Finally a power failure in my house

For the past few days, I noticed a smell of something burning. I had went around my house several times but just could not locate the source of the smell.

Last night, while I was reading my papers. Suddenly, the light went off and all airconditioner, electronics devices stopped working. I immediately deploy my E2D which was my regular EDC to check the circuit breaker and grab my mobile phone to call for an electrican.

While waiting for the electrican to arrive, I intended to deploy Osram lanterns and Dot-It as my area lights. 1 Osram lantern in common living area and another in the kitchen. One Dot-It for each bathrooms.

However only 1 Osram lantern was fully functional. I was surprise that the other Osram lantern had weak, dying battery. I am fully aware that my son had been playing with the 2 Osram Dot-It, so I would need to replace their batteries as well. Each Osram lantern requires 4 AA battery while each Dot-It requires 3 AAA.

I only had 2 primary AA and 1 or 2 dozen rechargable AA/AAA that not holding a charge. I was left staring at the battery charger and rechargeable batteries. Had no choice but to make a trip to the nearest 24hrs convenience store to buy additional primary AA & AAA batteries.

Inova 24x7 was also put into service for a while, for navigating from room to room and it was really useful when I change battery for other lights.

I also put in fresh battery for the Old version of Inova T1 and Pelican M6 LED. Then give the T1 to my wife while I carried the Pelican M6 LED.

The electrican took 3 hours to reach my house from the time I called. He had one of those big 6V Everready flashlight with a weak beam that he was about to use to check my circuit breaker. To assist him, I switch on my modded Mag 2C with 3x CR123. His immediate comment was my light was very bright and switch off his EVerready. He found loose electrical cables which cause 2 circuit breaker to melt a little. It took him close to an hour to replace both burnt circuit breakers and ensure all cables are correctly wired and tighten.

Lesson learnt, I need to get more LED based lights for the extended runtime. My choice will be Inova 24/7 for the handfree convenience and Osram lanterns for the soothing cool white light.

I may have to keep some primary AA/AAA on hand, seem that rechargeable batteries is not so useful in a power failure situation. The inconvenience of having to do reqular recharge, just seem too much of a hassle.

Except for my E2D which seem some action, there was no need for me to deploy the rest of my Surefires or dipped into my supply of 200~300 CR123A. If the power failures had been longer, I will have to deploy my Surefire L1 & A2.

I run lithium primaries in most of my honest go-to lights for emergency stuff. The others run either Eneloops (an alternative worth considering for a rechargeable) or Li-Ion rechargeables, both of which have good shelf life.

It's different when you really have to put the stuff to use, isn't it?

My lights are now predominantly AA powered. I run exclusively on Eneloops now, the low self discharge and running costs are great. I also have Duracell Ultra and Energizer lithiums on hand for emergencies.

200~300 CR123A

That's a big stock of primaries you've got there.:naughty:

Ducaticorse said:

I run lithium primaries in most of my honest go-to lights for emergency stuff.

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The Osram lantern is my emergency area lights, hence both lantern has fresh Energizer e2 Lithium AA. I had tested them before putting away for long term storage. Hence, I was very surprise when 1 of them has a weak beam & nearly flat batteries. Finding out your light need a battery change in the dark is no fun and worse, I do not have enough spare for the change.

I am a little disappointed with my rechargeable batteries because I had actually recharge the entire lot less than 7 days ago. The self discharge rate was so high that none had enough charges to light up the Osram lantern.

arjay said:

200~300 CR123A

That's a big stock of primaries you've got there.:naughty:

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Estimated my CR123A inventory, should be able to last several weeks for 2 dozen Surefires. If I deploy my LED / incan lights correctly, it should last a longer period of time.

200-300 CR123A.. wish I had that many. I have 16 unused in stock - I think I'll need to greatly bulk that up once I start using my A2 (when it gets here from the US!)

firefly99, get some eneloops immediately. You shame CPF by not having any!

In addition to having a seperate stock of primaries that are for emergency only ( no matter how much my wife needs to listen to her walkman, or the kids need their monster truck ), I also tend to rotate my "daily use" and "emergency use" lights. That way I know the light I am going to reach for in a power failure was filled with fresh batteries and given a good checking out not more than a few months ago. Plus, I tend to miss some of my good lights when they get on their "emergency use" rotation, so its nice when they come back to regular duty. It kind of keeps me from getting too bored with the lights.

zipplet said:

200-300 CR123A.. wish I had that many. I have 16 unused in stock - I think I'll need to greatly bulk that up once I start using my A2 (when it gets here from the US!)

