We had a power outage last night. Something caused a tree to fall on a line, there was a small fire on the line, and the loud distinctive boom and blue flash of a transformer blowing
made us head out of the house pronto. I headed around the block after calling 911, and soon enough two fire trucks showed up to check out the scene and block off a live wire.

The time lapsed between when the power went out to when it was restored was about six hours. It was a lovely evening, and the fortunate outage gave me a chance to talk to some neighbors who I don't see often enough and who were out of town for a lot of the summer. The neighborkids played on the sidewalk, and when we wanted to think about civilization, we could actually see it — brightly lit — at the end of the street.

Here are some links to things you should know about and think about before the power goes out so that you can enjoy it. You probably want to go through a drill from time to time just to be certain that you have something to look forward to.

Sources for ideas and people

Several area groups meet regularly and are full of the sorts of people and ideas who can take any electromechanical idea to fruition and who know how to source parts.

GO Tech meets on the second Tuesday of the month, and organizes the annual Ann Arbor Mini Maker Faire:

"It's a meeting for readers of is a meeting for Ann Arbor area readers of Make Magazine,
Circuit Cellar, Home Shop Machinist, Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools, slashdot, etc. That is, people who are interested in and make things using technology, whether that's a metal-cutting lathe or a Python script. A kind of generalized mixture of CerealBar, DorkBot, Oxford Geek night, and Portland Machinist Guild. We share projects, information about tools and ideas, and connect with like-minded people.

Lighting

Emergency lighting is a lot easier than it ever used to be, since LED lights use a lot less power than old fashioned incandescent lightbulbs. We have a terrific dollar store device that triples as a charger for AAA batteries, a night light and a flashlight. Designs and specifications for these things change every year, but you should look for something that you can keep plugged in all the time and can be used in ordinary times so that an emergency is not special.

When you look for emergency lighting, don't forget to get enough flashlights for every member of the family. This includes your pets. A clip-on blinking red LED light on a pet collar can make them visible enough at night to make them much more safe, especially if they are prone to crossing a busy street unattended.

Look for this sort of equipment at a variety of places. Low voltage lighting is in the domain of bicycle stores, camping supply stories and dollar stores. With the right LED light, you can turn a single coin cell into something that makes you visible; two or three AAA cells will light a path. Auto parts stores have 12 volt LED lighting in a variety of interesting shapes.

Phone

If you have a cell phone, you should be able to communicate, at least until your battery runs out. Extended power outages will cause disruption to cell phone service, as cell towers lose power or as networks get clogged with huge numbers of calls.

You will also need to charge your cell phone somehow if you use it a lot. A car charger for your cell phone is worthwhile in this situation, so that you can fill up its battery without needing to depend on the power grid.

Your land line phone is powered by the telephone company's central office, which has its own set of battery backups and diesel generators to keep it running. Many people use cordless phones at home, but it's worthwhile keeping a kit with a corded phone and the necessary wiring to connect it to your modular jacks so that in the event of a power outage you can still get dial tone.

Radio

Radio receivers require a minimum amount of energy to operate, so little that you can operate most of them on 2 or 3 AA or AAA cells. Look for ones that tune in to not only AM and FM bands, but also the weather band, so that if the power outage is due to extreme weather you can listen to National Weather Service forecasts. Modern weather radios will turn on automatically as needed for alerts. I'm shopping for a weather radio that doubles as a battery charger, but haven't located one yet.

In an extreme pinch, your homebrew crystal radio can pick up AM transmissions and is powered by the radio frequencies themselves. You'll want to build this before you have to use it. The Crystal Radio Society gives more than a few details, including lists of hard to find parts.

I just got my ham radio license, and with it I have borrowed a 2 meter "handy talkie" portable radio set that transmits and receives on amateur bands. This device runs on 12 volt power and has a car kit to charge it, so locating a 12 volt power supply is part of the extended effort to stay online.

Food preservation

An important consideration in an extended power outage is keeping your kitchen's stockpile of foods cold. You don't want that freezer full of venison or blueberries to spoil before you get a chance to enjoy the food.

One good way to preserve food is to eat it. A power outage is a great time for a neighborhood potluck or barbeque. Rather than have food go to waste, invite people who are nearby to enjoy it, and invite people who are far away to bring in supplies to help enjoy it. If you have leftovers, they can take things back to their own working freezers.

One key to keeping foods in ordinary refrigerators or freezers cold in the face of an extended outage is to make sure that they are normally packed full of food, or if you don't have a freezer full of food, packed full of ice. The added thermal mass will make the freezer warm up more slowly, and as a bonus you'll have ice.

There are some stores in the area that carry dry ice, which is frozen carbon dioxide; I'm familiar with Washtenaw Dairy as a source, but I am certain that there are many more. A chunk of dry ice will keep a freezer cold or a fridge cool. Note that if you have too much dry ice in one place, the vapors will suffocate you, so vent it well. The National Weather Service in Las Vegas has dry ice safety rules.

I am sure that there is something intelligent to say about coolers as a part of temporary food preservation, but I'm not up on cooler technology; the cooler we have at home that's big enough to store a freezer full of blueberries hasn't been tested for that task yet and is more suited to take fishing.

Fuel

Extended power outages affect the gasoline supply networks. Stations with underground tanks that use pumps to pump the gas to your vehicle will be offline if they don't have auxiliary power strategies for their pump systems. It's not that they ran out of gas, but just that they couldn't get the gas to you.

Electricity from a vehicle

It's completely routine these days to have an inverter plugged into your car's 12 volt power supply, turning the DC power into ordinary household 110 volt AC. The setup for AJ the Ford Fiesta, which demonstrated a complete in-vehicle hot spot that used Twitter to communicate, was instructive; they built a trunk-mounted system that included a power supply that provided what I think was 750 watts AC from the car's DC charging system. You can power a complete Internet node from the trunk, and if you hooked it up to something like a Wireless Ypsilanti router, you could drive around the neighborhood bringing light, heat and Internet to your neighbors without power.

Edward Vielmetti looks forward to the next power outage for AnnArbor.com. Contact him at edwardvielmetti@annarbor.com.