Features - QOTW: What's the longest you've gone without electricity?

[petrucius]

About 2-3 hours every once in awhile - back in the 80's when we lived in communism.
Now 15 to 30 mins once or twice a year.

[pinkpound]

Two days with out electric due to the power cable to house overheating.... They dropped a generator off which was the same size as a transit van.. I declined the offer when he fired it up and all the neighbours came out in a 2 mile radius lol.... So sent kids and wife to her mums and went to stay @ a mates

[samuraiweasel]

A month, floods in india arent that fun...unless youre about 12, then theyre awesome

[Output]

I think the longest has been overnight.

As for being prepared for a blackout - definitely not.

[3dcandy]

just about - the kids (6 and 7) nope they don't get having no internet as we're on holiday and they're missing telly! lol

[Mama Sumae]

9 months, I literately cried when it came on.

[Luke7]

2011 December 31st. I'm at a family friend's house ushering in the new year. It's approaching midnight and the 2012 apocalypse is at the back of everyone's minds. We all chant 5..4..3..2..1.. The lights go out. Someone screams. We all journey outside to see if the street lights have gone out. They have. We look at each other. "Surely not?"our eyes say as we glance around. At last one of us sees that the lights in a different town are still on. We laugh in a collective relief and spend the rest of the night chattering by candle light.

[aidanjt]

A few hours last year. Planned and notified in advance by the supplier. The last power cut must have been about 3 or 4 years before that. Hard to complain about that kind of reliability really.

The water supply has been much worse really, between the bacterial infection, antiquated/leaking/rupturing city piping, the variable water pressure, and the slight twist of metallic flavouring.

[lumireleon]

1 month without electricity!! in December 2009 as result of a faulty main electric supply Transformer.

[dhamodharen]

Hmm... you are telling black out is rare in your country. Why don't you come to Tamil Nadu, India (except Chennai)to feel daily black out. we have power supply only for 6 hours in a day, which is similar to full shut down for 4 years. Time is splited into 6 times which is there will be 1 to 2hour continuous power then there will be no power for another 4 to 6 hours. The only good news is They will provide 2hour continuous power at night 8PM to 10PM and morning 3am to 6am. Its a usual Thing here.


and one more bonus for us is we have monthly FULLDAY shutdown for throughout Tamil Nadu 10am to 6PM which is officially published in all newspaper for more than 4 years.

[flearider]

lol 40 ltrs of water candles dualburn stoves,petrol basic food ie:rice and such for 6 weeks ..
solar charger .. yeah i'd say i'm good to go ..

[Jedibeeftrix]

about four hours.

both the main pc and the htpc are on UPS's, as are their monitors.

will put the router on a UPS before too long too, as phone cables are not affected.

[Dooms]

You guys jinx'd me. After I posted yesterday the power went out about 3am and has been out for the last 8 hours!

[Lucio]

Funnily enough, was at work a little late on Thursday, and suddenly I realise that the fans had stopped working. For a moment I went "fuse must have gone" since my laptop was still working before realising that actually, my laptop was on battery

The stupidest part was the hardware guy calling up to get us to turn off the servers at the wall as a precaution against surges. My colleague went down to the windowless basement where the servers live, and goes to the hardware guy "god it's dark down here", to which the hardware guy responds "oh the lightswitch is just to the left of the door"

My colleague replies "It's no good, you called me because of the powercut"

Cue silence!

[watercooled]

Funny, but it shows how much we're used to a constant power supply!

Off-the-shelf UPSes aren't really a suitable backup power supply IMO; they might last an hour or so if you pick a fairly big one vs power draw, but they're more for ensuring your system has enough time to shut down gracefully to prevent data loss. And they constantly waste power, although I've read some newer models bypass the AVR under normal circumstances.

[bobharvey]

The village my dad had his shop in did not get electricity properly until 1976. Till then some houses had either two lights or one socket, provided during WW2 when officers were billeted there.

Even after that the power would go off most winters, sometimes for 3 hours sometimes for 3 days. The longest I remember before the rewire was 5 weeks, the longest after it around a week.

Where I live now we get a 2 or 3 hour outage two or three times a winter.