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Well, the LED portion of A2 ia sufficient of most night time usage and the battery will last quite a long while with few minutes of use each night. But if you wish to enjoy the full glory of the A2 incan, then you may need to increase your supply of CR123A.

3 words:
Low
Self
Discharge

firefly99 said:

Well, the LED portion of A2 ia sufficient of most night time usage and the battery will last quite a long while with few minutes of use each night. But if you wish to enjoy the full glory of the A2 incan, then you may need to increase your supply of CR123A.

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Hmm very very true! One of the nicest things about the A2... and the reason I bought it.

During power failures I tend to first get out the fenix lights as I keep them freshly loaded with NiMH. The T1 always has CR123As and at the moment acts as my long distance "wtf was that noise?" light during an outage. I have a 2mcp incan spotlight for that purpose too.

During a prolonged outage I'll get out the LED lanterns and rechargeable flourescent. Or, I'll just turn a few switches and activate the LED lighting I installed in my room that runs from a sealed lead acid, along with my inverter to run the TV

Edit: Glad your house didn't burn down though... that could have been nasty. I had an arcing/intermittent contact in a power strip that could have burnt down the house if it weren't for the fact I stayed up an extra hour to watch something and caught it.

Well we must be the only people (flashaholics that is) who look forward to power outages! :candle:

Some interesting and good lessons - it's always good to test out our gear in a short term setting (i.e. a 3-5 hour event) to see how your preparations worked out, rather than, say, a 5 day outage where you'd really be unhappy looking at those NiMHs and the charger (unless you've got a generator, solar or other charging setup).

As for the huge CR123A supply it remains one reason I've tended to avoid Surefires (owned a few and sold them) despite great build quality, solid reliability and compelling designs - I found I just didn't use them very much since I couldn't use a protected li-ion rechargeable battery solution in them (at least the ones I owned) and didn't want to run down the batteries. Foolish perhaps but with other lights I like equally as much if not more (HDS and Novatac for example) that I could use rechargeables, and that have really long runtimes, I feel pretty secure with a handful of primaries solely as emergency backups to my rechargeables which I keep topped off.

However, I do like the flexibility to use primaries if I need to and consequently most of my lights (all of them really) can work with both li-ions and primaries of various chemistries - the only exception is the Jil which works, but is definitely anemic, on primaries. Still it would provide light if necessary.

But in a longer term outage I have to admit that sometimes less exotic solutions work the best - my Energizer AA folding lanterns, MagLED 2 and 3D lights which run for a long long time, 5mm design headlamps and 5mm backup lights which run for a long time. I find that I use high levels rather infrequently, but it is nice to have one available for checking damage, etc..

zipplet said:

Edit: Glad your house didn't burn down though... that could have been nasty. I had an arcing/intermittent contact in a power strip that could have burnt down the house if it weren't for the fact I stayed up an extra hour to watch something and caught it.

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No kidding! I got home from vacation one year and the refrigerator (a rather expensive Jenn Air counter depth model that was IIRC 2 years old at the time) was not working. When the repair guy showed up and pointed out the black electrical smoke stains on the wall behind it where some components had shorted and started a small electrical fire :sick2: that thankfully did not apparently last long or did not have enough oxygen in the enclosed space to get going, well, I said a few thank you prayers and made sure I picked up a few firesafes for the irreplaceable items.

zipplet said:

Glad your house didn't burn down though... that could have been nasty. I had an arcing/intermittent contact in a power strip that could have burnt down the house if it weren't for the fact I stayed up an extra hour to watch something and caught it.

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Gatsby said:

No kidding! I got home from vacation one year and the refrigerator (a rather expensive Jenn Air counter depth model that was IIRC 2 years old at the time) was not working. When the repair guy showed up and pointed out the black electrical smoke stains on the wall behind it where some components had shorted and started a small electrical fire :sick2: that thankfully did not apparently last long or did not have enough oxygen in the enclosed space to get going, well, I said a few thank you prayers and made sure I picked up a few firesafes for the irreplaceable items.

