… and there was light.

[Té Rowan]

I live in an area not particularly prone to power outages (usually two or three per year), so perhaps it’s a bit weird to have something like seven battery-powered utility lights around the bedroom and only five decorative lights.

[Spica75]

I live in an area not particularly prone to power outages (usually two or three per year), so perhaps it’s a bit weird to have something like seven battery-powered utility lights around the bedroom and only five decorative lights.

Hmm, I think i´ve had maybe 3 outages in 5 years(or maybe 6-7?), and at least one of those was a planned and pre-warned maintenance outage.

And of course it´s not weird, with that much outages, it´s needed, since you can´t know in advance when they will be needed.

It was something like that when i was a kid, in the 70s, Swedish power grid and supply was expanding a bit too quickly for everything to work fine right away, but still not expanding as quick as power usage, so it took until early/mid 80s before things got more reliable.

Then however, came some really naughty storms, and started the big move to put powerlines underground, and that has really improved reliability massively.

[Knight of L-sama]

I know that feeling!

Until about three or four years ago we'd get power black outs every time the weather turned stormy. It was something of a mixed blessing that local geography tended to make storms go around us in that regard, but if it hit there were better than even odds we'd lose power.

Then with the big floods four years ago we lost power for several days. In the middle of summer. With huge amounts of water around driving the humidity through the roof. That was fun... not! (especially while trying to conserve my phone battery and friends and family constantly texting to ask how we were doing). Though thankfully they've fixed the local substation or whatever was causing the problem and we rarely lose power for more than a couple of minutes at a time.

[Ellen Kuhfeld]

We have some huge thunderstorms in Minnesota, and get power failures reasonably often. But our building has two-phase power -- and sometimes only one of the phases goes out. That means all of the 220 volt equipment fails, and half of our 110 circuits go out. So we can have light in one bathroom, say, but not the other; living-room but not kitchen. And while our laptops and tablets run happily on batteries, there's no guarantee the modem/router will be alive.

So we keep flashlights around, and have a plain old-fashioned telephone-line-powered phone available just in case. So far, that's been enough.

[Té Rowan]

They rarely last for long here, either; half a minute to half an hour with the unscheduled ones. The scheduled ones usually occur at night for minimal inconvenience, which I believe is the world-wide norm anyway. There are still places up here where outages can last for days. Last winter, the power line to a nearby lighthouse (ca. 7nm direct, much longer by road) lay broken for months until linesmen could get to the break. At least the gensets held out. Mind, I’m sure most countries in the world have places like that.

The only phone on our phone line is line-powered, so few problems there.

Oh, and I can’t find one of the ute lights and overlooked one decorative light, so right now it’s literally six of one and half a dozen of the other.