Power Outage Update

My local power company sent an email explaining the power outage we had the other day. They claim it was caused by tree limbs falling on wires. 

That makes sense. A lot of trees were damaged over the winter. Instead of light fluffy snow we got a lot of freezing rain and heavy wet snow. A good percentage of those trees will never recover. On top of that we had some high winds. 

Speaking of high winds we had an amazing thunderstorm blow through yesterday. The weather app showed lightning strikes zero miles away. The weather map display was a very tight grouping of lightning strikes -all around my house. 

Much to my surprise we didn’t lose grid power or even Internet during the storm. Luck of the draw, I guess.

-Sixbears

New California Preppers

California now has a lot of people who’ve been thrown into the prepping world. Thanks to the power shut offs people have to suddenly deal with being on their own. They are being encouraged to have a bug out bag, generator, solar chargers, stored water -the whole nine yards. The only thing they aren’t encouraging people to do is to prepare for their own security. California isn’t exactly a gun friendly state.

A lot of people have had a rude awakening. If you haven’t done any of this stuff before you soon find there’s a learning curve. I was talking to one guy who put in a huge generator capable of running his whole house. When the power went out, the generator turned on. His refrigerator didn’t start. The guy’s wife was in a panic, especially after spending all that money on a generator. As it turned out his fancy computer controlled refrigerator needed a full half hour to reboot after a power shut off.

There’s a lot of people who’ve been suddenly thrown into the deep end of prepping. If you were lucky, only your power was turned off. The unlucky had to flee a fire storm.

Of course, like everywhere else, most people will forget the lessons learned. There will be a lot of lightly used generators for sale soon. Just like after a Florida hurricane, the lessons are soon forgotten. Staying prepared takes though and effort. Most people want things to return to normal so they never have to think about this stuff again.

However, there will always be a select few who learn the lessons and stay prepared.

-Sixbears

Life without AC

Most of Florida and other parts of the Southeast are without power. That means they are also without air conditioning. It's going to be tough.

The south really boomed when air conditioning became common. Losing it is like going back to an earlier age. However, the house designs of the past that made the south somewhat livable are rarely used now. Many places have windows that do not even open.

The north has the cold, but a house can be heated with fairly primitive technology. There are no wood fired air conditioners. As I write this I have a nice kitchen woodstove that's perfect for heating and cooking. It needs no electricity to run. Not only that, I live in the woods, surrounded by fuel within walking distance.

Air conditioning has allowed people to live in a hot climate without ever having to acknowledge it. They go from their AC homes to their AC cars to their AC job. While that's pretty comfortable, they never acclimate to the climate. Only those who spend a lot of time outdoors gets a chance to adjust.

It's been my observation that it takes about two or three weeks for one's body to adjust to a hotter climate. It looks like plenty of people will be without power for at least that long. In the mean time, stay in the shade, catch what breeze is available, avoid heavy labor in the heat of the day, and drink lots of water.

People die from heat stroke. It's no joke. Hopefully power will be restored to most places before too long.

-Sixbears

Power outages

NH is in its 4th largest power outage on record. It will take until Monday for most customers to receive their service. With temperatures dropping into the single digits some folks are in for a bad time.

Here in the northern part of the state it hasn't been very bad. We were far enough north and cold enough for the storm to be all snow. The southern part of the state started out with rain that turned over to heavy wet snow -perfect conditions for toppling trees.

Anyone living where the temperatures drop below freezing should have some kind of auxiliary heat. It's only prudent. Alternative electrical power generation is nice, but it's not as critical as being able to keep warm.

-Sixbears

No Cash, no Sale

My lovely wife and I were picking a few things up at a store. We got to the check out and there were a bunch of people just milling around. The cashier asked if we had cash as the credit card system was down. We had enough cash for our purchases so we settled up and left. The other people there were all paying by one type of card or another so they couldn't buy anything.

Now some people like to have gold or silver as a backup for when the plastic cards don't work any more. That's all well and good as long term strategy, but the cashier wasn't taking precious metals. Cash, on the other hand, was perfect. Yes, I know there are some small business owners out there that would happily barter precious metals for their goods, but they are the exception. For your average purchase when plastic won't work, cash is the thing.

