# Power outages



## Matt88-8 (Dec 27, 2018)

Just for fun, I would like to see how much time people on here spend without power. I think it will really differ depending on where people live.

AnywayPost your (aprrox) location, how often your out, and how long.

I will go first.

Ontario, Canada. 

1 outage in the last 4 years. Lasted 26hrs. used 10L of gasoline.

Sent from my SM-G973W using Tapatalk


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## Dutchy491 (Sep 18, 2019)

Hey neighbour, I’m here in Ontario too. We lose power 2/3 times per year. Usually less than 4 hours. I have a Honda em5000 that powers the water pump, fridges and lights etc. I do switch off the electric water heater. We can heat with wood if required. I have a Honda eu2200 inverter generator for back up or as a power source around the property. However, we’ve lost power for several days on at least 3 occasions in the past 20 years. I always have 3 jugs of non-E gas for our bikes or yard machines etc and I rotate the jugs so that they don’t sit too long. I make sure that they’re full if bad weather is forecasted. I have spare spark plugs and Amsoil stocked to be able to do maintenance as required. I’ll be following this thread with interest, Dutchy


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## cosmic (Jul 1, 2021)

Florida. 
Power loss at least once a month. 
We are in a small older subdivision with big mature trees with branches that fall on the lines for absolutely no reason sometimes. When the wind does come up we know the power will drop.
The last hurricane in 2017 has us down 6 days. My craftsman 4500 cracked a cylinder two days before the storm and we made do with the 1200 watt inverter in the diesel truck in days and the HF 700w Stormcat ran at night, its quieter. 
I now have a HF Predator 2000 that fills the need and runs 12 hours on a gallon of gasoline. We can't run the water pump so I prepare ahead and store water in a 200 gal vertical tank. 
Life in the Florida boonies.....


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## OrlyP (Oct 19, 2021)

Metro Manila, Philippines

Outages here are rather sporadic and usually lasts anywhere from a few minutes to an hour or so. The longest this year has been around 6-7 hours when utility repairmen replaced a damaged transformer and post. The runtime clock on the generator says 9 hours (since mid-September). Up until the first half of this year, we probably get an outage every 2-3 months. Outages has become a little more frequent during the 2nd half. I presume that the onset of our rainy season last June had something to do with it.


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## tabora (Sep 6, 2018)

I live on the coast in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. We live in an area called Sherwood Forest that is a large area of very tall oaks, and we are near the end of a long feeder line that runs along the coast for a few miles. The Central Maine Power linesmen cringe when they hear there's an outage here, which happens 4-6 times a year. Usually at least one of those is an extended outage due to the number of trees down, and can last the better part of a week in the worst cases, like in October 2017. The week before last, we had two outages. One lasted 8 hours and the second, minor one a few days later was only 4 hours. I only started up the generator for the first one. Since the October, 2017 storm when I had to replace my generator quickly due to a broken valve, I have run my generator for almost 70 hours.


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## exmar (Jun 29, 2015)

Southern Ohio. Twenty years ago, outages were fairly common, lasting a day or so. We were almost assured of at least one ice storm, sometimes more in the late spring which brought down limbs and 2-3 day outages were expected. With the climate changing, don't see ice storms anymore, and AEP (Utility) now has a very aggressive tree trimming program so 2-4 hour outages a couple of times per year are the new norm. About ten years ago there was a Derecho (sp?) or inland hurricane, 13 days without power. While the outage situation is definitely better than when we moved here, I have a primary 5500W and a "spare" 3650W JIC. We're out in the country and our utility line only has 76 customers, so in a big outage we're pretty far down the priority list.


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## iowagold (Jan 22, 2020)

south Iowa USA here.
we were at over 20 a few years back shortest was 1/2 hour and the longest was close to 3 days.
i started with an eu1000i generator on this quest.
worked well for 4 years.
then the quest for a bit more power was on.
so i started adding eu2000i gens.
two would run one ac unit and all of the rest of the house..
then i moved on to adding 2 more gens.
and a total rewire and panel upgrade to 200 amp service.
then i upgraded to 4 eu2200i gens.
and added an eu7000is in the mix as well.
then the quest for tri fuel for all of them.

2021 so far has been a quiet year!
one outage that was 45 min. and was able to run 2 gens on NG.

this winter 2021-2022 could be a good hard winter with ICE storms....
I am ready, plenty of spare parts and extra gens on hand.
lol and T paper! lol!

working on water system upgrade in the house next.
new NG water heater, circ pump, and 2 electric water heaters in the mix as backup.

many years past we were close to 2 weeks with out power due to ice storm.
basic plan.... but no gen at home at that time.
my construction gen was in my construction storage 80 miles away closer to the job site that year.


