Power Outage Practice

The last week has provided plenty of Power Outage Practice due to large Thunderstorms! At one point on Tuesday there were over 40,000 customers without power in North Carolina. That is to be expected when you have over 3500 Cloud to Ground Lightning Strikes in a 31 county area.

Electricity Out in Troy, Illinois by Robert Lawton

No matter how many times that it happens there seems to be something to learn and improve upon. Last time we had a planned practice went over well. This time in the unplanned practice there was little thought paid too dinner.

As we saw the ferocity of today’s storm pick up there was little doubt that there would be power problems. The wind had sustained winds like you would expect from a Tropical Storm and it lasted for at least 10 minutes. The power was quickly restored for a lot of customers thanks to the dedication of the line crews.

This power outage practice was very short lived fortunately, but it had several key learning points that need to be constantly reminded of. When the power is out and you are on well water then you have limited water that is left in your pressure tank. The other conservation that is needed to conserve light sources.

Fortunately there is a lot of choices and of course it was a valuable teaching lesson why the Little Giant should not be the only option. It of course fired up and provided the light as needed, but a simple question about an extra wick caused certain people to ponder the lack of backups. Add some more wick material to the list here shortly.

Another powerful reminder was getting a busy signal on the cell phone during the outage. It helped prove some points about how fragile the communication infrastructure is and how ham radio can be the lifeline.

While this power outage practice was brief and no lifelines were needed this time. There are some other things to add to the list, but these opportunities for short term power outage provide great chances to learn before any serious outage.