What do you all do to be prepared for long term power loss?

[YanmarFever]

In Venezuela the people are hungry, (very) hungry, the first thing the govt did was to outlaw firearms.
Why? Because the govt knows that people are easier to control if they are unarmed.
Venezuela has some of the worlds largest oil supply's, yet gas is hard to get.
The electricity goes on and off all day long.

I met a young couple from there that said that you cannot leave your house or apartment alone, they said that your neighbors will rob the place if they see you leave. They are looking for food or anything of value that they can trade for food.

There is even talk of Venezuelan convicts entering the US in large numbers.

 

[Sigarms]

Our 22KW generator uses a little less than 2 gallons of propane per hour.

What percentage of load was the 22KW generator handling?

Better yet, what size house and exactly what the generator handling?

Reality is there is a breakdown, but after looking at what was needed for my own house, no way it was worth it for the price of LP in my area.

 

[boatmoter]

Curious what you all do to be prepared for a long term power outage due to weather, grid damaged by whatever. I've been telling may family to be prepared in the even of a sustained outage (longer than a month or two).

I don't feel sufficiently prepared for an outage that long, and I know my kids are not. If we had a coordinated attack on our grid that took out major components it could take months to get some things back in operation.

Right now, I have two generators, access to 100 gallons of gas, a freezer full of food and some canning supplies (not enough). I have a plan but would need to get a few more supplies. I do plan to put in a larger than normal garden this year, partly because of food prices and health reasons.

I have a 6500 watt generator I bought 2 yrs ago but blessed I have not had to use it yet. I wired into the 220vt side of my ac unit breaker, and installed a receptacle outside to plug generator in, if power goes out for a while I will hook up the generator and it will feed through the 220 vt side of the box and also feed the 10vt breakers. but I will turn off breakers to the AC,hot water heater & stove,my well pump runs off 220vt. all my electronics in house and light switches will all work normally. have not even put the oil in the generator yet & hope I never have to.

 

[Too many Kubotas]

If it gets that bad the last thing a propane delivery driver is going to give a crap about is delivering you propane. They are going to be at home with their families trying to sort their own problems out.

You must have completely misunderstood my post.

It's because they won't (or even can't, without electricity) deliver propane that I would go get tanks myself. Plan B would be to use their delivery truck, myself.

Either way, having propane is quite low on the list. Sure, it'd be nice to use the regular heating in the house and the garage, but not essential by a long shot.

 

[boatmoter]

When I moved here 20 years ago I was prepared for long term outages. They never happened until last year so when it was finally out for a week I discovered that my generator won't run my freezers.
I plan to pick up a 3pth generator and keep extra diesel on hand. Water isn't a problem, I can carry it down from my spring. The only thing I worry about is my freezer.
For a while I kept 6 weeks of dried and canned goods on hand, would donate them to the Post Office food drive every spring and refresh them. They didn't have it in 2020 and the next thing I knew I had canned goods leaking all over my floor.
Now I only keep enough on hand for a couple of weeks, and only what I will use.

Truth be told, if things turn to crap it's meds which will be my demise. Without the thyroid med I've taken since I was 39, eventually I would just fade away.

Long term situation like what's described above, I'm not sure I want to be around.

I have a compact tractor, I checked on a pto generator, to get the generator to perform you need to run it at 540 PTO RPM's, on my tractor thats 2500 RPMs on the engine.I bought a gas generator instead

 

[grsthegreat]

For years, I relied on my little Honda generator that puts out 13 amps. It's enough to power the TV, the computer, some lights and phone chargers. But not much more.

Last year I got a duel fuel 10,000 watt Challenger generator with an electric starter. We used it for the first time yesterday. I woke up to the power being out at 6 am and got it going right away. We have two incubators full of eggs that I didn't want to risk losing. One is Rio Grande Turkeys, the other is Guineas.

It's super loud. Almost painfully loud. I set it up on the back porch, but really need to find a place farther away for it. We had plenty of power to plug things into it with extension cords, but it's a pain. Power was only out for 10 hours. We've had a lot of heavy storms and the ground is saturated. Saturday nights storm was 2 inches of steady rain and we're guessing a tree fell over and took out the line.

Longest we've gone without power was a week because of snow. Honda generator and the wood stove was all we needed, but more power would of been better.

I'm thinking about a transfer switch so we don't have to unplug everything. I'm just not sure if I want to buy one for 10,000 watts, or wait until I get a bigger, better generator. My long term goal is to have one that runs off of Natural Gas. I have the line run to the land, I just haven't had it hooked up to my house yet. That's something I'm working on, but it keeps getting put back to do other more pressing projects.

