How Much Electricity Do I Use?
Fiona SLAPPED Me So Hard I Felt It For 9 Days
The real life story of a man without a battery or solar during a power outage
Backstory
I am probably mostly to blame for the bad weather in PEI. Prior to moving to PEI I have lived around the world living through ice storms, blizzards, heatwaves, tornados, atmospheric rivers, mudslides, heatdomes, forest fires and duststorms. Bad weather seems to follow me everywhere. So much so that my wife and I have a to go bag ready in the house for evacuations. The only weather phenomenon that wasn’t on my bingo card was catastrophic hurricane.
<<Knock>> <<Knock>>
Who is it?
Fiona
….Princess Fiona from the Kingdom of Far Far Away?
No…Sea Hag Fiona from West Africa
Honey….get the to go bag we just checked off the last number on a our bingo card!
*Hurricane Fiona was so devastating that the World Meteorological Organization retired her name from usage. Thats like a hockey team putting your number up on the rafters…you have to be really pretty awesome (good or bad) to get that kind of treatment.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/prince-edward-island/pei-fiona-ian-names-retired-hurricanes-1.6795089
Preparation
At this point in our lives we had only just moved to PEI so we didn’t have solar or batteries installed on our house yet. So we did our best to prepare given our time constraints
Storm chips
Generlink
Portable generator
Fuel
Non-perishable food items
““How much fuel do you think I should buy? Maybe 1 or 2 jugs?…should probably pick up some more storm chips too”
The storm
Fiona hit us during the night of Sept 23. By the time it hit….I had already consumed all my storm chips but I was not risking going outside to get some more. That could wait…considering the windows were shaking. Our power went out within a couple of hours of the hurricane starting. The storm seemed to go on forever, and it was pitch black so I had no idea what was going on. However I did see one idiot early on in the storm trying to run up the street against the wind to see how powerful it was.
“There is no way I am going out there to plug in the generator”
The next morning
Tyson +1
Fiona = 0
Thankfully where we lived was a brand new housing area. So there were no trees or any hazards around us that could damage our house. However when I looked out the window I saw a full on camper trailer on its side and multiple houses with their shingles all blown off. No damage was done to our house…I should really go onto google and give our developer a 5 star review. <<Shameless plug - If we have done a good service for you feel free to also leave us a google review here>>
Now to get on with my life. First thing to do was to plug in our portable generator to our generlink. Man that thing was heavy…and loud. It seemed to run for a few hours of the day which is great. I mean how long could we possibly need it for right?
9 days, thats what we needed it for…not 9 hours, not 1 day, 9 long days!
The next question was….what could it power and for how long? Turns out it could keep my TV and Internet running, fridge and an occasional running of the stove top and some lights for the day before I had to go refill the gas.
“…the line up to get gas is how long?…a 3 hour wait! Could I get some storm chips?….what do you mean they ran out!”
the next 9 days
For the overall island things were starting to get better. Work crews were out doing their best repairing the grid and trying to get most of it running again. Across the street from me, lights were on in houses. Unfortunately for me, Fiona decided she was going to make our neighbourhood harder to fix.
My wife and I were getting into a routine though and I came to the acceptance that I would never have power again. I slowly came to understand what I could and could not do during the day with the limited amount of fuel I had.
“well I get to BBQ every day and have my windows open but I am sure there’s going to be some extra charge someday for all the repairs they are doing to get my electricity back”
my likely consumption
While I don’t know exactly what I consumed over those days I did make a chart to just give you an idea of what I would have used during an outage.
Long story short I needed about 6.8kWH per day.
Making Life More Comfortable
Over time you are likely going to need to do more. Clothes will get stinky, dishes dirty…here’s a few more heavy appliances and how much they tend to use.
What I learnt from 9 days with no connection to the grid
“I can survive!….but it wasn’t all that enjoyable”
Tips for my next power outage
Get a battery - it is much easier to have something automatically start than having to go out in a storm
Get solar - Waiting in 2 hour lines at the gas station is way too long
You can never have enough storm chips.