Who has the power?

Geez, the electricity has been off here for the past 14+ hours. The Southern US just keeps getting pounded by storms.

So, I currently (heh) have an inverter plugged in to the cigarette lighter of my car and an extension cord run into the house. Needed power for the important stuff, the cable modem and router Also, needed to top up the laptop.

For a while, even the cable was out. I was online then by using bluetooth PAN with my mobile phone.

Yes indeed, I took care of the important stuff first, getting online!

I suppose that all the food in the freezer is going to be ruined, can't even cook some of it now as all my cooking devices are electric. Wait, maybe I could put something on the manifold of the car...it's running anyway to power my internet frenzy

Kent

Glad you can use your car to get power :)

We all wish that the electricity will come back at your place! All the best wishes from Denmark!

Best Regards,
FredeGail

looks like it's time to invest into a small diesel generator...your alternator doesn't take that load forever, ya know.
In Africa I've seen home made "powerplants" with solar collectors a bunch of old car batteries and an inverter (but they sure have sufficient sun down there
At least you could have your supper without having grandpa circling the dinner table with his bicycle

Hope you're back on the grid soon
(amazing how a country like the US have such a miserable grid)

-DG

z3r010 said:

Have you not got a BBQ?

I do, in fact. However, I don't have any charcoal. Hold on, there are a lot of tree limbs and branches lying about...hmm.

Wonder what a tv dinner cooked on a BBQ using sweetgum branches will taste like?

FredeGail said:

Glad you can use your car to get power :)

We all wish that the electricity will come back at your place! All the best wishes from Denmark!

Best Regards,
FredeGail

Thank you very kindly for the good wishes.

Kent

SledgeDG said:

looks like it's time to invest into a small diesel generator...your alternator doesn't take that load forever, ya know.
In Africa I've seen home made "powerplants" with solar collectors a bunch of old car batteries and an inverter (but they sure have sufficient sun down there
At least you could have your supper without having grandpa circling the dinner table with his bicycle

Hope you're back on the grid soon
(amazing how a country like the US have such a miserable grid)

-DG

I had considered a small gasoline powered generator but a small one won't do for powering a fridge and the like. Maybe a bigger inverter so I can power my desktop and my tv.

This is really very unusual. Most power interruptions are brief (between a blink and about 10 seconds) and very rarely last an hour. From what I've seen online high winds knocked over a lot of trees that brought down a lot of power lines. According to the power company website, there are still about 8,000 to 10,000 customers without power.

Darn it, I'm having a lot of trouble trying to light these sweetgum branches, they're soaked.

Condolences on your loss of power. In my area (maryland USA) about 12 years ago we had a terrible ice storm and power was off for 5 days. I then had a natural gas generator installed that automatically starts up after a power loss and it runs my whole house. At the time it was $5K installed for the 15KW but now they are over $8K due to demand. But I still have my internet..
Rich

richnrockville said:

Condolences on your loss of power. In my area (maryland USA) about 12 years ago we had a terrible ice storm and power was off for 5 days. I then had a natural gas generator installed that automatically starts up after a power loss and it runs my whole house. At the time it was $5K installed for the 15KW but now they are over $8K due to demand. But I still have my internet..
Rich

About that same time there was a terrible ice storm here, could have been the same weather system. Took down a television broadcast tower in Tulsa. There were folks here without power for days and in the more rural area, weeks. My power never flickered.

I get adverts with my gas bill for the automatic home generator. They never mention the price but since these outages are such a rarity it's not really worth it.

Oh good, I hear thunder, must be time for the next round.

Kent