So the power in my house just went out for the first time in about 3 years. It was out for about 30 minutes and then it came back on. We have really good power since we live right next to a big mall, and the power there kind of feeds into my house. And how many times does the Mall have a power outage? Once in a blue moon.

The last house I lived in lost power constantly. We once lost power for an entire week in a particularly violent storm.

What's your stories and experiences on power outages?

Heh-heh, I'm crossing my fingers right now with the hurricane down in here in Florida. I just moved farther up north of Citrus County thank god. But here we loose power more frequently then my parent's house....thank god I have a laptop and wireless internet...
Other than that worst I've had was three weeks or more, I can't remember.

I'm rural. Power outages are a way of life. A few years back, we got almost eleven feet of snow in two days. Our power was out for almost two weeks. We have a gasoline-powered generator, but it has its limits. (Namely, it runs out of gas, and we didn't have enough on hand to keep it running until we could get out to the gas station.) Thankfully, our house has three fireplaces and we had plenty of wood in the woodshed, so the house stayed warm enough that we didn't freeze, once we sent the teenage guys out to dig a path to the shed. The water heater is electric, though, so once we were out of gas for the generator, we had to take makeshift baths in water heated by the fireplaces. It was like being Amish. On the plus side, since it was winter and there was a ton of snow, we could empty the fridge/freezer and bury everything in snow to keep it cold/frozen, so we didn't lose any food. You just had to remember where you buried the milk...and hope that you didn't get more snow overnight so that you didn't have to dig through a couple more feet to find it. And we did a lot of grilling, since the grill is on a protected porch and we had plenty of propane on hand for it. Unfortunately, we get far more winter outages than summer outages, due to snow. (We live at almost 9000 feet up in the Rockies, so snow is normal, although eleven feet of it in two days was a bit unusual. )

Two winters ago, our power was out for two days because ice froze on trees, and they fell on a transformer, knocking out power in a HUGE area. I really wanted to play Sims sooo badly too. It sucked but I had to conserve my computer's battery, to keep up with weather changes and what was going on with the hospital I worked at.

Worst snowstorm I ever had was when I was on vacation in Alaska. We went up to this mountain in January for some camping and it was dumped on our motorhome for a week.

I hate when the power goes out, theres nothing to do ;_;

I'm kind of lucky, where I live we're on the hospital power grid. So the power almost never goes out. When it does it's usually because a lizard or animal has gotten into the local power transformer and fried itself. Last time this happened it took 6 hours for the power to go back on. Longest time was 4 days, but that was also during a cyclone, where most of the power went and it took one area 13 days to get power again. Once we had power we went and told friends without power and ended up with a houseful of friends, their pets and ourselves. Lots of fun :D

We have occasional power outages in my area due to old power lines and overloading but they fix them fast so all is well.

We tend not to have power outages in the UK too much - except as the result of strikes or some workman putting a jack hammer through a power line. It does happen but I think other countries have it worse than us in this respect.

We get power outages a lot. They usually come with fantastic storms and sometimes even flooding. It's a hoot living here. I remember that during the last storm, I had no way of knowing if the school was open or not because I had no phone, TV, or internet. The cell towers were out, too. Turning on the radio in the car brought music and news of other areas, not mine. So, I headed to school and my way was blocked by a downed tree limbs and broken wires. I tried another route and it too was blocked. I concluded that school could not be open because it would not be safe for buses to pass under these wires. A couple of days later, and still no power, my boyfriend and I made it to his house. I had cell phone reception there, so I called someone from work to confirm that there was no school and I did not need to come in. It was so bizarre and yet it wasn't the first time I had to guess that school couldn't possibly be open because it just wasn't safe or possible to get there.

Last edited by VerDeTerre : 26th Jun 2012 at 05:14 PM. Reason: Argh!

I get them all the time, even when the weather seems to be fine. Our line runs across some hills into the next county for some bizarre reason, so whenever the power's out it's always just my road. I live four houses from the end of the road and the next road always has power because they're on a different line, the same goes for the rest of the village. It's so frustrating to know that people that close have power and you don't! Usually when the power goes out we drive around the area seeing who else has power for entertainment . I have to admit they aren't as bad as they used to be (touch wood). I remember them being much more frequent when I was younger. Had a three day one once, you get pretty sick of not being able to cook and having to eat out.

One time we had one on my birthday (in October, so it gets dark relatively early) so we had to spend the evening sitting in the dark. We lit a fire in the fireplace for some light and warmth though, which actually ended up being quite nice.

I don't find them that boring, although it is frustrating not having internet. Even though I have wireless internet, the router stops working because that runs off the mains. Usually I just read, but my father always just goes straight to bed when the power goes out in the evening, saying he's bored!

