Survival Plan 4 — Short Term Power Outage

Where I live, the electrical grid isn’t a “grid.” It’s a single power line with no redundant supply, so every time a squirrel fries his acorns we lose power for at least a few seconds, and sometimes hours. The power blinks off an average of about once or twice a month.

Planning for short term power outage

1. Flashlights. Keep flashlights in known locations (at least two). Be diligent about always putting them back where they belong, so you can feel your way through the dark and find them. Check them periodically to make sure the batteries have a charge, and keep a spare set with the flashlight. Tape the batteries lengthwise over the poles with electrical tape to keep them from discharging by contact with metallic objects, and tape them together to make them easier to find in the dark.
2. If you work from home with a computer, purchase a backup power supply with surge protection. The idea is to have enough battery power to give you time to save your work and shut down the system. Make sure its power rating is sufficient to power all of the critical devices on your system. In addition to the CPU, this would include the monitors and external drives. If you’re on a wireless network and you’re working on internet files, you’ll need time save your work and logout, assuming the phone lines aren’t affected by the power outage, so be sure the modem and wireless network hub are both connected to a backup power unit. I use the APC 1500VA Battery Backup with LCD. There are many to choose from, so just get one suitable for your needs.
3. It’s a good idea to have a battery powered emergency lighting system that comes on automatically when it detects a power failure. The EMERSON Home Security & Emergency Lighting System is a good, reasonably-priced system.
4. Food will keep in the refrigerator and freezer for up to a few days, but if the power interruption extends beyond that you’ll need to salvage it. We’ll address this in a future article dealing with long term power outage.

Consider a short term power outage more of a glitch or inconvenience rather than an emergency. These few steps will make it go smoothly.

Contingencies: the battery pack in your computer’s power backup can only cycle through so many charges before it dies and needs replacing. Buy one with an indicator that measures the load on the system and tells you how many minutes of backup power it can supply, or at least indicates the remaining battery life. Aim for a minimum of five minutes to give you time to save work and shut down. When it falls below five minutes, replace the battery.

~SnoMan