At the time of writing this article, there is currently 16,282 homeowners without electricity in the state of California alone.
Just take a look at this report by EIA which reveals how much time the average American goes without electricity per year.
The purpose of us revealing this information is not to create panic.
Instead, we'd like to shed some light on just how long we all go without electricity every year, and what we can do to fill in the dark hours.
If you live in the of Louisiana or Oklahoma, we'd recommend you pay particular attention to this article, as you are likely to experience over 45 hours without power each year.
What Is A Power Outage?
A power outage can be a short or long term state of electric power loss to certain given area. It can affect a single house, building, or an entire city.
Other common names for power outage include power failure, blackout, outage, brownout, power disruption or electrical failure.
Types of power outages
1. Transient Fault
- A transient fault is a loss of power most commonly caused by a fault somewhere along a power line. Power to your home will be automatically restored once the fault is found and repaired.
2. Brownout
- A brownout is a sudden drop in voltage in a nearby electrical power supply. The term brownout was coined due to the fact that lights will dim when the power supply experiences a voltage sage. Brownouts cause equipment to perform poorly and sometimes even incorrectly.
3. Blackout
- A blackout equates to a total loss of all power supply to an area and is regarded as the most severe form of power outage that can occur. Blackouts which are caused by a power station tripping are known to be fairly difficult to recover from quickly. These types of power outages can last for a few minutes or potentially up to a few weeks, depending on the nature of the blackout and the configuration of the electrical network
What To Do During A Power Outage?
In this section of our article we aim to reveal various different things you can do during a power outage.
1. Create Your Own Electricity
What seems more applicable than creating your own electricity during a power outage? Very few things, that's the answer.
The question is how do you create your own electricity? Quite simple, with solar panels. You can use portable solar panels to generate your own electricity.
All you have to do is place them in the sun and the photovoltaic effect will begin take place. You can learn more about this process in one of our other dedicated articles.
2. Store Your Own Electricity
Generating your own electricity is an amazing feat, but you might be wondering where you will put all that energy. As you may be aware it is rare that we use electricity 24/7. Therefore generating your own electricity does come at a cost. What if you only need electricity when the sun has gone down?
This would mean all that generated electricity went to waste throughout the day.
Well it would, if you couldn't store that generated electricity. Enter, the BLUETTI solar generator.
With a solar generator you can store all your generated electricity for later use. So even if you need power at night, you can use the energy your solar panels collected during the day, from your solar generator at night.
3. Create Your Own Candles
This one also almost feels like a slap in the face to power outages. We recommended creating candles during the day.
Then at night, you can simply light those candles to produce energy in the form of fire, this will do two things. Release heat energy, but also limited amounts light.
Just make sure you take precaution when using candles, as an open flame inside the house can be a risky combination.
4. Make a bonfire
Similar to point number 3, except on a much more grander scale. Creating a bonfire will produce tons of heat and light (and kids love them).
Of course, you will need space (ideally outdoors) to make this idea a reality.
You could look in creating a DIY fire pit with your kids which could be a fun activity for the whole family to partake in together.
Here, check out this video on how to do so.
There is just something special about the age old idea of fire. Our ancestors have been making fires since the beginning of time (more or less) but interestingly, sitting by a fire even has health benefits.
Additionally, according to research carried out by the University of Alabama sitting by a fire can decrease your blood pressure.
Top 5 States That Experience The Most Power Outages
- Top 1: California takes the first spot with 438 outages that were caused mostly by accidents, animals, faulty equipment and weather.
- Top 2: Texas is next on top of the list with 192 outages.
- Top 3: New York was next on the list with 165 outages that lasted on average about an hour.
- Top 4: Ohio was next with less outages than New York,158 power outages, mostly caused due to weather
- Top 5: In 2017, Michigan was in the top 5 states in the US with the most power outages, 155 outages caused by different reasons with 36% from weather problems and 23% from faulty equipment.
In Conclusion
Knowing what to do during a power outage can prove useful for the entire family (especially the kids).
If you live in an area that experiences very frequent power outages, it may be worth taking a look to see if there are any local power outage apps which predict or know the schedule of the outages.
With this information you will be able to prepare for any blackouts before they hit you.