I'm also thinking of just connecting the power to an outlet, and turning off the main breaker. If we only use the minimum stuff, it should have enough power, but I'm unsure about doing this. I need to read up on it some more.

We can food from the garden and we have plenty of livestock, so there shouldn't be a food issue. Our biggest concern is electricity.

Look into a simple mechanical interlock switch. Heres the site i use. Its like an hour and a halfs work. Way safer than trying to remember to turn off the main breaker. I had 1 customer that forgot to do that, and when power came back on his generator grenaded in is front yard. Pieces everywhere's.

Generator Interlock Kits | Electrician Interlock Kits | GenInterlock

The GenInterlock.com generator interlock kit provides an economical and dependable way to meet your electrical needs.

www.geninterlock.com

 

[fatjay]

I'm working on building out a solar system with batteries. Even if I don't have everything off grid, having a bulk of it will make me a lot more comfortable if a long term outage occurs. The technology has only recently become cheap enough for it to be economical.

This set is down below $1500 now:

 

[drssg]

What percentage of load was the 22KW generator handling?

Better yet, what size house and exactly what the generator handling?

Reality is there is a breakdown, but after looking at what was needed for my own house, no way it was worth it for the price of LP in my area.

I have no idea what percentage of load it was handling. We have a 3-bedroom house, and the biggest usage at the time was in running the AC. It also powers our livestock barn, but that is more critical in the winter, to keep water from freezing.

It would take a LOT of hours running the generator before the LP cost exceeded the purchase and installation cost of the generator.

It's a personal choice and essentially a convenience, unless there are medical or physical issues involved. If I was unavailable, I couldn't expect my wife to haul out the portable generator, get it connected, and pull start it. In time, that could also become a physical struggle for me. It's nice to have a hands-off system in place that automatically provides power when it goes out, along with an automatic weekly test to ensure the generator is running correctly.

 

[riptides]

For years, I relied on my little Honda generator that puts out 13 amps. It's enough to power the TV, the computer, some lights and phone chargers. But not much more.

Last year I got a duel fuel 10,000 watt Challenger generator with an electric starter. We used it for the first time yesterday. I woke up to the power being out at 6 am and got it going right away. We have two incubators full of eggs that I didn't want to risk losing. One is Rio Grande Turkeys, the other is Guineas.

It's super loud. Almost painfully loud. I set it up on the back porch, but really need to find a place farther away for it. We had plenty of power to plug things into it with extension cords, but it's a pain. Power was only out for 10 hours. We've had a lot of heavy storms and the ground is saturated. Saturday nights storm was 2 inches of steady rain and we're guessing a tree fell over and took out the line.

Longest we've gone without power was a week because of snow. Honda generator and the wood stove was all we needed, but more power would of been better.

I'm thinking about a transfer switch so we don't have to unplug everything. I'm just not sure if I want to buy one for 10,000 watts, or wait until I get a bigger, better generator. My long term goal is to have one that runs off of Natural Gas. I have the line run to the land, I just haven't had it hooked up to my house yet. That's something I'm working on, but it keeps getting put back to do other more pressing projects.

I'm also thinking of just connecting the power to an outlet, and turning off the main breaker. If we only use the minimum stuff, it should have enough power, but I'm unsure about doing this. I need to read up on it some more.

We can food from the garden and we have plenty of livestock, so there shouldn't be a food issue. Our biggest concern is electricity.

Clean water. Mostly for animals is a bigger concern for us. I need an xfer switch just for my well pump. That would do it for us. I do have a hand pump... but lugging water is too much. Plus.. who knows what's up with that.. being a 100 years old. Gag.

 

[Sigarms]

I have no idea what percentage of load it was handling. We have a 3-bedroom house, and the biggest usage at the time was in running the AC. It also powers our livestock barn, but that is more critical in the winter, to keep water from freezing.

It would take a LOT of hours running the generator before the LP cost exceeded the purchase and installation cost of the generator.

It's a personal choice and essentially a convenience, unless there are medical or physical issues involved. If I was unavailable, I couldn't expect my wife to haul out the portable generator, get it connected, and pull start it. In time, that could also become a physical struggle for me. It's nice to have a hands-off system in place that automatically provides power when it goes out, along with an automatic weekly test to ensure the generator is running correctly.

500 gallon tank @ $3 per gallon LP (my area) would last you short of 11 days running it non stop. Of course you don't have to run it non stop, but figure that's once it's used up, that's pushing $1,000 to run electric to your house for say 20 days or so depending on what you could live without and only running it half days.

When I did the math on what LP cost and what the generator will use, it was a convenience not worthwhile for us.