Planned power outage - how should I prepare?

[Tom41]

The electric company in my area are replacing some equipment in the local substation, and as such will need to cut power to my neighborhood for a whole day.

I've heard a lot about power surges caused by turning electricity off and on, especially when it's done for a whole subnet from the substation. How should I go about shutting everything down and disconnecting?

What I plan to do is shut down all computers, servers and electronic equipment as far as is possible, then trip the MCBs at my fuse box for everything except the lighting circuit (so I can see when power goes off and on). Is that enough to isolate my equipment from any potential surges, or should I try to unplug everything as well?

Any electronically-minded people here have suggestions?

[dood]

Re: Planned power outage - how should I prepare?

I've always just shut everything down and unplugged... Of course, I have a smaller number of machines than it sounds you do.

[willawake]

Re: Planned power outage - how should I prepare?

we have occasional power outages here in the summer. what can happen on occasion is the power comes back with a surge.

the only equipment i would worry about are computers (if they are not protected by quality ups) but most importantly devices with poor power supplies such as dvd/cd players especially newer ones. (i had a surge once after a short power cut and it damaged nothing but two identical denon dvd players)

anyway if you want to be absolutely sure then just unplug anything nice you like to keep

[Topcat]

Re: Planned power outage - how should I prepare?

I've always just shut everything down and unplugged... Of course, I have a smaller number of machines than it sounds you do.

Unplugged being the key word. I'd have all unplugged until they're finished. I've seen power companies fry way too many people's and business's electronics. Boo-boo's happen, and they wont pay for their screw ups.

[japlytic]

Re: Planned power outage - how should I prepare?

I have thoughts of using a car engine (the Buick 3800, my favourite engine used in the Holden VN Commodore) from a wrecking yard and turning it into a 150kW (estimated) electricity generator (with some other parts), enough to power a large supermarket!
This system would use an inverter at the high voltage output connected to the generator output to produce clean and regulated AC power.

The Chevy 6L V8 from the new VE Commodore would be too hot to handle right now...

[gonzo0815]

Re: Planned power outage - how should I prepare?

If you have some things, you normaly won`t unplug for a few years, keep some replacement caps handy. Especially some DSL modems don`t restart, if the gone caps are cold. This was for me the only bad experience after an sheduled power outage of 4 h. This was the one of three power outages i can remember. But from the latest problems in EU, i think this good power reliability woud be the next sacrifice to the shareholder value.

[Tom41]

Re: Planned power outage - how should I prepare?

The outage has been and gone - it was nearly all day, 8:45am to 4pm! After putting the MCBs back on, all I had to do was reset the clocks and boot up the servers again. Nothing seems to have been damaged, thankfully.

Actually, maybe it's not all good - my phone line has been dead since the electricity came back on yesterday. No power to any of the phones plugged into any of the sockets. If you call the number (from a cellphone etc.) it sounds as if it's ringing, but the phones don't ring - and if you pick it up nothing happens.

I'm on cable so still get Internet and TV, but I wonder if all the road-digging works (for the new electric wires) damaged the phone network? Perhaps an MCB tripped inside the network distribution box when the power was turned off and on?

[kc8adu]

Re: Planned power outage - how should I prepare?

i would have made sure my genset had a full fuel tank and enough to run it a while..wait i already have that!
tests honda genset...yep starts with the bump of the key!