Backup Power for Short-Term Outages
Anyone who has experienced a power outage understands the inconvenience of living without lights, HVAC, and appliances – even for a few hours. For this reason, it’s common for a generator purchase to be a household’s entry point into crisis readiness.
Buying a generator can be a smart move. But if you live in the city or suburbs, and you’re getting your household ready for something worse than a short-term outage, is backup power really the panacea it’s made out to be?
What Are You Preparing For?
When my family lived on an island in the Pacific Northwest, power outages lasting hours or days were a frequent occurrence. The countless trees in our area were prone to taking down power lines after rain or snow storms. For people living in hurricane or tornado country, frequent outages can also make backup power a common sense solution.
But what about a grid-down scenario that lasts for weeks, or months? Many people imagine riding out this kind of grid-down scenario in relative comfort thanks to their backup power system.
Think about this – if the power grid stays down for a month, and grocery stores run out of food, and clean drinking water is scarce, how long do you expect people to remain civil?
Security During Grid-Down
The reality is that security will become your number one priority in any grid-down scenario lasting more than a few weeks. Once people realize that things aren’t going back to normal, all bets are off.
Even if you could somehow manage to keep a generator running long after everyone else has run out of fuel, do you really want to be the one house in your neighborhood with power?
If you live in a rural area away from cities, backup power for a long-term grid down scenario begins to make more sense. While expensive, a proper solar panel array and backup battery system could provide power indefinitely.
For anyone living in or near a city, however, a backup power system will only buy you some time until you have to make hard choices. For any grid-down crisis that lasts more than a few weeks, you may be forced to abandon your home altogether and evacuate to a less-populated area.
Backup Power for Critical Items
If the grid goes down and stays down, keeping your refrigerator, TV, and other appliances running will become exponentially less important over time. Your priorities will shift to survival.
Providing power to small electronic devices such as flashlights, headlamps, and radios will become critical. The good news is that you don’t need a generator or solar backup system to achieve this.
With a portable solar charger, or even better – a small 12V battery + solar panel – you can keep all of your most important electronics charged off the sun’s energy. Another big advantage to this compact setup is that you can bring it with you if you have to leave home.
Parting Thoughts
If you do choose to purchase a generator for short-term outages, there are several factors to consider. You have a variety of options available, ranging from gasoline, propane, and natural gas. Do your research and consider what will work best for your needs. It’s important to assess how much power you’ll need, and match a generator accordingly.
Another consideration is fuel supply. In a grid-down scenario, gas stations could run dry within days or hours. Spare gasoline can be stored at home, but only up to a certain amount per your area’s municipal code. Natural gas could theoretically flow to your home indefinitely from the city, but not if the infrastructure is compromised in a disaster.
Solar is also an option, but make sure you thoroughly understand your power needs. You could spend thousands on a solar array and backup battery, and still find that you are unable to keep your battery charged sufficiently to run appliances in your home.
While there is no perfect backup power option, if you treat your generator as a luxury for short-term outages, it’s hard to go wrong. Just avoid the trap of thinking that backup power will save you in a true grid-down scenario, and plan accordingly.