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## drmerdp (Apr 10, 2018)

Northern New Jersey here, I’ve lived in this current house for 6 years now. I’ve had a handful of few hour long outages and three 2-3 day long outages. My neighbors told me that my neighborhood was without power for 8 days when hurricane sandy hit in 2012.


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## LaSwamp (Mar 16, 2021)

South Louisiana here. Long power outages are not frequent. The cause of the long ones are typically hurricanes coming from the Gulf. We lost power for about week after Andrew hit in 1992. Katrina (2005) was bad for New Orleans, but I only lost power for a few hours here. The next big one to hit Louisiana was Gustav in 2008. That one was another Andrew-style storm. We lost power for about 6 days. Hurricane Isaac was in 2012. Some people in my area lost power for 5 days, but I only lost power for about 18 hours. The next long outage was not from a hurricane but from a flood, in 2016. A low pressure system stalled over the state and dumped rain on us for three straight days. There were reports of 32 inches of rain in the neighboring parish. All of the bayous and rivers massively flooded. I didn't get water in my house but my area was an island. We lost power for 5 days. 

It was after that when I decided it was time to generator-up. I was tired of sleeping in an 82 degree, 99% humidity house for days at a time. Not knowing better, I picked up the Firman generator. By the time of the next major outage, from Ida this year, I had also picked up two inverters. When Ida hit, we were much, much better prepared for an extended outage. I set up the two inverters at my girlfriend's house and we had plenty of power. Her outage was 2 days. After that, I packed up the Wen inverter and headed home. The outage at my house was an additional 3 days. 

All told, I probably used about 22-24 gallons of fuel over the course of 5 days. Gas was very hard to come by in the days after the storm passed. Imagine 1973 gas lines. When the power came back on at my house, I was down to my last 5 gallon can. I predict a lot of people will be switching to LNG for the next big one.


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## 50ShadesOfDirt (Oct 23, 2021)

Proximity to population helps (unless one lives in TX), as cities get priority of power restoral over folks that live rural; the person(s) at the end of the line are last, and could easily go two weeks w/o power.

We are off-grid in southern CO, so don't really notice brownouts/blackouts that happen out there ... but, power for grid folks goes out fairly often in snow/ice country, and could easily last a full week; aforementioned folks at the end of the line were out about 12 days or so.

It's not just weather, as drunk drivers hitting power poles cause excitement as well ... don't know if the country will ever get to buried power lines.

In the town nearest to me, they run their own generating plant, whereas the county is served by a large co-op. The town suffers brownouts frequently. So, who generates your power is a concern ...


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## Browse Deweb (Jan 16, 2021)

Long Island here. We had a 3 day outage last summer and a couple of outages the prior year due to some utility damage caused by a couple of bad accidents. The lines in my neighborhood are underground, but I guess the feeder line was taken out. We didn't lose power during Sandy until a couple of days after the storm. I'm assuming they had to bring down the substation to do nearby repairs, but it was out for more than a day. I'm more concerned with failure of the entire eastern grid than I am of local storm damage. I fear we are entering a decade of unfathomable destruction in the world economy. Seems like we entered Twilight Zone these past two years, none of it good. Nothing makes sense.


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## LaSwamp (Mar 16, 2021)

Browse Deweb said:


> Long Island here. We had a 3 day outage last summer and a couple of outages the prior year due to some utility damage caused by a couple of bad accidents. The lines in my neighborhood are underground, but I guess the feeder line was taken out. We didn't lose power during Sandy until a couple of days after the storm. I'm assuming they had to bring down the substation to do nearby repairs, but it was out for more than a day. I'm more concerned with failure of the entire eastern grid than I am of local storm damage. I fear we are entering a decade of unfathomable destruction in the world economy. Seems like we entered Twilight Zone these past two years, none of it good. Nothing makes sense.


Even though we were out for 5 days, I was still surprised Entergy got the power back up as quickly as they did after Ida. We had been hearing rumors of parts shortages from Covid and from Laura hitting Lake Charles a year ago. For the most part, though, Entergy got everything back up ricky tick. But yeah, the scary outages are the big ones, when huge, multi-state sections of the grid go down.


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## j.boudreaux88 (Oct 25, 2021)

South Louisiana here also, but Lafourche Parish. Same as the poster above, we lost power for a few days following each of those storms with the exception of Ida this year, where we were out of power for 14 days. The storm devastated the lower part of the parish and we took some pretty heavy damage in the upper part. Many poles down and sub stations damaged. Other than those storms we have the threat of dropping power when the bad winter storms come through. Earlier this year it got down to about 17 degrees F at my house. That may not seem bad to some of y’all but if you want to see people not know how to act down here, drop the temperature to below freezing LOL. That’s when I decided to beef up my generator and get my house plumbed for natural gas. As it stands I’m all electric and have no heat if the power goes out in the winter. I’m in the process of getting gas run to my house and building my own generator as I stated in a different thread. I grew up roughing it for storms with a small generator and a fan, but having a wife and kid of my own now changes things.


