What do you like to do during a power outage?
We're dealing with some stormy weather here (Vancouver for me, but it covers a wider area) and so a patchwork of homes across the region are having power outages. Crews are working to restore it
So on that note, what do you like to do?
I don't remember when the last one happened. We have like 5 minutes of downtime per year in Germany on average
Also German here, that seems a high estimate. The only downtime I had this year was when the workers building our sidewalk grazed a cable bug I can't remember any over the last few years...
I remember we used to get power outages all the time in my countries. But that was the 1970s, modern infrastructure has moved on
Well, everywhere except AHEM 🤔
The area out here on Canada's west coast is tricky to power, and expensive; and we're as far from our nation's capitol as Tehran is from Berlin, with I imagine similar feelings of disconnect. It's a lot of overhead power-lines, nestled in among beautiful, thick, tall trees that really catch the wind during winter storms like the one now (go see on windy.com!). Those wires come down, maybe start a fire in the forest for the lulz, and teams of people in their trucks and cranes repair the breakage. It's planned and operated as well as our flatlander conservative opposition will permit (the cruelty to plebes is the point).
It should be noted that one of the biggest projects for power in this metro is the remediation of overhead power lines to underground cabling running alongside water and sewer service, much as Germany has done. It's trickier to fix, and thieves keep stealing it for the copper, but every time the ground was opened for any significant pipe work, our hydro-electricity supplier was there to use its access and string new cabling alongside whatever else was going in. Wiring that last-hectometer has been a challenge with the WWI-era homes, but even trenching up to a bungalow and running the cable up the side - so ghetto - gives us something unlikely to put people like Otter in the dark for so long.
But long-range power connection is still via strings of thick cabling up on the steel - or often wooden - poles, for long trunk-lines into the wilderness (so pretty!, and see how long that line runs), same as Germany will do. Then it's just the cost of accessing the transmission line to safely get there and fix it. With the vast distances they're traversing, breakage is both more likely and also more expensive to fix.
I'm in a new section of the metro, and the power infrastructure is solid aside from the blip and blinks caused by construction - for new buildings and for upgrades - in the area. It's been solid, so far, and 30 min drive probably from Otter's house could get her to mine. So the upgrades are happening, but it's slow, costly, and stymied at every stage.
Trying to think of the last time I had a long outage here, it might have been 5-10 years ago.
Apparently a bunch of trees fell over power lines / infrastructure last night, and so there were outages all over the place
Read books. Go to bed early as soon as it's dark. Empty the fridge if it's going to be a while longer.
The longest I was without power was as a kid. A winter storm knocked out power lines all over. It was a week before we got power back on, the longest it took for some was 12 days. We had a wood burning fireplace so my parents invited all the elderly neighbors to stay with us. I wasn't happy about sleeping on the floor while some weird-smelling old person slept in my bed, but looking back now I'm glad my parents modeled civic-minded behavior.
Us kids played a lot of cards and picked fights with each other. Dad had us scooping driveways in the neighborhood and eventually the streets by hand just to keep us active and out of the house. It was not a fun week.
Blizzard of '93?
Nope, no special name that I am aware of. Other than "that bad storm in October that one year"
The storm itself wasn't abnormally bad, it was the timing and sequence. It was very early so some deciduous trees still had leaves. The storm started with rain, then slush, then it all froze. So tree branches were overloaded with weight and tore down. Oak trees that had survived for a century were downed. Older neighborhoods and towns with power lines on poles instead of buried lines like newer communities would have now had pretty much all lines and poles torn down. Lineworkers from all over the country were brought in to help. I was too young to really follow at the time, but I'm told some of the delay was simply supply chain; getting enough new wires and poles there quickly enough to keep the crews supplied.
Hilbernate. The other half uses the e-reader. Anything e-ink should have incredible battery life.
Can confirm. I generally prefer the comfort of holding a real book but e-readers are a godsend for blackouts and vacations.
Contemplate how close to total collapse we are every day
Go to bed early because it's dark.
Worry about all the food in the refrigerator.
Be hot (or I guess in your case, cold.)
Read books in the daytime, go for walks.
Cook stuff using the grill, drink cold brew.
Take dreadful cold showers.
Count how many socks and underwear are left, do I need to resort to hand washing some?
Playing the piano to pass the time. There’s a certain eeriness that I find quite enjoyable of having the music flow while in nearly total darkness.
This is a cool one I'll have to try sometime!
I like taking a walk / being outside, because all of the power tools/ leaf blowers/ ac units are shut off and the world is finally quiet
The cars sadly still exist.
It's true. When the power is out because of snow is the best because the cars drive less
Alas, generators.
