A winter storm forced us off grid for 10 hours!
- Aunt Plantsy
- Jan 15, 2022
- 2 min read
Updated: Sep 3
We practice a lot of homesteading skills but we are still on the power grid. There have been times our electricity has gone out but usually not for long periods of time. Regardless, we have things in place to get us by for a while.
Right now we are having a mild winter but one time shortly before 5 a.m., our power went out. We had no electricity, no landline phone and no internet – plus, we had at least 6 inches of snow and it was still coming down.
The first blessing was that our cellphones did work and we were able to contact family and friends about our situation. It always feels good to be in contact with the “outside” world.
The next thing we had to consider was how to keep the house warm. Fortunately, we have a fireplace insert and use it during the winter to heat our home. We have plenty of firewood for the time being and I thought ahead by bringing several days’ worth into the garage.
But our fireplace blower works on electricity – NOT! We had it hooked up to our off-grid solar power system years ago. Our house was nice and toasty.
During the day we opened our window blinds and used natural lighting; had the outage continued into the evening, we have some oil lamps that we could have used.
Our off-grid solar panels provided enough electricity for our fireplace blower and to keep our chest freezer and mini fridge powered up, but our refrigerator was without power since before 5 a.m. We were already into 8 hours without power, and had the good sense not to open the fridge at all during that time. Good thing we have a generator! We got our fridge plugged in and were even able to watch a DVD movie. Everything felt pretty normal and it was hard to believe we were 100% off grid for that period of time.
At about 3 p.m., I saw that our internet was working; we checked to see if power was back up and it was. This was a nice test run on how to handle a longer power outage during the winter. I hope that our experience allows you to think about what you would do. We tend to think it will never happen to us, but it just did!
Have a blessed day and be safe out there!
Please visit me online at www.peasbeewithewe.com
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