I’m baaaack!
All over New England there are power outages from a big storm. Typical New England stuff. There had been precious little snow all winter long, for the most part. And then a big storm in late March and one in early April. North it was all snow, then a line of mixed precipitation, and then all rain in the more southern parts. But there were high winds for all of it, and that’s what caused so many outages.
Losing power is a powerful (ha!) reminder of how dependent we are on electricity. The only thing that was getting through was text messages on my phone, and they were ominous. The power had been out since early morning, and at about 2:30 PM I got a text from the power company saying they were overwhelmed and full power restoration could “take days.”
Days. I’ve been in winter power outages that last days. No fun. Very cold. I was already planning a getaway – although I wasn’t sure exactly to where, although it had to be away from the path the storm had taken – when I got a reprieve. I heard a sudden noise and then the sound of the heating system, turned a light on and voila! Power!
What a sense of relief. And now I even have the internet. Such luxury. Thus, this post.
I see our former neighbors in CT dealing with power outages, down trees, flooded basements, etc. I had 40 years of that, and so glad I’m gone. By contrast, 75 here, crystalline sky, and I played golf. Our electric bill was just over $100 and we have a heat pump for AC and heat..13cents/kWh vs 30cents in CT. Why anyone lives there I don’t understand.
We had power outages some months ago, and the power company graciously suggested that it might be days before power was restored. In reality, it lasted several hours. Thanks for being so pessimistic.
All the biggest snow storms I recall from growing up in Massachusetts were in March. The longest power outage I remember was after hurricane Carol, it took about two weeks for power to come back on. Fortunately our stove was kerosene and propane and there was a nearby pond where we could get water for the toilets, and putting a handle on the well pump gave us drinking water. We also buried our garbage and burned the trash. Things have changed since then.
I’m in the Boston area visiting grandkids. I would never move here. The roads feel like the Third World, consisting of potholes patched together. And having to walk through slush in April.
What were the Pilgrims thinking?
Power goes out. Various UPS start beeping. Thirty seconds later the gen set kicks in. Ran for a week straight once. Highly recommended. Some of the new ones are just a big battery.
Ah, New England and storms. — We are beginning to plan a move to a smaller house, probably in the NC mountains. We’re looking for a natural gas connection and will install a whole-house generator.
Living in hurricane country I know very well that sense of relief when the power comes back on. More than relief if it’s been longer than a few hours.
We installed a whole-house generator some months ago and have had a couple of brief (minutes) power outages since then. The generator kicks in automatically and it’s pretty amazing. The UPS on my computer only beeped once before it was made happy again. But I hope we never have occasion to need the generator for days or weeks.
Looking at a whole-house generator. Problem is, on our irregular lot, where to put it so that, among other things, it doesn’t get smothered by the snow plow guy.
Lost power in January. We have a wood-burning fireplace, for ambience. I fed it about every quarter hour and it kept the room thirty degrees above the outside. The outside got down to twelve.
Eventually decamped to a relation’s place for half a day and the power came back on earlier than expected. Takes a LONG time for the material in the house–not the air–to get warm again. Granite counter? Bedding?
Denver area always gets the worst snows in March and April: heavy, wet stuff rather than the nice powder of the fall and December. We always lose tree limbs, especially if they have started to leaf out, which they haven’t yet this year.
We never had much problem with power outages over our nearly-20 (!!) years here, until 2021, when we discovered that having a gas-fired furnace was useless when there was no electricity to run the fan motor.
We had a wall-mounted heater installed the next month, which has no fan or electrical connection. It only warms the one room, but that’s enough to wait for the power to come back on.
Sometimes I fire it up and pull my rocking chair close just for nostalgia, as that is the kind of heater my grandparents had.
Neo;
Just wait until Massachusetts’ achieves their zero (or near zero) carbon emissions goals in regards to power generation.
Brownouts and blackouts will become routine.
By then your gas cooking stoves will be illegal as well.
But do not fret; just pop over to John Kerry’s house, where you can bet your life he will have a fully operational 6 or 8 burner natural gas cooking stove that he will allow you to use.
He probably never uses it much anyway, because most of the time he can be found jetting around the world in a private plane, NOT staying in Motel Six’s, and not dining on high protein insects for dinner.
Though I have not researched it, my guess is at those fancy schmancy Davos get togethers, they do not serve insects for the protein portion of the meals, but instead the best cuts of meats for dinner.
The beauty of being a member of the self-anointed royalty; they make all the rules the unwashed masses are compelled to follow. Rules which the elites are exempt from and will never follow.
By the way, if John Kerry refuses you to have access to his kitchen, I am sure that Elizabeth Warren will immediately offer her’s to use.
Our new house here in FL has a pad and hookup for a whole house generator. We have not put it in yet as the cost is around $10k. We will get one installed late this coming summer before the tropical season kicks into high gear. We’ve had only one multihour outage since we moved in last August during the hurricane/TS last fall. Outage was just over 4 hours, compared to multiday outages we regularly experienced in CT. And it’s the ONLY outage we’ve experienced. In CT even on a great summer day, the power would go out for a minimum of 3-4 hours on a random basis. Given any sort of storm, we could count on the power going out.
Southern Maine here, Power went out at about 7am yesterday, came back on nearly 12 hours later, Has been in and out today as they patch and repair. We went with a whole house generator when we built this place – being dependent on well water we felt there was no other choice. Worst season so far for power outages.
physicsguy, if you plan to use a largish propane tank for fueling your generator, you might want/need a pad for that too? Thus possibly moving your total cost closer to maybe $15K? That was the $ amount when we looked into it.
We ended up going with gasoline fueled 7KW unit, and then wired the distribution panel box to support everything except AC. [I made special notes to ensure I shut the grid power off before connecting and running the generator for the house. 🙂 ]
Unit uses about 5 gals gas per day, shutting it down at night. Also on wheels so can move it around the property if needed. And we have a 120V single room AC unit that we can set up in MBR if heat becomes miserable at night [but not used so far].
But the auto turn on/ turn off features of most whole house units is a really nice feature. Beats trying to set up a smaller unit with a flashlight at night in the dark
🙁
Here in So. NH out for about 30 hrs. Big pine uprooted, fell on power lines, blew the transformer and took out the whole neighborhood. Wood stove, camp stove and 10 gals of saved well water for flushing helped us get thru. Fortunately it wasn’t that cold outside. Used the porch as our fridge.