New Year’s Resolutions: Be Prepared

Throughout the month of January, we are making it our mission to help you improve your life and your home this year by making some helpful New Year’s resolutions. The year 2020 changed a lot about the way we live, and many people are resolving to be better prepared for the unexpected. That very much includes power outages, where you lose access to the electrical energy that very much powers your life.

In the past, preparation for power outages meant something as simple as having batteries in your flashlight and knowing where it is. However, this only really helps in short-term outages. Instead, our blog takes a closer look at a few tips you can follow to be better prepared for an outage so that the impact to your life and your comfort is minimal.

Shield Your Home with Surge Protection

Power surges one of the biggest threats your electrical system faces. They can hit with little to no warning and cause tremendous damage in the blink of an eye, including irreparable damage to some of your most valuable and delicate possessions like data centers, HVAC equipment, and more. For this reason, we have always used surge strips to protect some of our most devices. However, they can only protect what is plugged into them, and that often means only a select few things.

The solution: a whole-home surge protection system. In the event of a surge, a surge protection system prevents the excess energy from reaching your home’s main electrical grid, preventing the excessive damage. The extra energy is safely disposed of through a ground line, and your home remains safe and intact. For this reason, we cannot recommend these systems strongly enough to nearly any homeowner.

Have Alternate Ways of Doing Important Things

Many of our life’s basic necessities require electricity now, including normally mundane tasks like cooking. Without electricity, we may not know how to handle these otherwise routine chores. How can you be expected to heat up food if you don’t have access to electrical cooking appliances like a microwave, oven, or stovetop? Likewise, how can you keep food fresh without a working refrigerator?

For this reason, we recommend having an alternate way of doing important things on standby. For example, a propane-powered camping stove can provide just enough cooking firepower to handle most simple meals. Likewise, they can be easily and safely used outdoors. Outdoor grills are another great way of being able to prepare food without electricity.

Consider Installing a Backup Generator

A backup generator might be the single greatest investment you make in your quality of life, and you’ll see why as soon as you have to go through your first power outage. Whether it’s a simple portable generator or a full-fledged standby system, having the ability to create power you can use to do a limited number of things as you normally would is invaluable. For example, you can use a few electric lights, power things like a cell phone or emergency radio, and even power a small fan for climate control during a scorching hot summer day.

Portable generators are great for the budget-conscious consumer, as they typically require a smaller investment. These systems do typically require more maintenance, need to be regularly refueled, make a fair amount of noise, and don’t produce as much power as standby systems, but they are still valuable. A standby generator isn’t portable, but rather is always installed on your property. These systems are powered by natural gas, meaning they require a gas supply line to operate. However, they turn on automatically, provide more power, and require less maintenance than their portable counterparts.