POWER OUTAGE PRACTICE - This Saturday!

This Saturday, March 31st is your opportunity to test your power outage preparation skills for one hour - At 8:30PM your local time, turn off anything and everything that requires mains power, get out your flashlights and lanterns, and dig in for an hour of blackout entertainment. Some points to consider:

- Do you know which light you'll use in specific locations? It's something you might have considered when you bought a particular flashlight or lantern, and now is your chance to see how well it will actually work..

- Are you still able to get information? Once you've got everyone armed with the right flashlight and each relevant area of the house lit, you're going to need some non-AC-powered way to know what's going on beyond earshot; is your battery-powered radio ready, and do you know where to tune it for news?

- Are you having fun yet? Flashlights alone are fun for we flashaholics, but everyone else might want something a little more engaging; the aforementioned radio can have some entertaining content if you look around, and don't forget board and card games, which are always more fun in the near-dark..

The wife and I will be relaxing under a ceiling-bounced Quark MiniAA Warm while listening to a local talk show on the radio; what will your house be doing?

(This thread is for discussing tips and techniques for the actual Earth Hour event, not the possible political or economic implications of the concept. MODS: as this thread deals with only the 2012 event proper, if you must merge it with previous threads, please wait until the following Sunday.)

I hadn't thought about this - but I might give it a go

I have a Solarforce with lantern head that can give a healthy 500 lumen output (Triple High-CRI XP-G) for a couple of hours (couple of spare, charged 18650's kept ready for it). More than enough to light up the kitchen by itself, but my Quark AA (14500, eneloops stolen from kids toys in a pinch), 3300L and Tri-EDC, all with the same emitters, can all be tail-stood to light up any room as needed.

My portable radio is on eneloops, charged and ready to go, and a few sets of spare Lithium AA's for good measure. It's tuned for the local ABC Radio broadcast, where we get all of the real news from, as well as localised alerts and warnings.

I haven't got any card games, but there's a bookcase shelf full of board games if needed.

If all else fails, the iPad is stocked with a few hours of video, as well as music on each of our iPhones.

Should see me through for an hour

Where I live, in a rural area, half way up a small mountain, the power goes out all too often, so we get lots of "Power Outage Practice". Sometimes we get to practice for days, or even weeks on end. By coincidence, the power has already been out once today for about an hour as we are experiencing an unusually windy day with very high gusts and that often brings down a tree or two onto a power line. I have friends up the road who live in what was once a large hippy commune during the 1960s but is now a group of private homes, all off the grid. They all have generators and solar panels and certainly don't need any practice but it's fun to visit them because I get to select which lights to bring along. Whenever I get invited to a party or barbecue up there I say, "Oh boy, flashlight night!". Even the little kids up there are pretty flashlight savvy.

I guess my point in talking about this is that when you live in an environment where you lose power, even briefly, every few months, weeks or days, you tend to develop a different attitude. Living where there are no street lights effects this as well. It is less recreational emergency planning and more everyday mission critical. That's not to say that "Power Outage Practice" is not a really good idea. It is just a different mind set as many folks I know live in places where the power goes out maybe once a year, if at all. All too many people in urban areas become complacent about these sort of issues and then they become the folks who run to their local store "after" the storm hits to find out that all the flashlights and batteries have long been sold out. This is where us flashaholics can be a good influence on our non-flashaholic friends, wherever we live.

Beyond a house well stocked with quality flashlights and a healthy supply of appropriate batteries I always recommend an arsenal of power outage tools. For me it includes an 8kW propane powered generator that allows me to keep food frozen during long outages, run the house lights or computers if I want to and most importantly to pump water. (water can be more important than flashlights during a long outage). I have a portable solar panel that will allow me to charge any kind of battery including and especially 12V automotive and marine batteries. This is important because I've come to think of auxiliary area lighting as even more important than flashlights. Flashlights can get old really fast during a long outage and they are difficult to cook by or read by, or for just hanging out. (well, there's flashlight ceiling bounce of course.) Don't get me wrong, flashlights are vital and we all love 'em, but they are not the only thing that one should rely on for a serious outage. Certain types of candles and lanterns are important, especially Aladdin Mantle Lamps. My favorite home brew emergency lighting is a normal table lamp with a 12V E27 type RV bulb installed, plugged into a pig-tailed adapter made with a standard plug on one end and alligator clips on the other attached to a 12V Deep Cycle marine battery. These bulbs are widely available, very inexpensive and they look exactly like a normal screw-in light bulb, except that they run on twelve volts. This will provide many evenings of 60 Watt equivalent light from a single charge on a typical car sized battery from a nice lamp with a shade. Between two of these and an Aladdin lamp it feels like the power isn't even out at my home and neighbors who've seen my house lit up from the outside have been fooled into thinking the power was back up and running.

All in all I think StarHalo's suggestion is a really good idea, Earth Hour or no. Everyday can be a kind of Earth Hour. There are quite a few other threads about this topic elsewhere here at CPF and emergency planning and practice is a big and worthwhile subject that involves way more than just lighting or having a good radio on hand.

lots of outages here without inducing one intentionally.
most of my neighbors have long run ups systems i built for them.
lots of 12v stuff around here to run from large ups batteries.
we had a 2 week outage last may due to severe storms.actually had a news reporter videoing the trees down on the power lines and the busted up transformers on the ground and commenting that surprisingly the power is still on here.she was seeing several outdoor lights that were run from 12v.
yes when this happens there are flashlight and modded hid spotlight parties.

There are quite a few flashaholics who became that way out of necessity, but we've got a lot of new guys this year who have never tried out their new toys in an actual power outage; you don't know how prepared you are for a blackout situation until you can practice for it, and that'll be the fun part about Saturday - the one day when the whole family can play with flashlights and it won't look strange to the neighbors!

Some locations that will be participating this year: The Eiffel Tower, the Empire State Building, the Burj Khalifa, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, Sydney Opera House, Great Wall of China, Beijing Bird's Nest, Tokyo Tower, Taipei 101, UN Headquarters, The Louvre, Brandenburg Gate, The Vatican, Buckingham Palace, Tower Bridge, the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben, the Las Vegas Strip, the NASDAQ Building, among others.

Many Hilton Hotels internationally will turn out their common area lighting and offer candlelight dinners to guests.

The International Space Station will be making observations and taking photos of the event.

It's a pretty big deal, join in!

It was an interesting coincidence that member qwertyydude posted the thread, "Almost 24 hours now without power", from the greater LA area within hours of StarHalo posting this one. I guess quertyydude got the jump on Saturday's festivities, like it or not. Hope everything is back to normal for him and glad to see that he owns a generator. Many folks in places like Los Angeles don't.

The power went out again here today, albeit very briefly. (enough to have to reset the darn clocks!) There must be something in the air.

Anyway, for those who don't know what exactly StarHalo is talking about in his posts, some may want to check out the Earth Hour web site.