With all the solar flares popping off lately, there's a chance that satellites and power systems necessary for electronic purchases might get disabled. Keep a bit of cash available for any last minute purchases.
I don't normally go around with big wads of folding money, but I don't feel comfortable unless I have some. Maybe I'll have to buy some food or fuel in an emergency. Batteries, candles, and lighters won't stay on the shelves long either. Those with cash can score some last minute supplies.

In a long term disaster, cash won't be any good either. The thing is, few of us will know if the problems are short term or long term. From a person's perspective on the ground, they can't tell if it's a local temporary power outage or if a CME has taken out the National grid for years. Don't be that guy hanging around the check out, waiting for your credit card to work again.

-Sixbears

Hurricane Sandy

The phone rang and for once the automated message was not from a politician. Public Service Company of New Hampshire (electric company) called about the approaching storm. They gave out some basic prep info and contact numbers for outages. This is the first time that has ever happened.

For me, the grid serves the same function as a back up generator. Most of our day to day power usage is from solar. In fact, I’m going to use the grid to top off my battery bank before the storm. After that about my only other storm prep will be going around the house looking for anything that can blow or wash away. Being a prepper, this is the sort of thing I’m always prepared for. Of course, that doesn’t mean the wind couldn’t blow a tree through my living room, so I’m not taking this one likely.

I think back to Hurricane Irene. After the big cities weathered it pretty well, the news people were saying how much of a non-event it was. Then the remains of the storm blew into Vermont causing horrific flooding damage. They still haven’t fully recovered.

Hurricane Sandy is exactly the sort of storm that causes the computer models to fall apart. The conditions that cause such a storm don’t happen often. The models are based on what’s happened in the past. With little data to draw on, they are really just making informed guesses. The weather people do well with tropical weather storms. They do a pretty good job with northern storms. When the two meet, they aren’t quite sure how to handle it.

That being said, power outage maps show that I’m in a high risk for power outage area. If my area does go down, it will most likely be out for a long time. Those of us in the far flung rural areas get power restored last. That’s just a fact of life out here.

If my blog disappears for a bit, it’s probably because my Internet is down. My lovely wife and I will most likely be fine. The biggest danger in our area would be flooding and wind damage. Fortunately, the leaves have already dropped out of the tress, so they are less likely to get toppled. My home is on the side of a mountain 1300 feel above sea level, so flooding is not a major issue. What sometimes happens is that the rains flood all the roads out, but as long as we stay put we’ll be fine.

When Hurricane Irene hit our area, is appeared to be just another moderately rainy day. We suffered no damage at all. Areas just forty miles to the south and 40 miles to the west had roads, bridges and power poles washed away. We were lucky then and I hope we are lucky again.

If you live in a low lying coastal area or anyplace prone to flooding, I hope you are reading this from your bug out location.

-Sixbears

Slight Delay

As you can see, there will be a slight delay on the painting project. I’m willing to work under some trying conditions, but even I have a limit.

It sure is pretty though. The second shot is off my deck looking towards the lake. With all the snow weighing down the branches, it’s almost impossible to see any of the lake. Normally this time of year I have a nice view of the water.

We only received about 3 inches from this storm. Some parts of the state got over 2 feet. Something like 3 million people lost grid power in this storm. We weren’t one of them. The solar electric system’s batteries were fully charged. Firewood had been brought in the house for the kitchen stove. It wasn’t necessary after all, but sure felt good to be prepared.

The last few years, there’s been a pattern where many storms stay south of the White Mountains. They used to all come here to the far north. The only reason we end up with more snow at the end of the winter is our colder climate. What precipitation we get in the winter tends to be in the form of snow, and it sticks around longer.

Milder daytime temperatures are predicted for the next few days. If all goes well, I should get a chance to do more painting.

-Sixbears

San Diego lost power (and so will you)

As I write this San Diego is without grid power. Early reports point to transmission line problems.

Exactly!

The whole transmission grid is a problem. It’s really a crappy way to power anything. Two thirds of the power transmitted through the grid is lost. Not really an efficient system, isn’t it?
It might have made some sort of sense when the idea of electrifying the country was a new idea. Even back then, there were those questioned the whole set up.

When does throwing 2/3 of anything make sense? You can afford to do that with electricity under a few circumstances. If the electricity is really really inexpensive to generate, it might not matter if you lose a lot of it along the way. Another way it makes sense is if someone else is paying the bills. That someone else is the rate payer -you, that is. The cost is just passed along.