Hahaha you should see the outage map of Washington State.
What do I like to do? Nothing, I hate power outages.
What I typically do is I have a large stockpile of candles from an old MLM scheme. I light those and play on my phone if there's Internet. We have multiple battery banks for these occasions.
If there's no Internet I will read. Both ebooks and regular books because my attention will shift.
I also try to do something productive like study for something.
Most of all I pile like eleventy billion blankets on the bed because I'm so cold. The furry ones are poor space heaters.
When I was a kid we always played games. Like charades or something. My dad would light the camp stove and we'd entertain ourselves for the evening as a family. They were nice.
I think my last power outage was 30 years ago and i loved it. Lighting candles and playing boardgames. I never even considered that that's a thing that still happens.
I live rurally and have spent the night without power 3 times in the last 2 months.
It gets old.
Last outage we had, one of the first things I did was take a hot shower. Our water heater is electric and if it became extended I might not get another chance.
We lost power for 3 days back in 2006. The water heater still had hot water in it when power was restored. It wasn't piping hot that last day, but was still good enough for a shower. I was quite impressed.
The same things I do when there is power:
chat with my spouse, read, write, sketch, paint, play chess. I will also try to do some chores I have been avoiding for awhile ;)
Edit: we have a few portable reading lamps that will hold for many hours between charges, so we can read during the evening too. We also have flashlights and... candles, just in case we need them (so far, we never were cut off power long enough)
Stare.
I live(d) in Asheville, NC for a decade. I've had the power go out pretty often, most recently for Hurricane Helene (4 days for us, and we were on the low end!). Seeing a 24-48 outage is frequent here.
We have our house wired for a generator, so it's mostly about a cycle of rationing fuel to keep the fridge cold, charge things while it's on, use water and fill things while it's on (we are on a well not city water).
Beyond that, reading books, playing handheld games like the Steam Deck, lots of talking. Losing power is not the worst thing most of the time to me.
Wait for the power to come back on.
Think about opening the fridge and pointlessly looking to boredom eat, then remember I shouldn’t open the fridge and let the cold escape because the power is off. Repeat.
Think about how much of our lives revolve around and are entirely dependent on electricity, and how bad loss of power would be even for just a couple days, and disastrous it would be for a week or more.
Wish I’d remembered to recharge my phone power banks.
Where are all the books? I used to have books to read. They’re all on my phone now. Shit. Need to save battery.
Guess I’ll see if I can find some candles. Maybe the fam will want to play a board game.
Think about opening the fridge and pointlessly looking to boredom eat, then remember I shouldn’t open the fridge and let the cold escape because the power is off. Repeat.
ADHD, power outages, and a fridge. That's how that goes.
Obsessively refresh the "There is a power outage in your area!" page.
Let it go unnoticed as battery and solar handled things.
That’s actually something I think about quite often recently. People 150 years ago didn’t have electricity at all, what did they do?
First the things that would be really helpful if already built into your home: It helps if you have a gas or wooden stove to cook meals. Same with heating, a masonry stove for example could really make a difference.
Stuff that’s good to have is a small camping gas stove, some LED lanterns, tons of batteries and candles. Powerbanks to charge your mobile phones, maybe a few solar cells on the roof with some batteries connected to it. Maybe even a small emergency power generator. Don’t forget the fuel for it.
What you can do: Go for a hike. Read books, play boardgames and cards. Do puzzles. Write! Get a notebook and a pen ( I recommend actually fountain pens) and do some journaling. Write about your day, your dreams or your concerns. Make a list what parts of the world you want to visit before you die or anything else you can think about. Learn to draw or to paint. Maybe it’s time to put up the guitar that’s gathering dust in the corner.
Something like that. Thanks for coming to my ted talk.
A solid list, thank you!
Mostly nothing special in preparation. I have a grill in the back, a propane and a sterno camping stove, so I can still cook food. I have a one-gallon water-filtering thing that I can use if we need to go to boil-water status (our water treatment plant is probably a bit lower than it should be), and I have a camping solar panel (and several power banks) that I can use to recharge the electronics. We also have lanterns, flashlights, headlamps and a lot of candles.
If it's going to be a major storm, I'll fill up the gas tank and stop by the ATM - get small bills where possible, sometimes people can't make change. Oh, and if you're running low on a prescription, see if they can refill it early. If it floods: a long time ago, in a 3am fit of doomscrolling, I figured out what the nearest highest point I can get to without crossing any streams or storm drains. And after Katrina, when all those people survived the flood but died when they got trapped in their attics - well, I had nightmares about that for a long time, and I eventually mounted a hatchet to the attic wall.
