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I'm on a well, so when I lose power, lose the well (short of the hand pump) as well.. But.. In 12+ years at my location in rural Laurens County, SC.. I've lost power for more than an hour once, I think.
I have underground power to my house.. I'll have flickers during thunderstorms and an occasional trip when a transformer overloads or something like that, but those are just for a few seconds. I probably average 1 of those a month, based on the reports from my UPSes.
The area i'm in is sitting over alot of granite, and I wound up putting nearly all electronics in my house on battery backups to help isolate against surges and lightning. I think that granite conducts lightning strikes and feeds back or something.
But.. I'm on Laurens Electric Co-Op and they've been very good.. Up the road in Greenville, which is on Duke power.. You hear horror stories about people being without power for weeks. In fact, after one ice storm, I was without power for 4 days when I lived up there.
Rural southern De and the off and back on flickers are quite common. The problem was that it would set off all the hardwired fire alarms - and we have at least 5 in a 1200 sq ft house! To deal with that while dead sound asleep in the dark was too much, so they're all disconnected. We have had one outage in 2 years that lasted the entire day and put the whole town out.
In 23 yrs of living in the middle of nowhere we had 2 significant power outages and one of those was the super tornado outbreak in 2011... no one anywhere around my part of the state escaped that one.
Water went out a few times in that 23 yr period, broken old pipes, but always back on in short order.
Much less frequent outages than when I lived in town.
The UPC on my computer reports that in the last 6 months I have had 8 blackouts, for a total time in UPC power of 1 day, 2 hours, 16 minutes. That's low, because last winter we had a wet snowstorm and I shut the UPC down entirely until the power came back.
We lose water every summer. There is a persistent drought in the PNW summer, where it doesn't rain for weeks, and a shallow well is all we have. The well produces about a quart a minute into a 2500 gallon cistern, but sometimes well flow drops below that, so we have to call for a water delivery. A truck can deliver about 2000 gallons, so we never actually run out. The bottom of the cistern is level with the house eaves, so we always have water to flush the toilets and make coffee.
here in inland NC, we have lost power for more than 48 continuous hours due to several storms:
Hurricanes Fran, Floyd, Isabel, Florence, and Micheal, an ice storm in 2002, (out for 6 days) and one tornado.
we have two old generators with a whole house transfer switch. just bought a third one this year, since
it was a really good deal on a electric start model.
Rural Arkansas. Power goes out about once a month. Usually for about an hour. It's weather-related about half the time, and then it seems to be a lot of critters getting into transformers and other infrastructure. It's also been shut down because of someone hitting a pole. Longest it's been out was about 3 days due to an ice storm. We've had a couple of boil orders regarding water, but the only time the water has actually been out has been when the water company is doing maintenance. They give you a warning about three weeks ahead of time, and then they send someone to people's houses the day before to remind them and tell them exactly when it will go off and when it will be turned back on.
I live in downtown Bremerton, WA right now. Through all the windstorms, rain, hail, snow, car accidents, you name it, I think the power's gone out once in the last 20 years and then for only about half an hour. When I in a trailer park a little further out of the city, the power would go off regularly, but that was because the transformer blew, and once that was because of a major ice storm. Now where my friend lives in Poulsbo, their power goes off if you breath on a power line. All it takes is a little wind and they have no power for the next 3 days.
The only power outages I recall in California in San Jose was the big one where a bunch of Western states went out all at once. Now that was fun. For me, anyway. Otherwise power was pretty reliable. But when I'd go house sit for my friend in the Santa Cruz Mts, it was a given the power would be out. Of course, that was the 1980/81 El Nino, too. I'd go up with a Duraflame log and a flashlight every Friday night and have no power through the weekend. The power would be restored sometime during the week, we'd get another storm and boom, out it went again on Thursday or Friday. That made life somewhat interesting.
Where I'll be moving to, all the power lines are underground. But...they connect to above ground wires along the road down below and to an above ground power station. Lots of snow and wind and rain means the trees along that road bring down the wires. The last big snowstorm out here had over 60 trees down over that stretch of road. So...I can look forward to power going off up there, except that I'm going to be off the grid for the first year or so!
electricity- on average three times a year. Usually ice storms or a transformer blows- Which btw if you ever hear one of them blow up, you'd seriously think your area was under attack! That BOOM sound reverberated!
Water- Usually if they are laying new pipe lines we are forced to be with water shut off for a day.
Only two other times was it due to city mandate due to some Boil water warning. I'm like...sure I'll boil water, you supply the tea!
We, happily live out in the boonies of southwest OR, on side of a beautiful forested mountain. Back in 87 we made a deal with the power co. to install our electric power & phone lines underground.
Once in a while the power might flicker, to where i will have to reboot my desktop computer & reset the DirecTV satellite tv reception (takes a couple minutes). The only time my DirecTV goes out is when it's raining cats & dogs, or snowing pretty hard, in the winter. Reception is back when it stops raining/snowing. In the winter a few times the power might go out for 1-4 hours when trees fall on power lines. We usually sit close to the wood burner, drink a little wine, &/or play.
Our water comes from an underground artesian spring higher up the mountain. Water flows through a filter, into a 2500 gallon storage tank, then by gravity through PVC pipe, through another filter, down to our home. Overflow water goes to my bass pond & down to the creek.
Have a wonderful summer, folks...
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