Update:
The power was restored five hours later and our 3 outage reports were cancelled. Unfortunately for me, the power was not restored since the cutout feeding our community center and other buildings was tripped. I had to make more outage reports before the cutout was reset. Total outage: 15 hours.
Lessons learned:
- The backup generator was not powerful enough for the well pump. No water from the well.
- The other parts of our electrical backup plan did work.
- I have at least 10 hours of tree cutting to do from the storm damage. I learned that no matter how many dead or leaning trees that are cut that may impact electrical power, it is never enough.
This is a map of the current electrical outages for our co-op. Unfortunately, this is a common occurrence.
Used to live in East Tennessee by the mountains and had that problem all the time. Coop was unreliable EXCEPT when it cam time to collect their money!
I live elsewhere now ( also in the country) and the electric company delivers outstanding service.
We live in rural West Tennessee. Local cell tower got taken out by tornado two months ago. Yesterday, Verizon shut down for 12 hours for much of our region. Most of today, service was running at .5 mbps. Maybe we should go back to the 1980s. We would be a lot better off without the rectangles of death.
Wow.
Generator Country.
Living in a national forest area, we used to have regular power outages, this was back in the seventies and eighties! I put in a generator and a simple solar PV system, the generator ran during the days and the solar gave us lights at night from a couple of batteries. Then solar was about twelve dollars a watt, now it is less than a dollar. In the last five years we expanded the system so we don’t need the generator! It all works pretty good and saves money on the electric bill, it is not tied into the grid, but runs on batteries. Now outages are no problem.
Lawnmore what batteries do you use? My Deep cycle lead acid batteries are getting old.
I am using primarily 6V golf cart batteries, at 4 KAH. I never discharge them below %70 or 12.3 V, these days I am running a 10A trickle charger, to extend their life. Four of them are 100 AH, I know you shouldn’t combine different types, but they are left overs. The others are all 230 AH.
Consider, are you seeing (Truly) which direction this world is going? Or are you caught up in the theatrics and agenda of the world rulers? The Lord of this world seems to be Baal.
Some of the electrical impacts and storm activity are not simply because of man’s physical prepping and or shortcomings.
Magnetic Pole Shift
TOP RISKS:
-Technological Failure
-Ozone Destruction
– Radiation Enhancement
-Food Chain Disruption
– phsychyological Impacts
2 Peter 3:11
What kind of people should we be?
We need to be people of God and only observance of his laws and not heed the lawless government edicts and unconstitutional laws they cram down the throats of the American people every day.
“Not heed,” Agree. Also, not worry so much. Not be consumed by the worries of this world. Become ‘set-apart.
Try switching to a 1/2 HP Grundfos well pump. It will run on 120V.
I live in this area. This latest outage was 4 hours at my place. We’ve lost power here 5-6 times this year. Anywhere from 40 minutes to 10 hours. This is the worst year since I’ve been here. Ordered a dual fuel emergency generator just to keep the refrigerator and a few lights going. The price you pay for living in the mountains!
The price we pay for living in Atlas Shrugged where people have given up.
Drenegade the whole point of going Galt was to CRASH the system and SURVIVE the chaos meanwhile.
That’s what I get out of Atlas Shrugged.
Withdraw your consent to perpetuate evil. Rebuild a better future when the inevitable collapse comes.
Seems we agree.
Now if more people really owned, read and honored the bible, the declaration of independence and the constitution so we had something to build with.
I felt like I needed to write “Amen”. Meaning of Amen- truth!
Good friend in central Illinois, who’s lived there all her life, has not had power for 6 days ( and counting now). City Power and Light company has no estimate of when the city of Springfield, the capital of Illinois, will have power again! They say 5 tornadoes touched down……
Try getting a good water pump; you can put one on the well and still use your electric. We have one here in northern Maine and it works all year round; you can put a hose on it as well.
We have a simple pump and a spring head that provides 2 gallons per minute. I want redundancy for several systems.
For something as important as running clean water, redundancy is essential! I never want to have to carry water again!
I should get some sewer line to bypass the septic system it it fails.
Lawnmore given we are in for a multi-generational fight and restoration (if it’s in God will) you need to think about a properly sited and protected outhouse.
A septic line dumping untreated human waste is going to be bad for your children and neighbors.
It was just a thought; however as we live next to a cliff in the middle of a national forest, with no neighbors, it is not much of a problem, in a SHTF. Having spent decades in micro biology I am aware of the issues. None the less thanks for the reminder.
Electric motors, when started have a locked rotor current that is ten times or better, making any significant line resistance as well as generator wattage a problem. A bigger generator is a good idea, if you are still having problems double up the size of the wire to the well head, or move the generator next to the well.
For most homesteads where power lines are long, line resistance can get to be a problem. My pump is five hundred feet to the transformer! I had to replace much of the aluminum line with one hundred amp wire for a ten amp motor!
My solar panels are three hundred feet from the batteries. They produce about 100 A at 14.5V I had to go to 300 amp wires to get the losses down!
Lawnmore that locked rotor amperage is only drawn for a few seconds until the motor is up to speed and drops to RLA that is running load amps. You size your wire by amps and length to the load for 12volt or 24 volt you would count both wire lengths, no need to count both on 120 or 240 volt.
Yes, but if there is not enough current available to get the motor up to speed, then you have a slow or no start and hot wires.
While under normal circumstances, line resistance is not a problem, with long lines or low voltage it can be, I recommend lines twice the maximum current for 12V, for short distances and depending on the distance five to ten times. Fuses, breakers, switches and shunts for meters will also have a voltage drop across them, it all adds up, keep your wires large. Starting with 3.5KW at 16V, I get about 1.5-2k with 300A wire at 300 feet
do internet search on “electric motor soft start”. Not sure of your exact application but that might help.
Thanks for the reply, but all is good here, since I increased the wire size!
Yep, I live in the big red circle, thankfully have a full house generator, now I have to get the well pump wired to the house panel vs garage panel