How do we pass the time? We'll talk with each other or our neighbors - gotta check in on everyone, make sure everyone's doing as okay as we can be. Maybe go for a walk to check out the neighborhood as well. We all have books and magazines and been meaning to catch up on, so it's a good time for that; family jigsaw puzzles in the early evening before the light gets too bad. It's also really nice to just sit and listen to the world without the constant background noise of civilization.
This is all well thought out, I'm sure your local community appreciates you :)
I've experienced exactly one power outage in Germany in the last 50 years, so i haven't really developed a routine.
I was trying to remember the last time there was a power outage... I think workers had to cut the main power to our home for a few minutes a few years ago. It wasn't really a big event.
I like reading. Make sure your Kindle is fully charged, some books downloaded and articles downloaded in Pocket.
Video games lol
The power outage I remember from over a decade ago was in the nintendo DS era, and I was at a friend's place at the time
It's not like the device could be used for much else during a power outage so might as well play on it.
Last time this happened to me we hastely turned our dinner in a romantic candle lighted dinner.
Lots of babies are born 9 months after major power outages. I hope you enjoyed your company.
I have a pair of lanterns which work great to light up a room.
With those on or if it's daytime, I like to either read or play cards or a board game.
Read a book
In the dark. (if you're unlucky enough)
If during the day, I'll call someone on my mobile, do work out in the garden/yard, or read. If during the night, I'll browse the internet on my phone, play on my Nintendo Switch, or go to sleep if it's already late. I have many sources of backup lighting in the house including a couple dynamo powered torches that you wind up.
Several years ago we lost power for 4 days after an especially bad storm. We don’t have good enough cell service at our house to usually use data or run a hotspot. Mostly it’s like camping except we get to sleep in our beds.
Prepare: We keep filled water jugs for both drinking and flushing the toilets.
We have a small generator to run our fridge, so once a month we run it for about 10 minutes. We keep gas and spark plugs for it handy.
We have a weather radio that’s solar powered with battery back-up.
We have a solar-charging battery bank (to charge our phones) as well as lanterns and flashlights that use AA batteries and a stash of extra AA batteries. Winter here can be quite cloudy, making solar lights harder to use sometimes.
We have a camping stove and extra fuel, as well as some easy to prepare foods. We use the food when we go camping and get new ones to store for emergencies, making sure the food doesn’t expire. We cooked outside (it was summer but even in winter I would do the cooking outside).
For winter we have a kerosene heater and extra fuel and wicks.
Entertainment: I would guess you’re especially asking about evenings, as during the day when our power was out we’d go outside if the weather was nice. In the evenings we played board games and card games, did puzzles and crosswords, did art (drawing, coloring, and painting), did crafts, and read.
If we know ahead of time bad weather’s coming, I’ll download some shows and movies to my tablet. We also have a DVD player to connect to my laptop while the battery lasts.
Living off solar and batteries, I'd get to work fixing it.
First, I check the lower power company's website for an estimate of when the power will come back on. If no one reported the outage, I'll take a few minutes to do so. We usually have the battery powered lights out during a storm, if it's a surpise outage, I go fetch the lights.
If the outage is going to be longer than 6 hours, I go buy some gas for the generator. I pour what isn't used during the outage into the car's fuel tank.
I use an rss reader on my phone with a lot of saved articles. I try to get through some of those.
When it to stops raining or snowing I pull the genny out of the shed, fuel it, get it running. Next, I run a few extension cords for the fridge and freezer.
In order. Turn off the main breaker Turn off the breakers for HVAC and hot water heater Unplugged my car charger Wheel out the generator Power on the generator Plug the generator into my house Put my security camera that can see the street light on one of my screens so I can see when power comes back on. Resume activities
If I can get all that done in less than 10ish minutes my WiFi and computer don’t even power down.
To resume I just unplug the generator and then flip the breakers back to the on position.
I think we just went to bed, because it was pretty late anyway. It was like 4-6 years ago. Outages are pretty rare here, where I live.
I only seem to get power outages at night, after the sun has set. So besides burning some candles or using flashlights until I'm sure I have everything I need, I usually just call it a night early and go to sleep. The power is usually back on by the time I wake up in the morning.
Before that, I'll make sure to shut down my computers. I have several of them running on an UPS, so they don't lose power when it goes dark; however, they burn through my UPS battery within 30 minutes or less, so I need to make sure they're safely shut down first.
My power used to very unreliable and I'd get rolling brownouts (flicker of power) every now and then. Which would kill my PCs. So I got the UPS so they maintain power, regardless of a blackout or brownout. Ever since, my computers stay on 24/7 without problems.
