We used the lights for a good 3 to 4 hours after it got dark, getting wood from the cellar, getting water out to the horses (my sister has a boarding stable on the property with 16+ horses), just general use
I have used this outage as a learning experience, I learned a great deal about the makeup of the grid, the order in which power is restored, the way CMP prioritizes repairs, what power pole circuit breakers look like, how to tell a tripped breaker from a functioning one, and also learned that we need to keep more than a cord of wood on hand, we also need to have multiple backup redundancies for our backup plans
We did well on the food, water, and lighting side
We did okay on the heating side, but we really need to have a lot more wood and/or firelogs on hand to be truly prepared
we absolutely failed on the electrical side, we should have at the very least, a small 8 KW generator to keep our oil furnace running, we can live without electricity for the *conveniences* like electric lights, TV, and the Internet, but since both our oil heat, propane heater, and water heater and water pump are electrically powered, we were forced to rely on our backup equipment, which we had just barely enough of
Going forward, we plan to;
1; keep a decent, if not excessive amount of wood on hand for use in the woodstove for supplimental heating, and in fact, the woodstove will now be used as a main part of our winter heating strategy even when we do have power, we'll use the woodstove to reduce our reliance on fossil fuel heating
2; keep a good amount of water onhand in storage, we'll re-use those 5 gallon water cooler jugs and keep them filled at all times, if the water isn't potable, it can at least be used for flushing toilets
3; we will be seriously considering a professionally installed backup generator, powered by Propane, this will be used to run the oil furnace in winter outages, and the refrigerator during summer outages, the only drawback to the genny is it's cost, as it would be an unplanned for expense
the biggest problem I had with CMP, and the reason for my irrational ranting, was their lack of communication and the poor/false info they were giving us, sadly, this is not a one time thing with them, our road has always recieved substandard-to-nonexistent support from CMP, I don't like calling them, and I know they're sick of talking to me, but it's the only way to get any information from them and it's the only way to let them know our power related problems
They blow up under your car the noise doesn't stop all night. No firework laws in many places. But the sound of cracking limbs and trees it's much scarier. You hear the CRACK then the limbs smashing to the ground. But other than that dead silence.
