• Have you tried out dark mode?! Scroll to the bottom of any page to find a sun or moon icon to turn dark mode on or off!

diy solar

diy solar

Prepping for impending grid outage

One thing I learned from the Northridge 6.7 magnitude earthquake in 1994 (we lived 2 miles from the epicenter) is that cash is king. When there's no power, everything is down. It is also possible that if the entire grid is down, water could stop flowing as well since some water lines use pumps. During the Northridge earthquake, no public utilities were working due to breaks in the lines. No power, no gas, no water, no phones. Oddly enough some cell phones still worked. But that was 1994 and very, very few people had cell phones. Credit card machines were down so you can't buy anything. Can't pump gas even if you pay cash because registers are down and pumps are down. If you need gas for your generator, you are out of luck. The local 7-11 was selling what food they had left. A blueberry muffin was $8.00. (JERKS!) But if you were hungry and had cash, it was yours.

So what do you need to prep for impending grid outage? Cash. With enough cash you can get whatever you need from someone who is willing to sell it.
 
I saw an estimate of $1 trillion to harden the grid to survive a Carrington event. I though that was a lot of money, until the past few years and all the trillions the fed is wasting.
They'd rather send the trillions overseas to be laundered than to actually do something useful with the tax dollars and printing press.
 
Can talk about it right here. What are your specific concerns?
chances are batteries with built in BMS could get be affected. I put a charge controller and inverter in a Faraday cage. Nothing major, just want something to charge small batteries. what about panel damage? should I a few tucked away?
 
In an emergency the vast majority of our energy usage can be cut loose (clothes dryer, hot water). The exception being winter heating, blower and circulation fans. My oil furnace draws about 450 watts for example and those Wh can really add up.

Refrigeration would probably be the biggest remaining load but even a modest off grid system woukd be able to handle that.

If an emp kicks off, grid down for sure but do we know if that would actually effect our MPPTs, inverters or BMS ?
I read a post from some so-called electricity expert that said we would have to be close to the blast for most items to be affected. not sure if thats true
 
I think an EMP is less likely than a physical attack on the electrical grid. With who knows who has come across the southern border over the last 3 years anything can happen. Do an internet search on "national electric grid vulnerabilities"
There are only a couple dozen critical interconnect substations, those that convert the 384,000 and above volt transmission lines to lower voltages for distribution and most have no physical security.

National Electric Grid Vulnerabilities

National Electric Grid Vulnerabilities
think you are right. Documentary “grid up power down” hosted by Dennis Quaid was enlightening. also the Netflix movie “Leave the World Behind” produced by the Obamas is probably a scenario that's most likely to happen
 
I am a bit more worried about water from the TX example a few years ago when a few of the municipal water supplies shut down for lack of power.
Have a pool but might need to look at some of those filters to make sure it is drinkable.
thats what I did.. we keep the jacuzzi filled and lots of filters
 
Ok, 9 hour outage. I don't think it's so clear that we can jump to the conclusion that x-47 means weeks months or years outage. It's a very complex consideration that would require educated analysis.

It doesn't seem like x-47 means internally trying a generator head, for example.
Yes, it is hard to precisely predict all the effects (or lack thereof) which a CME hit on earth would cause. But it is important to keep in mind that at the time of the Carrington event, there were NO electronics with sensitive semiconductor junctions and really very little to nothing in terms of power lines. The only long distance conductors were telegraph lines and railroad rails. Both of those saw effects and some damage.

A similar CME today would be quite different. Many thousands of miles of power lines to pick up voltage and current; power transformers which will not handle the DC currents, lots of sensitive electronics in most devices which are plugged into the grid. Of coarse it will all depend upon the details of the event, but the possibility is there for a lot of damage to infrastructure and "appliances".
 
If you like fiction and want to read a series of books on the results of an EMP, internet search for author "William Forstchen".
Takes place in Black Mountain/Montreat North Carolina.

Couple of hours from me and I had to drive up there just to see the community. Pretty much as described in the books.
Deep
 
As shown a couple of years ago a rifle round or 2 in a transformer ends it. A few people shooting into substations could wipe out electric in large areas. And those transformers are currently a 3-4 YEAR lead time to replace and come from China.
Documentary “grid up power down” hosted by Dennis Quaid was enlightening.
 
I suppose the most effective preparation for any such event would be to completely disconnect from the grid. Most equipment failure will be caused by v/m energy from the power lines. I believe the E1 pulse is most damaging to disconnected equipment but is relatively short range compared to E2 and 3. Longer term problems will present when people notice your lights are on.
Truth!!!! prepare to backout all windows
 
One thing I learned from the Northridge 6.7 magnitude earthquake in 1994 (we lived 2 miles from the epicenter) is that cash is king. When there's no power, everything is down. It is also possible that if the entire grid is down, water could stop flowing as well since some water lines use pumps. During the Northridge earthquake, no public utilities were working due to breaks in the lines. No power, no gas, no water, no phones. Oddly enough some cell phones still worked. But that was 1994 and very, very few people had cell phones. Credit card machines were down so you can't buy anything. Can't pump gas even if you pay cash because registers are down and pumps are down. If you need gas for your generator, you are out of luck. The local 7-11 was selling what food they had left. A blueberry muffin was $8.00. (JERKS!) But if you were hungry and had cash, it was yours.