I basically start collecting everything that has power and can provide power. Basically I just check on my laptops, power banks, phones, the bag of random batteries, estimate how long I can keep going, and try to reasonably save power regardless: Shutdown instead of sleep for laptops, mobile data off on phone if not needed, prefer dedicated flashlight over to phones, fetch other options like candles.
Kills enough time that the power gets restored during that time. Then I think of how unprepared I was, how I am going to improve it, and then never do it. There's a bag of old 18650s from power banks and laptop batteries under my bed for like 2 years. I don't know what state they are in now. I know I measured their capacities, disposed of dead ones, put good ones into the bag, planned to use it for a giant power bank, but did absolutely nothing with it in the end.
I should probably dispose of them at this point. They all had like 60% of capacity anyway and years of use.
And then I also think about the bag of batteries from dad's disposable vapes. They're rechargeable, but it's possible they were overdischarged and shouldn't be used anymore. On some the wires running along those batteries were partly melted too.
I should dispose of that too. So much damn waste.
In the end after each power outage I turn to the web, obsessively looking through power banks, get amazed by those with built-in mains inverter, but in the end don't get anything as it isn't necessary.
This one sounds the closest to my experience. Maybe I'll make a list now so I don't forget the important items
Sit in the dark and enjoy solitude for once.
Sleep and hope that I dream and that my dreams take me to the dream noosphere.
Make a blanket fort and read
removed that the power's out.
Connect phone to laptop to drain for juice.
Sleep.
Read, sleep, and I usually have a hand held charged if I'm super desperate.
It usually happens in the summer in my area, when everyone had the air on full blast.
I really really enjoy complete and utter silence and lack of any electronics outside, depending on how wide spread it is and the weather. Sometimes I just get a chair outside and enjoy the silence of all the electronics that are everywhere. Especially at night it's even better without lights ok everywhere
Remove enterprise UPS battery backup system from home lab and use it to charge my hand held gaming consoles and phones. This was in Texas when ice storm knocked our power out for over a week
Playing a game on my phone
Watch TV via the agm batteries and eBay inverter that I got a couple years ago.
Use the batteries.
The best light I have actually had to use during a power cut is this:
https://www.wexphotovideo.com/phottix-t200r-rgb-led-tube-light-3112051/
I was cleaning my walk in closet and the power went out, I was in the zone and needed to keep going to get it done, so I grabbed one of my two lights and kept going.
That's why I keep a pen and paper. For power outages.
Apart from that, if there's light:
No light:
Read a book, usually Asimov.
I sit on my phone until the power comes back on. Rarely lasts for more than an hour. I think I've had more outage time from them doing maintenance than from weather.
Haven't delt with that in a long time. Closest I had was maybe an hour or less because I live close to an elderly home and they usually get power restored real quick. I just stayed on my phone, which thankfully was charged, as I went with my parents to get candles. Never got candles since power came back so quick.
Longest I was without it because of an outage was around 2014 maybe, in winter. Cold days/nights spent in the living room, probably using the fireplace for the first time ever since I lived there. Used my phone and probably had other means of keeping myself entertained. Don't recall much about it because it was a decade ago. Neighbor across the street was an amazing person because she let us take an extension cable cord thing from her house to ours when they got power back. I do remember watching a video when all of the sudden the power came back, though.
As for what I'd do now, probably cry and hope my Steam Deck/laptop/phone are charged. Also probably get batteries for a radio CD cassette mini boom box thing I got from a thrift store recently and play music, plugging in my headphones. I've got enough CDs to last a short while.
Sleep.
Out by RCH here. Nary a blip. You good?
We're good! It came back on for us earlier. The crews are working hard out there
Beauty news -- they do prioritize well, at least. My work group (remote) still has a peer out in Sooke with issues, but that's a lot of greenspace and loooong cables. CobbleHill just came up as well. Islander communities will be out the longest, but the BCHydro map will get rid of most of those measles by day's end I think. I think they're doing well in a bad situation, but I have the luxury of saying so in comfort, so Grain of Salt and all.
The best light is the cheap usba plastic bulb ones that plug into any power bank. They last forever on battery power and provide decent enough light.
I recently bough a new flashlight, a Wurkkos FC11C to be exact. It's pretty good for the price, and it really can't hurt to have a good flashlight around. I made a post about it in !flashlight@lemmy.world about it, and there are some other posts too.
I am always amazed that power outages are such a common experience in north America. In more than 55 years here in Europe I have experienced exactly two power outages, one that was planned when they were working in the substation for this street, and one incident that took out a whole part of the city for 20 minutes. The latter one was so extraordinary that it made the national evening news.