But ISTM state-level statistics are useless. I don’t live at a state. I live at an address. What matters to me is the power outage history at my address, and only my address. The same thinking applies to you and everybody else.
Different parts of the same state will have vastly different outage histories. Whether that’s a matter of different power providers, different grid offtakes, different topography and therefore climate, coastal vs inland, urban vs suburban vs rural, etc., etc. Heck, whether any given spot is prone to small local outages vs county-wide outages or multi-county outages will also vary a lot by area.
It’s not your fault this cite is basically cute pictures instead of actionable info. But cute pictures is about all it is. More granular data will not be easy to find, if it’s available at all.
This. I’ve lived in two houses in the past 20 years, both in the same city. The first house had a power outage just about every damn week. It never lasted long, but it was enough to have to reset clocks. The house I’m in now has an outage maybe once every year or two, usually just a brief short that auto-resets after 20 seconds or so. Either way, nothing that (to me) would justify a backup generator.
The first time the power went out this winter we found out our installed automatic generator would run (it would cycle on every week), but not actually produce power. By the time we got that sorted out (full replacement) the power had gone out twice more, both times for long enough that the house was getting uncomfortably cold and the freezer uncomfortably warm. We came close to 24 hours a couple times and ended up moving frozen foods outdoors at least once.
Our power goes out at least a couple times a year. We are rural, which means we don’t have water when power goes out. (We are on a well with electric pump.) This is the main reason I bought a generator.
Since I am powering our whole house from a (somewhat anemic) 3600 W generator, I turn off the circuit breakers to heavy but non-essential loads when I am running the generator. These include air conditioner, range, microwave oven, and dishwasher. I keep the other breakers on, which includes the furnace, sump pumps, and refrigerator. I also tell others to not use hair dryers or portable electric heaters.
Power outages can be hit or miss. Our area had a severe storm in early March with hurricane force wind gusts. Our power was out only briefly, but in the next county over, thousands were without power for up to five days.
In the aftermath of “Superstorm Sandy”, 8.5 million people were hit by outages. An outage on Long Island lasted 337 hours.
The solution to vulnerable is power grids isn’t for everyone to have a generator. But it’s valuable insurance for some.
Regarding noise, our generator (a Generac) is no noisier than the central air. In any event it certainly is less of an annoyance than having the power out for who knows how long. There’s one at our neighbor’s house too, and when it does it’s weekly test or whatever, it can be heard over here, but it’s certainly not a big deal. Certain rude people driving by with radios too loud, or squeaking school busses from the jr high down the street, that’s a lot worse.
Agreed. But the state level idiocy can have a worrisome effect. I live in Texas and… well you know it’s… [gestures wildly in all directions while using really bad words]. We’ve traditionally had a few outages each year, some for a few minutes and occasionally for 10 or more hours. In the summer this is a few steps past the safe-zone for freezers and refrigerators. Adding the events of the past few years, along with the insane population growth leads me to think a bit more coverage makes sense.
So, we quadrupled our capability, with the expected results. Since installation in 2021, we haven’t lost power for a single millisecond. I hope the neighbors appreciate our efforts in this.
My dad lives in a state which isn’t on the “often loses power list” and your assertion makes a lot of sense. His particular neighborhood loses power monthly, and was offline for 24 hours earlier this week. The record was 12 days a few years ago. He has a large auto-switchover whole house version and frequently wakes up to discover he’s on his own power and slept through it during the night. The gennie is so quiet you can only hear it in one room of the house, so he only realizes it when he sees blinking clocks.
Admittedly Texas is speshul that way. In a class by itself, out standing in its field, etc.,
Were I living in Texas I’d be much more concerned about systemic, as opposed to local, blackouts than I am here in hurricane-infested southern Florida. Which is really saying something.
I’m sure they’re grateful. I know my many coworkers in the greater Dallas area appreciate your sacrifice.