Where I live, in the summer especially, we get a lot of short intense storms, so the power goes out relatively frequently. They never last long though, most of the time everything just shuts off and immediately turns back on. Every once and a while it'll stay off for a couple of hours. As long as we keep the fridge closed the food's usually alright. Almost everything we have is gas powered though, so we can still cook (from the pantry) and shower and all that. I usually end up just filling the bathtub with cold water and wishing I didn't live somewhere so goddamn hot.

I agree with you that there's plenty to do without tv or internet. A power outage is ok when it's the occasional day; it's when it goes into day 4, 5, 6 and counting that it begins to wear on you. One particularly bad storm caused me to feel intensely isolated. I had no phone or cell. I had a gas fireplace, but it in order to provide warmth, it needed to be left on and I was only comfortable with that if I was at home to keep an eye on it. My boyfriend needed to watch things like pipes at his home. I was huddling close to the fire for light and warmth on day 5, without anyone to talk to and it got dark early, around 3:30. Candles and the few flashlights I had barely pushed back the darkness. I gained a new appreciation for the infrastructure and the social structure of older pre-electric societies.

Well, where I live, we once had a what they call a "complete blackout" throughout the whole country. The problems was that many people started migrating, thus causing an overload on the electricity supplies available which lead to these constant blackouts. On the day of the "great blackout", our house was one of the few houses that still had electricity, no generator was used. However, the gov finally decided that they should build another power plant to rectify the effect and things are great, well, for now.

After some time, at school, we were having some free time and were chatting with our teacher, he mentioned the "great blackout" and stated that they "say" it "was" a "great blackout", but it wasn't because in some areas, they still had electricity. Apparently he was right, because we didn't have a power out.

Anyway, until this day, we still have some power out's. At first, when we just moved to our current house a few years ago, we had several power out's because the area we are in is new, and few houses were available at that moment, so the there were not many power plants around here, so anything we did, like turning the mains for the computer on while the TV was working could simply shutdown the electricity. But that has been fixed.

We had a partial blackout when, during the winter, it was raining and windy, one of the tree branches knocked over one of the fence light, exposing the wires, the water reached the wires, so, then, all mains downstairs were not working. OH NOES! NO TV!

There were probably more but I can't remember, and any current power out's are usually due to some maintenance. The Ministry usually hands out warnings during the day about that the electricity will be cut out for a few hours for maintenance purposes.

Power was out this afternoon. Due to heat, we kept the house closed, only going out to walk the dogs. We had sunlight at the hour and read books by the window. We talked more than usual, and enjoyed the quiet. A few flashlights and some candles kept us until 9 PM or so.

It seems ice cuts the power llines more often than snow. Here is no different. The trees hang low, the ground is coated. the lights go out. We had one week without power once, had to leave the house. Some power lines had fell in a nearby field. It was impossible to repair until flood water and ice cleared the field.

I also saw electricity out once in a foreign nation. We noticed the street was dark approaching a village. When we arrived at the village gate, there was a huge orange glow and cloud of smoke from the building next to the gate. The fire had cut the power, so we waited until we could get inside. I didn't know where to go, since it wasn't my home place, but we found a place to hangout until we could get into our home.

We had a pretty decent heat wave a few summers ago, and naturally everyone in the neighborhood had their air conditioners going at full blast. This was apparently way too much for our poor old power grid to handle, and a transformer on the next block blew up. When I say "blew up", I actually do mean that it exploded--it burnt down a garage and melted the two cars that had been parked inside of it. It took the electric company three or four days to get things running again, and I think that might be the longest I've ever had to go without power.

We tend to get a lot of power outages caused by summer storms, though. We have a notoriously old grid in my area, so summer storms tend to cause blackouts all over the place. They're usually pretty quick about restoring power, but we've had our fair share of refrigerators full of spoiled food. We haven't had much in the way of rain here yet this summer, but I guess that's a different problem...

Hey guys, so I live in the DC area and more than 800,000 people in my area have lost power due to a storm last night. My house DIDN'T lose power. That's pretty cool, right?

Wow, which of the gods do you favor, piggypeach? That storm put out the power clear across from Illinois to DC! I like this summer outage better. We were able to put the dog in a car and cruise for a bit. And JHD, those transformer explosion-fires are dramatic, but I wouldn't want to live next to one!

Thurs night when the storms went through and woke me up we lost it but luckilly only for a couple seconds.

If it's out during the night, I freak out and get in bed while hugging my plushies. If it's during the day, I put my laptop batteries on and continue what I was doing before. But at night, it's scary as hell.

Well, where I've lived and where I'm living now there are only blackouts caused by accident, not by snowstorms or such (Snowstorms are very rare, too) We once had a blackout for 3 days because a military helicopter lost height and hit a powerpole. Everyone got fine out of the helicopter, no worries

Our power has been out since Friday night, and is still out. I'm at a family friend's house right now, which is the only reason I have internet access. Summer power outages are the worst. I couldn't sleep in my room last night because it was about 100 degrees up there. I slept on the living room floor with all the windows open, which isn't incredibly safe, but it's the only way I would have been able to sleep last night.