Power is getting more expensive. That’s no surprise if you’ve been paying electric bills. Transmission is also getting more expensive. There’ s a huge amount of materials tied up in grid infrastructure. The price of those materials has gone up fairly high. Stories appear almost every week about local power outages caused by metal thieves. Does that sound like a secure system to you?

So what have we got here? An wasteful system that throws away 2/3 of mostly non-renewable fuel. It’s transmitted through an aging and stressed network that has growing scrap value making theft profitable. It’s unreliable and expensive. There’s also incentives for big business and government to keep the old grid monster alive. Big business controls the power and government rakes in tax money.

Is it any wonder there’s almost no support for home generated power? I paid one time for my solar electric system. Since I was working on my own house, I didn’t need an electrician and could do all the work myself. (legal in NH, your mileage may vary) No monthly check is sent away to a big company for that solar electric power. The government can’t collect any taxes on it.

Is it any wonder the government has minuscule support for alternative energy and huge support for the old fashioned non-renewables? Follow the money. Follow the power -electric and political.

Can you afford to support the old way of doing things? Doesn’t it make sense to have at least some home power capability? Start small and build on it. Instead of stringing materials across the countryside with huge power lines and transformers, use less material, and wire up individual houses.

1.7 million people in San Diego might agree with me -if only they had power and could read my blog.

-Sixbears

Heat Wave

My house doesn’t have air conditioning. I don’t miss it. Occasionally there’s a day or two where it’s a bit uncomfortable. On those days, my strategy is to grab a cold beer and wade into the lake. It works for me.

The current heat wave isn’t hitting northern NH too badly. It’s not even supposed to get to 90 before cooling off early next week. It still gets down to the 50s and 60s at night, so it’s possible to have a comfortable night’s sleep.

Air conditioning is a wonderful invention. It’s made the south livable. Old southern architecture, in the days before AC: high ceilings, good cross ventilation, big shaded porches, but when it gets really hot, it’s hot. AC makes even a tin box mobile home comfortable. New houses aren’t designed to use natural cooling and without AC they are unlivable.

In northern NH we don’t worry so much about staying cool. Keeping from freezing to death half the year is the main concern. At least it’s possible to stay warm using fairly primitive methods. Pile on the clothes and blankets. Burn wood in a woodstove. In the old days, a serviceable fireplace could be built using rocks and clay.

There is no primitive AC. Sure, there are swamp coolers that work if the humidity is low enough, fans help, earth tubes and earth sheltered construction can be effective. That being said, there is no easy retrofit for a modern AC unit. Many homes in the north have added wood heat without too much trouble. There’s no plug in substitute for AC. Whether it’s heating or cooling, having one really comfortable room is a relief -necessary for people with health issues.

Heat waves currently cause a certain number of deaths. If the grid goes down at the same time, there’ll be a lot more. Plenty of people aren’t acclimated to hot temperatures. My sister-in-law in TX didn’t even know there was a heatwave one year. She went from AC house, to AC car to AC office.

Most people can adapt to warmer temperatures, but it takes some exposure to them. You can’t go from a constant 70 degree AC environment to 100 degree temps. When my wife and I go to the the south, we try and stay out of AC as much as possible to adapt. There’s no AC in our old truck, and we often camp in tents or on the sailboat. We drink plenty of water and take it easy until we adjust. For me, it takes about two weeks, but it’s worth it. After that, it’s fun in the sun.

-Sixbears

Everybody does it

Poop that is. Nobody wants to talk about it, but everyone has to deal with it.

Most people just flush and forget it. Trained professionals with high tech do some sort of magic "downstream."

Nobody wants to think about it, but when the magic stops happening, having a plan B is a darn good idea.

Let's say the water supply is cut off. Could be a failure at the municipal pumping station, your home pump could fail, the water lines could freeze -you get the idea. The simplest thing to do is the old bucket flush method. Either fill the toilet's water tank with a bucket, or flush by pouring the water directly in the bowl. The second method is less delicate, but can use less water. That might be important if your supply is limited or if the water has to hauled a long distance.

Most municipal sewage systems will function for some time. If you have a home septic system, the bucket flush method could work fine for years.