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I did not see any flames or sparks, just some faint burnt smell. The circuit breaker enclosure actually hide the portion that was melted/ burnt. Because none of the circuit breaker trip, so it look normal when I check them.

Yes, I am very thankful the damaged was limited to 2 circuit breaker and no open flames. In fact, 1 of the thing that I had purchased in the past year is a fireproof rating safe to store some of my important documents. While the rest of important stuff are in off site storage.

Gatsby said:

Well we must be the only people (flashaholics that is) who look forward to power outages! :candle:

Some interesting and good lessons - it's always good to test out our gear in a short term setting (i.e. a 3-5 hour event) to see how your preparations worked out, rather than, say, a 5 day outage where you'd really be unhappy looking at those NiMHs and the charger (unless you've got a generator, solar or other charging setup).

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I had been looking forward to a real power failure since I joined CPF in 2005, but had no luck until now. All my lights had fresh batteries, fixed extra O ring, greased, tested, before put up for standby duty.

Gatsby said:

But in a longer term outage I have to admit that sometimes less exotic solutions work the best - my Energizer AA folding lanterns, MagLED 2 and 3D lights which run for a long long time, 5mm design headlamps and 5mm backup lights which run for a long time. I find that I use high levels rather infrequently, but it is nice to have one available for checking damage, etc..

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Agreed. Energizer AA folding lanterns was no longer available when I went to look for it.

firefly99 said:

I was left staring at the battery charger and rechargeable batteries. Had no choice but to make a trip to the nearest 24hrs convenience store to buy additional primary AA & AAA batteries.

Except for my E2D which seem some action, there was no need for me to deploy the rest of my Surefires or dipped into my supply of 200~300 CR123A. If the power failures had been longer, I will have to deploy my Surefire L1 & A2.

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If you don't mind my asking, why did you run to the store to buy AA & AAA batteries instead of using a few of your horde of 200-300 CR123A?

Rechargeables are great when you KNOW you will be using your lights, but nothing beats CR123A for emergencies. But I don't need to tell you that...

Intermittent contacts are the worst. I actually snapped a pic of the failed powerstrip back when it happened, that almost cost me this house (and definately all the gear in my room) - notice the black residue and pitted contacts:


It was one with individually switching sockets. BTW, about 2 weeks ago another one from the same manufacturer (masterplug) failed with a loose switch, so I put it out of service before it got worse.

When se lived in Lake County, CA my line was tied in with the local Fire Dept, which has priority when power goes out for quick fixes, so my power was never out for very long. Some parts of the County would be out for days when a big storm would hit. Non the less, I was mostly ready for a power failure, depending on a couple of my AA lights that could be dimmed down, and last through the night in the bathrooms. Used battery lanterns of the short power failures that we did have, and I have two Aladdin lanterns that can put out close to 60 watts of light each.

Bill

brucec said:

If you don't mind my asking, why did you run to the store to buy AA & AAA batteries instead of using a few of your horde of 200-300 CR123A?.

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Look I am in the midst of a power failure with no access to any electricity and completely in the dark.

You expect me to modify my light in darkness to use an alternate battery size ?

firefly99 said:

Look I am in the midst of a power failure with no access to any electricity and completely in the dark.

You expect me to modify my light in darkness to use an alternate battery size ?

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no need to take offense at his post, but i think he meant in the surefires.

MWClint said:

no need to take offense at his post, but i think he meant in the surefires.

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I am not offended by his post.

I feel there is no need to activate my heavy artillery (my 2 dozen Surefires) including the Surefire LED lights such as L1, A2, L4, etc.

I decided to deploy the Osram lanterns, Dot-Its, Pelican M6 LED, Inova T1 & Inova 24x7 to evaluate their performances under actual use. Besides I love the soothing cool white light from the Osram lanterns.

Only catch is I did not cater for the AA / AAA batteries requires by the Osram lanterns and Dot-Its.

You've got the Osram lanterns which I'd probably prefer but found the Energizers on clearance at Target and Wally World for $4 each IIRC. They're handy and good enough at what they do.

A friend gave me a Coleman flourescent lantern, and while it puts out a lot of light IIRC it's only rated at 12 hours on low with 4D cells - not my most efficient solution when I can run a Mag 2D/3D for 20+ hours on2/3 cells or the 4AA lanterns for 120 hours on AA cells.

Sounds like some lithiums or Eneloops in the lanterns and you're set!