On Friday, January 5th, a wind storm knocked out our power in Los Angeles at about 3am. When we left for Aguanga at Noon, it was still out. This is the 4th time we have had a major outage at our house in the past year.
- Blown transformer at the end of the block that left a live high-power line dangling in the street,
- Blown transformer around the block,
- A transformer fell off a power pole into our neighghbor’s house two doors north when the termite-eaten support collapsed, and
- This wind-caused outage
I sure am glad we have UPSs on all of the computers. Perhaps I need to set up the wiring so I can plug a generator into the house. Our neighbor has that set-tup. He disconnects himself from the city grid and plugs the generator into a socket at his outdoor power panel. The generator takes the place of the grid, and everything in the house works. It is pretty cool.
We were very impressed with our Bose Wave Radio‘s performance during the outage. Like many clock-radios, it has a 9-volt battery that allows it to keep the time when the power is out. But Bose went one step further — the alarm worked on the battery. So with a power outage it won’t let you oversleep. Great design, if you ask me. In addition, when you modify the settings on one of the two alarms, it turns the alarm on. Good design again.
Update The power did not come on until 5am on Saturday. It went off at 2:49 am Friday. 26 hours of outage. Ouch.