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## speedy2019 (Jan 29, 2019)

I live in England United Kingdom and rarely have powercuts, but with being in the countryside the trees takes powerlines down in strong winds...Years ago our power was always going off in strong winds but not so much anymore. The last lime I used the generator during a powercut was 2yrs ago.


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## ToolLover (Jan 13, 2020)

In 1986 a tornado touched down on my farm in Clemmons NC.
The barn was gone, the garage was too.
The losses were very high in $$'s as we did not insure farm buildings.
We spent a week running on two Massey Ferguson powered PTO generators while we cleaned that mess up. One 15 KW and one 30 KW.
We, meaning my son's home and ours.
The farm was too much work and the area was becoming a bed room area.
We sold out and moved to the city.
The area where we ended up was covered in Willow oak trees and was beautiful.
High winds created power outages several time a year every time a tree fell on a primary.
Things have calmed down and the outages are less frequent.


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## LaSwamp (Mar 16, 2021)

j.boudreaux88 said:


> South Louisiana here also, but Lafourche Parish. Same as the poster above, we lost power for a few days following each of those storms with the exception of Ida this year, where we were out of power for 14 days. The storm devastated the lower part of the parish and we took some pretty heavy damage in the upper part. Many poles down and sub stations damaged. Other than those storms we have the threat of dropping power when the bad winter storms come through. Earlier this year it got down to about 17 degrees F at my house. That may not seem bad to some of y’all but if you want to see people not know how to act down here, drop the temperature to below freezing LOL. That’s when I decided to beef up my generator and get my house plumbed for natural gas. As it stands I’m all electric and have no heat if the power goes out in the winter. I’m in the process of getting gas run to my house and building my own generator as I stated in a different thread. I grew up roughing it for storms with a small generator and a fan, but having a wife and kid of my own now changes things.


If I recall, Lafourche Parish got torn up badly from Gustav in 2008. There were estimates of several weeks before power could be restored. I don't think it actually took Entergy that long to restore power to the area, though. Oddly, during the hard freeze last February, my area never lost power. Over in Livingston, I have a friend who lost power for a week. He was able to ride it out with a 7 kw Predator generator. 

Lol, indeed, it's interesting down here when it gets cold. Typically, a difficult winter for us is when the temperature dips below 40 F. Throw in some ice and snow, and it's game-on. We're supposed to have another cold winter, although who knows how accurate those kinds of predictions will be.


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## j.boudreaux88 (Oct 25, 2021)

Our power loss for Isaac and Gustav were similar. For Katrina we were out for about a week. Even though we didn't take the brunt of the wind like Biloxi did, I remember sitting outside right before the sun came up and hearing the main sub station in Thibodaux break loose. Sounded like a large ship blowing it's horn and lit up the sky for about 10 seconds. For Ida, the Larose area on down didn't get power back for 4-5 weeks, and honestly that's impressive considering the damage they sustained. 

We never lost power for the freeze either but we were hearing rumors of the power being cycled, and at the time I had a one month old. My pucker factor was at level 10. The last several years we've somewhat consistently had extreme freezes come through in January, so my mentality going forward is that it's something we have to expect.


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## Bluwolf (Nov 8, 2020)

I feel bad for you guys in Texas and Louisiana. Between the cold and the hurricanes it seems like you're not getting a break. I thought we had it bad in Florida. But since Irma we've had nothing. Of course I didn't get my generator and shed set up until after that. But at least I'm ready for next time...


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## JJ Ranch (Apr 23, 2021)

Until winter storm Uri hit us (Texas Hill Country) this past February, our power co-op was really reliable. We would have maybe one or two outages a year of 30 minutes to maybe two hours. Our outage with Uri lasted 13 days, friends a couple of miles away were out for 18 days. Now we have a diesel standby generator but for Uri we probably burned 25 gallons of gas running our EU7000is about 8 hours a day. Don't remember exactly though.


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## JVazquez53 (Jul 8, 2021)

Matt88-8 said:


> Just for fun, I would like to see how much time people on here spend without power. I think it will really differ depending on where people live.
> 
> AnywayPost your (aprrox) location, how often your out, and how long.
> 
> ...


How about 4 months straight? After hurricanes Irma and Maria, in Puerto Rico we were without power from september 2017 till January 2018. There were people that the power returned 6 months. later. As of today November 2021, power outages are still a big problem. Power goes out quite often, from a few minutes to two days and more. For that reason, I do own three generators; two Hondas EU7000is and a Firman 9000 watt hybrid. I do keep them inside that shelter, made of concrete and rebar with a steel sliding door. hurricane/theft proof.


