2021 by DanvillRob 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mihcmac Posted August 17, 2021 Share Posted August 17, 2021 Cali is a state of mind in the perfect dream, like reaching another level of no-mind in meditation. 😆 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. Natural Posted August 23, 2021 Share Posted August 23, 2021 Welcome back, Bud. Cabrera got his 500th yesterday. I hope you saw it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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