How I deal with a winter storm in the forcast

[OffGridForGood]

I have been dealing with a pretty big storm this week, and since last year at this time we lost utility power for four days in a row, I thought I would share what we do to prepare for a winter storm in our local forcast; maybe it will help someone else, even if you live somewhere without winter storms, our approach could work for other forecasted extreme weather events, and it seems these are becoming pretty common.

The background: we run our business and our home on side by side rural properties, the off-grid set up is actually in the shop next door, with a pair of buried cables between the shop and our home. The house still has a utility connection, although we try to minimize our utility use, or we load-shift to nights when our TOU rates are half of the daytime rates. The business uses 12-14kWh per day, and the house 24kWh per day.

Earlier this week we saw in the forecast a big blow-out coming with high winds, and up to 20-inches of snow mixed with freezing rain conditions. Knowing these are the conditions that took out hundreds of trees last spring and the utility lines with them, resulting in a four day utility outage, I set up the system to charge up the batteries to 100% off-peak, and run the two properties during the day on solar/battery. It turned out the utility remained on during most of the storm, with only a four hour outage during the peak, but having the batteries all fully charged each night gave us great comfort that we were prepared. Yes, we have a back up generator and proper connections to the solar now (added Fall 2022) however the generator is effectively $1.25/kWh power supply and we try to avoid that source unless all other options are down. (note: we do run the generator about once a month for an hour to exercise it, use up any old fuel in the tank, and confirm it is available for use).
Hope this post helps others, and leads to considering the priority of fully charging batteries leading up to a forecast weather event, over minimizing utility usage.

 

[12VoltInstalls]

leads to considering the priority of fully charging batteries leading up to a forecast weather event, over minimizing utility usage

I’m running what most people think of as a tiny system- 280Ah of LiFePo currently with 800W of active panels. I never give power much of a thought, although admittedly I need another 140-280Ah in reality, along with on-lining 2kW of panels that I haven’t done.

However, with weather scarecast calling for 40-60mph (didn’t probs get over 40) I also flicked on the grid switch and charged fully. Unclear if the (grid) power went out or not but I didn’t notice if it did.

In your case, charging was a good idea being that you use a fair amount of grid in The Dark Months by the sound of it. In my case, charging was a good idea because with storms - never mind The Dark Months- the solar input is dismal and I do not replenish daily. With the overcast and the storm I used about 8kWh of grid charging over six or seven days.
We have sun today and I’m 13.4V with ~10A charging currently. I might not need anything with storms if I had the 2kWh connected.

I actually got ~24-ish but I didn’t leave for two days due to 3-6’ snowdrifts and an 8’ tall pile at the end of the driveway. The pic below is the curl on a drift upwind of my “shop” (office trailer) and behind the drift is a 2004 Grand Cherokee and a 1976 CJ5 that got a little buried. Some. A lot. You can see the portable garage frame sticking out of the snow above where the Cherokee sits…



Prep for storms is fine if it’s charging up or checking generators. But if you don’t have a few weeks of eats on hand and your prep is ‘shopping’ then you need to make a plan.

A typical winter storm is expected, not a surprise emergency. It shouldn’t take running around like a chicken with its head cut off. But even if you live in an a region where that’s uncommon, you should be set up to weather out anything that might come for at least 2 or 3 weeks. I don’t think of myself as a prepper but yet- surviving a few weeks fully intact with anything that comes my way besides a fire, a nuke, or a meteor is just common sense.

 

[OffGridForGood]

I get really poor solar during Nov-Dec and the first two weeks of Jan, after that solar is generally good, but not during a white-out that lasts a few days! LOL. Like you say, we don't consider ourselves 'preppers' in the current sense, but we have all the supplies we need to last a good long time without needing any outside resources. Being ready for common or even uncommon local weather is just good planning, and over the last number of years, these spring storms seem to be a lot more common around here!
Stay safe, and be careful digging out from that nice dump of white-stuff!