A Wish List for Power Outages

We awoke this morning to an ice storm encompassing much of Maine. We lost electricity around 3:30 AM. School's canceled, and everyone's asleep, but I got up early to assess our situation, shake ice off my beloved apples and lilacs, and investigate the snapping tree limbs I'd been listening to in bed for the last couple hours.

Our little Maine village is filled with the drone of generators, but we don't have one.

We, like most folks, are decidedly ON the grid.

Here's the state of energy in our home when the flow of electricity is interrupted:

The propane that fuels our stove continues to flow. We're coffee capable, thankfully. Seems a good morning to cook bacon. The laptop I'm writing on retains some battery power. The little pot bellied coal stove that was here when we bought the place stands at the ready, but I cringe at needing to use it. (Not clean coal.) We've got a good supply of crank-powered flashlights and a Freeplay Eyemax Weather Radio, so I've been able to get NPR and confirm the school closings. (The local ME public broadcasting network is not on; later I learn that there's a downed power line in their parking lot.) My iPhone remains the sole link to the internet. Luckily I remembered to give it a good charge.

That's it. No more.

No electricity to our house means:

No heat (even though fuel oil's our primary source). No light. The fridge is warming; the freezer's thawing. We're off line. The VoIP phones are dead. There's undoubtedly some retained heat in the water tank for a shower, but the sewer pump's down. No kitchen exhaust--the house smells like bacon. For now, the thermostat reads 60. Down 3 degrees since I got up, and not likely to start warming any time soon. I don't have reams of candles to make the house look friendly when it gets dark (at about 4 in the afternoon), and I am wishing I'd stocked up on water, or at least filled the tub.

In general, certainly compared to much of the world, our grid is fairly reliable, even though we like to complain about it on days like this. All of which frames the question: for these occasional times, what would we love to have? A generator, like all those I'm listening to around the neighborhood, seems like it would be hard to justify economically for our twice annual ice storm, not to mention adding to the drone. If I had a Freeplay Freecharge Weza, I'd have a lot more control over my current destiny, powering up all the waning small devices, and even the Vornado Vortex Space Heater, via foot power. It's the modern equivalent of "cut your own wood, get warm twice" with all it's aerobic benefits. But this morning, when we need it, we don't have a Weza. At least, not yet.

Nor do we have a wood stove that could be keeping the whole house at reasonable temperature and giving us that time-stopping feeling of peace that a brief interval off the grid can offer. We would all curl up with our books, and actually feel grateful that nobody could reach us. We'd heat up milk on the stove for hot chocolate - lots of it, because the milk's going bad anyway.

Now everybody is awake. And my daughter is on the sofa curled up under a big blanket with... her iPod, praying she can reach the end of Cricket in Time's Square before the battery runs out.

updated 8.6.09