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I am moving to northwest Cary. Without giving the exact neighborhood, it is the Amberly-Braemore-Cary Park area.
Anybody able to give a rough estimate as to how many hours (or days) in an average year that an average house in one of these neighborhoods would be without power due to storms, etc.?
Could anybody estimate, in an average 5-year span, what would the longest continuous power outage be? Are we looking at an outage of 2-3 days (or longer??) once every several years? Once per year?
I know nobody can predict the future, but I'm just trying to get a sense for what to expect. Specifically, I'm trying to figure out if a whole house generator would be worth buying. I suppose I would think it was worth it if I should expect more than about 12 hours per year of power outages.
Thanks for any input!
What's the rationale for 12 hours per year?
I live in that area and all local power lines are underground. Except for a power outage post snowstorm which lasted about 10-12 hours during daylight hours, things have been rock steady in the 12 years we have been in cary. I lived in Chapel Hill during Fran and power was out for a week and in Durham for the 2002 ice storm and power was out for 5 days. The 2002 ice storm was in a neighborhood with underground utilities, but power was cut to the neighborhoods because of all the fallen trees.
We’ve been here for 7 years, don’t recall losing power for more than 6 hours ever and even more than 2 hr outages are rare. Two times we went out to eat due to no power at home. Both times it was on when we got back. The rest was in the evening, so we just watched a movie on a tablet (I always download something when bad weather is coming) and went to bed earlier.
I agree that investment (and maintenance!) is just not worth it unless this is needed for a medical reason. You could just stay at a hotel if necessary and it might even be covered by HO insurance. Make sure to have flashlights and some entertainment lined up and you’ll be fine.
Depends largely on whether the power lines are buried or not. I'm not sure if any of the neighborhoods in that area have buried lines. It's also tough to figure an average. You could go years with just a handful of hours without power, then have a Hurricane Fran tear through or major ice storm, and be without for days.
Buried lines can help, but now always. When Fran came through, I was living in a neighborhood where the lines were buried. Unfortunately for us, the feeder lines at the front of the neighborhood were aerial and got knocked down by falling trees. We were without power for a little over 5 days.
Like most people, my experiences of long power outages are from hurricanes and ice storms. I was a teenager in Fuquay when Fran came through and we were without power for about a week, maybe a little more. It was more of a pain because we were on well water which comes with additional hassles. There were a few other hurricanes where we were without for a few days but IIRC, Fran was the longest. Now that I live in Raleigh the longest times have been around 4-6 hours from ice storms and the like.
Otherwise, outages are pretty rare and only last for an hour or so at most, mainly during bad (but mostly typical) storms.
I agree with others that unless you or someone in your house has a medical condition, a whole-house generator makes little sense. If you're really worried, just get a smaller one that can power a few appliances and you'll be fine. It's better than making a mad dash to Home Depot after a hurricane anyway.
We've lived here for 12 years. Our worst power outage was a few day during an ice storm last winter. We were able to deal with it for the first 2 days, but then the house interior temperature got so cold that we decided to go to a hotel. On our way out of the neighborhood, the power came back on.
Been here my whole life and we have a small generator we can drag out. It’s enough to run lights, fans, stove and the tv/radio but that’s about it. It really isn’t worth it but having lost power for almost two weeks with fran we did buy one. Now we are on the side of the neighborhood that never loses power and haven’t needed it in the last 5 years. We run it every 6 months or so just to keep it functional.
I wouldn’t bother. If you have one, great, but it’s really not necessary. A gas or wood fireplace and fans that run on batteries are sufficient.
Tornado in 2011 knocked power out for I think 4 days at my place, otherwise it's usually under 24 hours if it's like a tree hitting a line from a thunder storm. So much of the power is underground it's pretty quickly fixed unless it's a large scale outage. We have a 3000 watt honda 110 that we use to power the fridge and some lights if power goes out.
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