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## email4eric (Dec 23, 2018)

I'm near Olympia, WA. Around here, power outage duration is linked to how far out you are from core populations. So someone in town would have their power restored much, much sooner than someone who, say, lives on a dead-end road at the end of a peninsula with only a handful of residents. We get trees on the lines just along a half mile or so stretch which then isolates a small group of people at a terminal distribution. Not considered very high priority!

So being the lowest man on the totem pole, we get probably 4-6 outages a year. Usually one of those is for a week or longer but it's highly variable. Last year, the longest was a 6 day outage and the year before, an 8 day outage. Rarely is an outage fixed in under 24 hours. Interestingly, today was an outage just up the road at 0400 from a toppled tree that was fixed by noon. Never have seen that happen before!


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## BadDNA (Jan 23, 2019)

Great poll -- I'm in NW Raleigh, NC. Presently: 6hrs/yr or so from the maint logs. In the 90s and aughts, we lost power for a day or two a year. Hurricanes or ice storms. In the last 10 years, there's been only one day-long outage. Most others are 2-6 hrs from a thunderstorm or drunk driver (power comes to us from poles -- only last mile is buried -- substation feed is 3 miles of wires in the air). The hurricanes this far inland have been far less frequent in the last decade. Ice storms and snow less, too. So I'm on genset power maybe 6 hrs a year now. I accrue that many hours/yr in maintenance runs (1/2 hr per month).


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## JRHill (Nov 19, 2020)

South Central WA. Our power has been "out" since we started this project 14 years ago (wink). There's power a few miles away as the crow flies but the effort to set poles and string wire is prohibitively expensive let alone maintenance/repair. There is only one other full timer in this canyon, also off grid.


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## VelvetFoot (Nov 11, 2019)

We used to get more power outages before they trimmed our lines, but that was ten years ago, so we're about due for an uptick. The large duration outages are usually related to ice or heavy wet snow.


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## Gen10K (Jun 25, 2020)

We have not got a Power Failure in a long time. I grew up with Hurricanes, I know what is like to live without power and water for days, even weeks. I say, run the Gen as little as you can. Reduce wear, tear and maintenance, also, keep from advertising that you got one, plus saves you fuel in the long run. People, when desperate, they do stupid shît. Imangine, too many Zombies out there with dead Cell Phones, Medical Machines, etc... Try to rough it up to see how far can you live reduced/without electrical power. Learn power conservation and management.


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## JVazquez53 (Jul 8, 2021)

This is what looks like after a Cat 5 hurricane and subsequently 5 months straight without power. And people ask me why I have three generators...


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## iowagold (Jan 22, 2020)

looks like parts of iowa after the aug 10th 2020 dechero.
search that.
just sticks every where...
total level in spots like a city block.
weird storm for sure!

but not near as bad as some of the PR spots..
just miles of total gone!
how do you plan for those....
bunker or move are the options.
the heck of it is where do you go?
storms are getting worse in spots where storms were rare!


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## Gen10K (Jun 25, 2020)

JVazquez53 said:


> This is what looks like after a Cat 5 hurricane and subsequently 5 months straight without power. And people ask me why I have three generators...


Tell me about it, what about the Fuel Stations, no power, unable to pump the fuel from their tanks. I remember, I was kid back then, the Mechanical Fuel Pumps, the power went out and the station attendant used a Mini Bike with a Drive Belt attached to a pulley to pump the fuel out. Was quiet a spectacle to see this guy pull starting a minibike to use the Gasoline motor to pump Gasoline out of the fuel cell.


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## Mt.Power (Aug 11, 2021)

Mountains of Central California.

I spent the 2nd half of the summer in my off grid cabin. We are talking propane generator. We ran it about 2 1/2 hours a day, mostly at night to get the local news and weather. Of course I had a battery-powered radio which I listened to in the mornings--you know Clay Travis/Buck Sexton, Sean, then later Mark. I found I need a smaller generator during the day when I bring up the internet and smart TV.

As for grid outages, yes they happen on an infrequent basis and happen also because the power companies are desperately trying to upgrade equipment so they don't get blamed for the next fire. I would say this is 6-8 hours per year combined and total.


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## VelvetFoot (Nov 11, 2019)

I like this link which shows all the outages by state and utility for US and Canada.








Powering your home, your business, your world.


website




www.generac.com


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## iowagold (Jan 22, 2020)

there are several like that out there.
my utility has a tracker tied in with the smart meter.
and updates every 15-30 min.
you can also set those alerts to hit text or email.
nice for when you are out of town for sure!


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