Preparing for Power Outages in Disasters

By Fin @ 2022-03-08T17:04 (+9)

Author: Finan Adamson

Last Updated: 03/2022

Overview

This guide goes into details on how to maintain electricity if it’s important to your survival and flourishing even when the power goes out. It may not be necessary to do anything here if you don’t depend on electricity to live. If the electricity is out for many weeks or months, you’ll likely go elsewhere so you don’t need to prepare on that scale. You may also want to do some minimal amount of preparation so you can charge your cell phone. 

Tradeoffs

If you need to have electricity when the grid is down your options seem to be generators and/or batteries. What setup you want will vary depending on your needs. 

You may want both so you can charge your batteries off the generator, but this can get expensive so you may want to skip this unless you really need it for medical reasons. 

Providing Power during an Outage

I just want to charge my phone for a day or two

I want to charge a few things, but not my whole house

I want to provide power to my whole house

Example Solution

Finan has sleep apnea and needs to use a CPAP to function well.

How to store gasoline

If you are running generators you will need gasoline. In preparation for emergencies you’ll probably want to store at least a little bit at home in case gas stations get shut down.