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Posted by Sherman in Idaho [72.47.153.24] on Thursday, July 05, 2012 at 11:10:11 :
In Reply to: Re: FINALLY! posted by Jerry in Idaho [69.59.83.175] on Thursday, July 05, 2012 at 10:49:17 :
How do you figure storms are going to increase? What's more likely is it's getting harder and harder to live without electricity and we have more instant news coverage so we here about every storm instantly. The electricity is more reliable now than it was when I was a kid in the suburbs of Seattle, and WAY more reliable than it was at my grandparent's place in Oregon. It seemed like every time we'd visit, which was usually Thanksgiving and Christmas, the power would go out for several hours. The house was heated by an oil burner in the living room, and grandma had plenty of kerosene lamps, and they still had the old gravity water line, so it was no big deal except if she had a roast in the oven. Nowadays a house without electricity is pretty much uninhabitable.
Short of putting in a genset powerful enough to run the whole house, you can do a lot with a car battery and an inverter. It's enough electricity to run the computer, make a modern gas/electric range work, power the electric part of a gas-fired boiler, or run a few lights. In a pinch, you can charge it by swapping it with the battery in the car. Want to get fancier and you can charge it from a genset that you only run once in a while, or from a solar panel, or you can get a deep-cycle battery and set up a semi-permanent system. My point is there's a low-cost alternative to the 25 kW whole-house emergency backup gensets and to running a noisy little fuel-sucking portable genset that won't stand up to continuous use. I expect if you live in a place where you absolutely have to have A/C, however, you'd need one of those big systems and a big fuel tank.
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