No power for 8 hours!

[GTP]

We lost power in the whole State of South Australia yesterday afternoon at about 3.50pm after a High Voltage Tower collapsed in our wild weather!
Finally got power back at about 10.30pm last night, but when the power did come back on it created a surge that blew several breakers on my powerboard.
Couldn't get an electrician till 2.00pm today!
Still many rural communities and parts of Adelaide without power.
Last night was so spooky and kind of awesome! I went for a walk and it was so dark! You forget how dark it gets because of the street lights, house light etc.
Even when we get localised power outages the sky is still light from the city and other suburbs around us that still have power.
It was absolutely pitch black apart from the occasional "candle in the window!" with the sky heavily overcast as well.
No PSTN telephone or mobile phone service either! That was scary!

 

[glennd]

We lost power in the whole State of South Australia yesterday afternoon at about 3.50pm after a High Voltage Tower collapsed in our wild weather!
Finally got power back at about 10.30pm last night, but when the power did come back on it created a surge that blew several breakers on my powerboard.
Couldn't get an electrician till 2.00pm today!
Still many rural communities and parts of Adelaide without power.
Last night was so spooky and kind of awesome! I went for a walk and it was so dark! You forget how dark it gets because of the street lights, house light etc.
Even when we get localised power outages the sky is still light from the city and other suburbs around us that still have power.
It was absolutely pitch black apart from the occasional "candle in the window!" with the sky heavily overcast as well.
No PSTN telephone or mobile phone service either! That was scary!

I was watching the radar yesterday as the storm that hit Adelaide moved east. It moved a little north of us but it was still a wild night. Apparently you've got more to look forward to tonight. 80,000 lightning strikes in Adelaide yesterday according to the news.

 

[Moltuae]

Wow. Longest power outage I think I've had in recent years was maybe 10mins, and that felt like an eternity.

I do vaguely remember, as a kid in the 70s/80s, the miner's strikes and the long power outages that ensued as a result. But those seemed like no big deal, back in the day, since we had very little stuff to plug in!

 

[Diggs]

Which brings up the question - Is everyone running good UPSs on their benches? Since I'm rural, power flickers or goes out quite a bit here. Fortunately, Charter's cable usually stays up and I'm good for at least a couple of hours on my battery backups. A power flicker here and I have a chorus of chirps here as the UPSs speak up - heh.

 

[GTP]

Which brings up the question - Is everyone running good UPSs on their benches?

Finding a UPS that will last up to 8 hrs might be a stretch!
My UPS runs 2 laptops for about 2 hrs.
Or 1 Desktop and monitor for about 15-20 minutes.
Would love to have a backup generator but I think the neighbours would complain!

 

[nlinecomputers]

@Barcelona welcome to North Korea.

We lost power for 33 hours last year when a drunk driver crashed into a distribution node box for our neighborhood. Replacement had to be shipped out from Dallas and the labor involved in restoring 300 connections.

 

[Moltuae]

Would love to have a backup generator but I think the neighbours would complain!

Get half a dozen Telsa Powerwalls instead.

In fact, since you're in Oz, wouldn't solar panels make a lot of sense too?

I've considered solar panels myself, but the sun is pretty elusive in the UK. Some method of generating electricity from rainfall would probably be much more practical here.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

I do vaguely remember, as a kid in the 70s/80s, the miner's strikes and the long power outages that ensued as a result. But those seemed like no big deal, back in the day, since we had very little stuff to plug in!

Yeah..exactly. Growing up, those power outages could last a long time. We learned to plan ahead of time, fill up the bathtub so you'd have a good amount of fresh water available. Get all the candles out. And we dealt with it. Usually cuz it was a storm, as a kid a bunch of us would be playing outside in the heavy winds or something.

These days...power outages, my wife and kids get instantly bored and start really...just....not dealing with it well. They don't know what to do without their electronics! It amuses me.

 

[GTP]

We lost power for 33 hours

Noooo! 33hrs...
I went ballistic waiting from about 4.00pm yesterday till the power came back at 10.00pm but I still couldn't do anything till the electrician left at about 3.00pm today!
Power to my residence no problem, every time I flicked a switch in the workshop "pop!" circuit breaker tripped! Grrrr.....

 

[GTP]

In fact, since you're in Oz, wouldn't solar panels make a lot of sense too?

I've got 12 Solar Panels but they go back into the grid, not stored.
My Daughter and her Husband have a country property of 26,000 hectares of land! It is 11km from the front gate to their house!
Their only sources of power are solar and wind turbine. They store the power in batteries, about 60 of them!
They also have a diesel generator in case they get prolonged bad weather.
The batteries are costly to replace!

 

[allstarit]

You mean this tower

 

[allstarit]

that hail you guys got was pretty crazy too

 

[1on1 Computer Services]

I can't believe you'd go walking around at night in the dark with these guys out there roaming around...

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=1219480581430255

 

[TAPtech]

Wow! I have one client that insisted on getting two large rack mount battery backups. He insisted on daisy chaining them together. I had just never seen that before so I contacted the manufacturer and tech support was like "yeah... I guess you could do that." So I think he gets something like 8 hours of run time. Not sure what good that would do when the internet connection is down as well as the rest of the power in the shop...

 

[Slaters Kustum Machines]

Would love to have a backup generator but I think the neighbours would complain!

That probably depends on how big of a generator you got and if you shared a line or two.

 

[fencepost]

There are worse things to have happen than 8 hours: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_1998_North_American_ice_storm

 

[PBComputer]

We lost power in the whole State of South Australia yesterday afternoon at about 3.50pm after a High Voltage Tower collapsed in our wild weather!
Finally got power back at about 10.30pm last night, but when the power did come back on it created a surge that blew several breakers on my powerboard.
Couldn't get an electrician till 2.00pm today!
Still many rural communities and parts of Adelaide without power.
Last night was so spooky and kind of awesome! I went for a walk and it was so dark! You forget how dark it gets because of the street lights, house light etc.
Even when we get localised power outages the sky is still light from the city and other suburbs around us that still have power.
It was absolutely pitch black apart from the occasional "candle in the window!" with the sky heavily overcast as well.
No PSTN telephone or mobile phone service either! That was scary!

I had similar yesterday. Power off for me for around 5 hours. Some where off for 12 hours. I have since found an old phone which does not need power to work for next time.

 

[Markverhyden]

Back when I was kid living in Sao Paulo Brazil, late 60's-early 70's that was fairly common. Was quite surprised as in those days Sao Paulo was in the top 10 largest cities in the world. A couple of days was not unusual. But what was worse was water outages. Those happened so often many homes, including ours, large water tanks on the roof. Maybe 1000 gallons.

 

[GTP]

You mean this tower

Yes, and the other twelve it brought down with it!

 

[GTP]

that hail you guys got was pretty crazy too

Luckily no hail in my area!
Some places copped it again last night!
Wind here was incredible, like a cyclone!