Now let's say that flushing isn't an option. Perhaps an earthquake has destroyed the sewage system. Maybe the problem is limited to your house. One extremely cold winter my sewage line to the septic system froze. Thawing it out was a true horror tale, one I tell small children around the campfire.

Let's assume the problem can't be fixed. It would be really nice to have something like the Humanure System: http://humanurehandbook.com/humanure_toilet.html
They are cheap to buy and even cheaper to build. I know from personal experience that there is very little odor. Sure beats heading out into the woods with a shovel.

There are a whole variety of companies selling composting toilets. They basically do the whole composting process inside the unit as opposed to hauling a bucket to an outside compost bin. When they work right, the final product is compost -nearly odorless and sanitary. When they don't work right, it's very ugly indeed. If you plan on going this route do your research. Some work better than others. I know of one very expensive system with a very high failure rate. Also be aware that some require electricity to work.

Do not confuse composting systems with the old fashioned outhouse. The Humanure process relies on aerobic bacteria. Old fashioned outhouses rely on anaerobic bacteria. Both classes of bacteria do the job of breaking down waste products. The big difference, at least as far as our sensibilities are concerned, is the smell. A well designed and maintained Humanure composter has very little oder. Outhouses can bring tears to your eyes.

For many years my dad owned a one room hunting camp. It had a traditional outhouse. Besides the smell, the other discomfort is the ice cold seat in the winter time. My dad got around this problem by keeping the seat inside the camp, hung up on a hook behind the woodstove. When a hunter felt the need to visit the little outbuilding, he'd take the seat with him. Believe me, a warm seat made the outhouse a lot less intimidating first thing in the morning. The seat was always painted red so deer hunters wouldn't see a flash of white (like a deer's tail) moving through the woods.

Have a plan for safely disposing of "the dirties." Make sure water supplies are safe. People in Haiti are dying by the thousands from a cholera epidemic caused by poor sanitation. Knowing how to safely take care of human waste is a matter of life or death.

Have a plan B.

-Sixbears

Stormwatch

On Friday, NH's Governor Lynch declared a state of emergency. Hundreds of thousands of people are without electrical power in this state. Overall, the storm knocked out power for a million people.

It appears it will take some time to sort everything out. The situation is widespread enough that crews that normally come in from other states are busy close to home.

On a personal level, my household is fine. Ironically, the grid never went down at my house. My backup systems were in place and ready to go, but were not needed. Outside of having to clean up downed tree branches, it wasn't much of a problem here. There wasn't any need to go anywhere, so I stayed home.

However, my daughter in MA called to let me know she and her husband and daughter were heading to the in-laws place. After a day without power, they'd had enough. Since they have a small baby to take care of, leaving the house for a couple days makes sense. They don't have the backup systems that I do. I wish they did. She asked some advice about how to shut the place down. On the bright side, it looks like temperatures will be mostly above freezing. Their plumbing should be fine. Still, I can't but help worry about them. Doesn't matter how old your kids get, they are still your kids.

I was surprised that their area was still without power. They are on a major route into a good sized city. Usually those areas get fixed pretty quick. It's outlying areas in the woods that take time. Had power gone out here, this area would be one of the last to get fixed -low population density.


In a few days, a week, or maybe a bit longer, the grid should be back up and running. For some people this will be a wake up call. They'll realize how fragile our systems really are and take basic precautions. Others will go back to sleep and avoid learning any lessons from this.

-Sixbears

Should have seen it coming

Yesterday I do a post about power outages. Tonight I'm sitting around wondering if the power will go out.

Thursday morning there was about 6 - 8 inches of new heavy wet snow. The top of my driveway was blocked by a tangle of downed tree branches. Just to make it more interesting, after the branches came down, the town plow jumbled them all together into a massive snow bank. Yes, that massive pile of branches and snow was at the end of my driveway. Fortunately, my vehicles were parked across the street in my other parking spot.

It took a chainsaw and a shovel to clear the mess. On the plus side, I cut up the branches and have been burning them in my kitchen woodstove. Waste not, want not.

My wife had a physical therapy two towns over. Took the big 4x4. Roads were good on the way in, but not on the way back. Rain turned to snow and iced the roads. A big tractor trailer went off the road about a mile from my house. No one hurt. We took it easy and had no problems.

