Power Outage, How many Lumens, How many batteries? (for lights and more)

[IMA SOL MAN]

@N8N I'm glad that you brought this back up top. It's a thread that's great for passtime reading, and full of insightful ideas.

@IMA SOL MAN apparently you've been reading it from start to finish. I appreciate the likes you have given me, it causes me to reread sections. Someday, I'll reread the entire thread.

You betcha! Been enjoying all the voices of experience. I seldom suffer a prolonged power outage, but anything can happen. We recently had a stupid SNAFU at our water works, and that was a major inconvenience. The city hauled in truckloads of bottled water, but you had to pick them up yourself--no address delivery.

I'm fortunate to have two good fireplaces--one upstairs, one downstairs, and an abundance of wood, so no heat worries. However, a summer outage will be life threatening. I have three window A/C's that I could install, and maybe run them off a portable genny, but I don't have one. I would rather get a whole house genny, as my house is all electric--no natural gas, no propane, no heating oil. Lookin at solar, but not a total answer to the situation, as the battery bank would have to be huge. I have plenty of room for arrays, though.

I want to drill a well, but money is an obstacle, and possibly permits, too.

Anyway, enjoying the thread and getting ideas.

Best regards.

 

[AlexGT]

I would get a solar panel and/or wind generator and recharge the batteries from there and save the gas for other uses. Maybe use a big capacity power bank for the radio.

 

[M@elstrom]

I've never experienced a prolonged power outage (that wasn't scheduled maintenance) in my life, that said I suspect that to change as our Country gravitates towards renewable energy and battery infrastructure.

We have several large capacity powerbanks and I keep a charged back up battery for my primary lights in addition to long runtime lights as additional redundancies, a UPS for our landline and internet modem would be useful but not of much use if the outage is widespread.

Back to basics is the plan, camp cooking and tinned food 🤣

 

[IMA SOL MAN]

 

[Poppy]

Yesterday morning, I woke at 4:30 AM. My room was unusually dark, I looked up at my alarm clock to see what time it was, and it wasn't lit. Oh boy, we had a power failure. I reached to the top of my tall-boy dresser for one of the two lights I normally keep up there, and they were both gone. I remembered seeing them in another room. So I reached for a light that I keep on a shelf of the mirrored dresser.

I placed a TN30 (a three led soda pop can light) in the bathroom on low, at either 1 LM (1200 hours) or 38 lumens (75 hours) ceiling bounced, and a 2C maglite LED powered by an 18650, on low, placed on top of the entertainment unit in the living room.

I discovered that one of the two auto-on power failure lights was off. I guessed that it ran the battery down. Later I discovered that it was actually turned off, such that it never came on!

I plan to give each of them a run time test. They each have a number of years on them, and I don't know how well the batteries held up. My daughter said she got a text message from PSE&G around midnight stating that there was a power outage. So, the outage light that was lit maintained power for at least 4 hours. Not bad for a $10 emergency auto on light.

 

[IMA SOL MAN]

Yesterday morning, I woke at 4:30 AM. My room was unusually dark, I looked up at my alarm clock to see what time it was, and it wasn't lit. Oh boy, we had a power failure. I reached to the top of my tall-boy dresser for one of the two lights I normally keep up there, and they were both gone. I remembered seeing them in another room. So I reached for a light that I keep on a shelf of the mirrored dresser.

I placed a TN30 (a three led soda pop can light) in the bathroom on low, at either 1 LM (1200 hours) or 38 lumens (75 hours) ceiling bounced, and a 2C maglite LED powered by an 18650, on low, placed on top of the entertainment unit in the living room.

I discovered that one of the two auto-on power failure lights was off. I guessed that it ran the battery down. Later I discovered that it was actually turned off, such that it never came on!

I plan to give each of them a run time test. They each have a number of years on them, and I don't know how well the batteries held up. My daughter said she got a text message from PSE&G around midnight stating that there was a power outage. So, the outage light that was lit maintained power for at least 4 hours. Not bad for a $10 emergency auto on light.
View attachment 45136

@Poppy Are the batteries in those lights meant to be changed, or are they built in?

 

[Poppy]

@IMA SOL MAN the one pictured uses batteries that look like this.

I don't recall if they are NiCads, or NiMH.

The other one is a different style, and I haven't had it apart. I don't know what kind of batteries it takes nor how easy it would be to swap it out.