When the Power Goes Out – Short Outage Realities

Beginning of April 2024 Wisconsin was hit by a late in season Winter Storm.  Wet Heavy snow with lots of wind.

At the home QTH power was out briefly, but the new Kohler Genset kicked in, and we barely noticed with the smooth automatic switch over to Genset and later back to mains power.

Our Washington Island QTH was hit much harder by the storm, as on the Island wires came down in over 60 places, multiple poles snapped and the power to the island was cut because of heavy damage in the main Door peninsula.

Ours was mostly worry, and sudden lack of connectivity to our monitoring systems.  The home is left ticking-over at a lowered temperature, set to 55F (13c) as that temperature avoids setting off the alert systems and gives a couple day buffer if the power is out.

After two days the power did come back on, and here is what my sensor screen showed:

Sensor Screen after two day without power

We heat with a hot water boiler with backup electric baseboard heaters.

As the outside temperatures were around freezing, I was pleased that our temperature drop was fairly minimal.

When we come up during the winter it is a simple adjust the thermostats to normal, and put in a wood fire to bring this place up to temperatures.  (I have bought commercial grade IoT controllable thermostats but have yet to install them.)

When the power is out we lose the Canary monitoring system, as it would be impractical to battery backup each sensor unit.  We have a main Emerson House Minder setup that provides less data, but much better alerting capabilities including having a basement water-on-the-floor sensor.  The House Minder calls out when an alert condition occurs, so often it is the first notification we receive since Canary reneged on the originally included alert features.

The cameras still work:

Camera View

The stuff we worry about:

• Temperature Drops – as if the home ends up below freezing long enough to freeze water pipes and/hot water heater parts, that could be very messy & costly.  Mitigation is we had the heating system filled with a glycol based solution that resists this issue as well as reduces corrosion inside the system.  If we were there the woodburner can easily heat the place.  As a local monitoring backup a large outdoor thermometer is visible from outside, being mounted on a stand I built so friends/authorities can check the temperature without going inside.
• Freezers & Fridges thawing out is not a worry as we empty these and turn them off, when not in residence during the cold season.  If we were there and the power went out, it is several days before Fridges & Freezers warm up too much, and we’ve used the ice chest outside.
• Water In & Out – this one is a problem when the power is out, as the well pump and the septic lift-pump simply require power.  The upside is that they don’t need to be powered up continuously.  The well pressure tank helps, as well as finding other water for non-potable uses like flushing toilets.  The lift-pump comes on when the separation chambers fill up enough, so we would have some considerable time with that pump off.
• Sump Pump – here is a troublesome concern, as our home has a full basement, which is not universal on the island because of the high bedrock situation.  So we monitor for pump failure with the House Minder water on the basement floor sensor, and a couple seasons back changed our rather new sump pump for a double-pump/one-hole setup where the lower (first to run) pump is 110vac and the slightly higher pump is a 12vdc version running from a deep cell marine type battery kept on a managed charger.  The nearly new pump that was pulled out is there ready to drop in as a pump replacement and I have a “trash pump” with enough hose to provide another backup option.  Anything water-sensitive is either up on blocks or was swapped out for outdoor rated materials, up to about a 12 inch (30cm) from the basement floor, reducing the risk of losses.
• Radios – while the home QTH is setup to transition over to Genset power, the island QTH is power dependent if it is left on.  For the most part I never leave it on when we are off island, as the present internet sucks.  Eventually we will get the new fiber and at that stage I will need to power-harden the station to allow for remote operations.

Some action items are additional battery backups at the home QTH, completion of installation of the remote thermostats at the island, changing the island sump pump battery this autumn based on battery age, and consideration of a limited amount of battery backup at the island.

Our island power came back on about 60 hours after going out and the temperature drop from no heat was about 5 to 8F (3 to 4c) which was within my predicted loss expectations.

73

Steve
K9ZW