Made sure to top off the batteries in the battery bank. We are fine on food. Don't have to be anywhere all day Friday, so that's a relief.

Right now it's raining hard, should turn to snow later.

I'll post if anything interesting happens with the storm.

-Sixbears

Lights out! Then what?

The lights have just gone out in your house. How can you find out what caused the problem? It's important to have some idea what the situation is.

If the problem is with only your house, you can't just wait around assuming someone is going to fix it. You are that someone. If the neighbor's are all fine, it's time to get busying fixing your problem. If you are knowledgeable about electricity, you'd best get your flashlight and get busy. If not, maybe it's time to call the electrician.

Let's say you've checked and the neighbors are in the dark too. Fine, it's not just you. Can you see lights in another part of town? The houses across the lake from me are on a totally different circuit than my side of the lake. If my side is dark but they still have lights across the lake, then the problem is limited in scope. If both sides are dark, then it's at least a regional outage. If you can't see any house lights anywhere in your town, it's a sizable outage.

It might be obvious why the power's out. There's no mystery when power goes out during hurricanes, earthquakes, and ice storms. It's to be expected. You can assume the people who run the gird know what's going on. They'll get crews on it as soon as they can.

Once in a while there are large major outages that don't have obvious causes. The Northeast Blackout of 2003 had no visible cause to the vast majority of people. It wasn't a storm event. It happened during generally nice weather in the middle of August. Those are the sort of blackouts that cause me concern. At the time, speculation ran wild that it was a terrorist attack. Was it a cyber attack? Was it an act of war?

Most phone service remained up. Some cell phone towers failed to handle the heavy load, but most people had at least some phone service. Most radio and television stations went to backup power and continued to broadcast. If you had a regular corded phone that didn't rely on electric power, you could make phone calls. If you had a battery powered radio or TV, you could tune into new broadcasts and keep up to date with what was going on. Many people had to use their car radio to tune into broadcasts because they didn't own a battery powered unit.

My solar electric system functioned fine. I had dial-up Internet connection that worked. I could use my TV and home radios to listen to the news.

There are things that can take down just about everything. A massive electro magnetic pulse (EMP) caused by an air burst atomic weapon or even something like huge solar flare could actually destroy key parts of the grid. Should that happen, power won't be coming back for an extra special long time.

It's possible that an event could take down the grid, yet leave most home alternative energy systems alone. At least that's what my research leads me to believe. Then there's the other end of the scale. Some EMP type events could not only fry home energy systems, they could cook your TV and all your radios. Car electrics would not work. Most vehicles would be dead. Now not only is the grid down, you have no way of knowing what the heck happened. Travel is reduced to human or animal power.

You would know the problem goes well beyond a simple electrical grid malfunction. If the power's down, and all your electronics are inoperative, it's a huge deal. You know that power's not coming back and that you are on your own. You have to take care of all your needs yourself for the indefinite future. No one's going to turn the lights back on. It's harsh knowledge, but the sooner you understand what's going on, the sooner you can take action.

Not much you can do about a sneak EMP attack from an atomic weapon. However, we may get a day or two's warning that the sun is doing something weird. If a solar event looked likely, I'd throw all the disconnects on my solar electric system. Every major component can be switched off from every other component. It's possible that would prevent a power surge from destroying my system. Once the even is over, then I'd cautiously turn the breakers on and see if my system survived. It might be possible to save most of the national grid by disconnecting and shutting it down. I've no control over that, but I've control over my own system.

Should such a major event happen, I'd want to know what's going on. My last ditch ace in the hole is a Grundig shortwave radio with a hand crank generator. It's sealed in a metal ammo can and stored in the basement for greater EMP protection. It may be possible to tune in something like Radio Australia and learn of an atomic attack on the US. Darn useful information.

Woe to anyone caught in a major city should something like an EMP happen. I can heat my house with wood. There's food in the pantry or garden and game in the woods. My well has an overflow. All I need is a bucket. Of course, that level of preparation is good for a whole range of problems. Best yet, it give me a good quality of life right now. Live is good out here in the woods.

So if your power goes down, it's essential to learn what the problem is. Is it local and minor, or is it the proverbial the end of life as we know it? Do you wait it out by reading a good book with a flashlight, or do you load your rifle?

-Sixbears