So what do you need to prep for impending grid outage? Cash. With enough cash you can get whatever you need from someone who is willing to sell it.
agreed.. Living in L.A. Baldwin Hills during the quake. Had to travel 10 miles for water. cant believe it's been 30 years. They are way overdue for another
 
IMO if EMP is big enough to take your home electric system that can only happen if there is a nuclear blast your within the fallout zone. You be better off just being vaporized then attempting to survive after a full nuclear exchange between 2 super powers. Even if you are off-grid and have EMP proofed there will be millions of starving people looking to take everything you have. You can only defend a stationary location so long eventually they will overcome any defenses you have. Why bother with spending extra money on EMP proofing I think it's more a gimmick like selling bomb shelters were in the 1960's.
 
If you look at studies of the black death in the middle ages, you will find that most economies continued to function as best they could, and that in general, things did not run amok, relatively speaking. Those scenarios are vastly more extreme than what have been presented to the populations recently. Modern perspective aside, this seems like a way to consider the present more positively. Not that I don't have my own strong opinions on the present....in a negative way....
 
I'm not prepping for an EMP event or any other event that may take the grid down for 6 months or more. I'm prepping for the next ice storm. I've already been through 2, each resulting in lost power for more than a week. We installed a standby generator after the last one. However, we'd be lucky to get 5 days from the generator before running out of propane. In the next few weeks, I'll be adding 20 KWH of batteries to my home system. I'm hoping to convince the neighbor to follow, so we can convert the generator to 2 wire start and not run 24 hours a day.
 
"Grid down scenario" is the #1 reason we invested in all this solar gear.
Need electricity to operate the well pump & refrigeration, among other things.

(Reason #2 was to reduce the monthly electric bill)

Hurricanes are the main reason for prolonged grid outages.
Have been through a few in the last 7+ decades of living here.

Service is usually restored within 2 weeks or less.

The next reason is DUI drivers knocking down power poles in our rural area - power is restored quickly: (less than a day)


Not worried about man made EMP, but this solar cycle might send some unwanted energy our way:


I remember 30-40 years ago a solar event had the tropical night sky glowing bright red here.
Very unusual at this latitude.


I have implemented UL 1449 surge protection because of the amount of lightning strikes here during Summer, hope it helps w/ induced energy on the grid side of our connection.

We don't sell back, so the solar electronics are not going to see anything massive coming from the grid.

Also implemented some of the Motorola R56 standard grounding & bonding (built a halo system) around the building that has the Schneider electronics in it.


As others have mentioned, letting vast numbers of foreign soldiers and terrorists in to the country will eventually result in attacks on infrastructure and institutions, so in terms of probability of extended grid down reasons, this might be higher than hurricanes now.

A few years ago, I went on the public tour of the Grand Coulee dam.
The tour is much less extensive than before, due to security concerns.

But they did show us the system that is designed to prevent a vehicle from driving on to the dam, it would shred a big truck that hit it at speed, very impressive.

added idea - if the North America grid is significantly damaged, and down for a long time, the data centers providing Internet, cloud and storage will shut down.

The one I worked at had about 8MW worth of giant gensets, but only "day tanks" of
Diesel, requiring a tanker refill. Twin 24 cylinder, quad-turbo Diesels are thirsty.

So I'm buying one of those "Starlink" contraptions, reasoning that somewhere on the planet,
there will be a functioning net.
Starlink and a 1951 HF tube-type receiver will keep me connected to the world, I hope.
Screenshot 2024-03-03 at 07.56.23.png
 
Last edited:
"Grid down scenario" is the #1 reason we invested in all this solar gear.
Need electricity to operate the well pump & refrigeration, among other things.

(Reason #2 was to reduce the monthly electric bill)

Hurricanes are the main reason for prolonged grid outages.
Have been through a few in the last 7+ decades of living here.

Service is usually restored within 2 weeks or less.

The next reason is DUI drivers knocking down power poles in our rural area - power is restored quickly: (less than a day)


Not worried about man made EMP, but this solar cycle might send some unwanted energy our way:


I remember 30-40 years ago a solar event had the tropical night sky glowing bright red here.
Very unusual at this latitude.


I have implemented UL 1449 surge protection because of the amount of lightning strikes here during Summer, hope it helps w/ induced energy on the grid side of our connection.

We don't sell back, so the solar electronics are not going to see anything massive coming from the grid.

Also implemented some of the Motorola R56 standard grounding & bonding (built a halo system) around the building that has the Schneider electronics in it.


As others have mentioned, letting vast numbers of foreign soldiers and terrorists in to the country will eventually result in attacks on infrastructure and institutions, so in terms of probability of extended grid down reasons, this might be higher than hurricanes now.

A few years ago, I went on the public tour of the Grand Coulee dam.
The tour is much less extensive than before, due to security concerns.

But they did show us the system that is designed to prevent a vehicle from driving on to the dam, it would shred a big truck that hit it at speed, very impressive.
But a mine, underwater or floated (possibly remote controlled) into the dam could do enough damage that the water flow through the breach would finish the job.
 
You just need to be ready to defend what is yours.


My uncle was in the Army at the time of the Davy Crockett. He was trained to shoot nuclear tipped artillery. He has a picture standing next to one of the guns at the training center he was sent to. He said they never fired any on a test range I'm sure they sent 100's of personal to the training school he was deployed to Germany late 1950's early 1960's I believe he was drafted.
 

diy solar

diy solar
Back
Top