WARNING to CPAP Users: PREPARE for the Unexpected - When the power goes out

[SuperSleeper]

Frustrated Greater Danbury officials prepare to storm power company

by Robert Miller

John McAuliffe of Ridgefield suffers from sleep apnea. He can get a good night's sleep if he's wearing his CPAP -- continuous positive airway pressure -- mask and the device is plugged in.

But McAuliffe lives in a town that is without electricity, thanks to Hurricane Irene. There's little hope of seeing power restored by week's end.

So he has to find a place that has power. He has a hotel room in Danbury for two nights but isn't sure where he'll stay next.

"For me, it's dire," McAuliffe said Tuesday, heading to Ridgefield's emergency shelter at the Yanity Gym. "And I know it is for others."

But Northeast Utilities -- the utility that supplies power to much of the state -- doesn't have enough crews in the area, and isn't keeping the crews on the job long enough, area town leaders said Tuesday. As a result, people like McAuliffe are left scrambling.

"It's painstakingly slow," said First Selectman Rudy Marconi of Ridgefield, where 85 percent of the town is still without power. While sections of Route 35 in the Copps Hill commercial area got power Tuesday, Main Street, Route 7, and all the neighborhoods adjoining them were still powerless.

As a result, Marconi called Tuesday for a face-to-face meeting this week with area town leaders, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and NU officials, to learn why NU has responded to Irene in the area in the way it has.

"We need crews," Marconi said. "The level of frustration is growing."

In response, NU spokeswoman Janine Saunders said NU now has 800 crews working to restore power in the state.

"It's a long-term restoration effort to a lot of devastation," Saunders said.

And, Saunders said, people should remember that the devastation wasn't confined to Connecticut. Extra crews are needed up and down the East Coast, she said.

"It was a U.S. storm, an East Coast storm, a Canadian storm," Saunders said.

But such explanations don't always cut it with people used to living with electricity.

"I think you can see by our faces, this is Day Three," said Janet Jacobs wryly, as she filled water jugs at the Yanity Gym.

"It's amazing what we take for granted," said Kathy Lang, who with her daughter, Elizabeth, was going to the newly reopened Parks and Recreation center in Ridgefield for hot showers. "Lights, power, water, phones, the Internet."

Because of the unhappiness of the people in their towns, Mayor Mark Boughton and Newtown First Selectman Pat Llodra said Tuesday that if Marconi can arrange such a meeting, they'll be there.

"We understand this situation," Boughton said of Irene, whose winds and rain disconnected about half the state from the power grid.

But Boughton said Danbury, which has about a third of its homes without power, has been left waiting for NU crews to arrive. The utility's delay frustrates people, he said, who then sound off to elected officials.

"My phone has been ringing off the hook," Boughton said.

"I've been tearing out my hair," said Llodra. Seventy-five percent of her town was without power after the storm. Llodra said it took her six hours of phone calling to get five NU trucks to Newtown to supplement the two that were there.

But Llodra said she doesn't expect the crews to restore power to much of the town until Thursday or Friday at the earliest.

"I feel for people," said Llodra, who has no power in her home. "It's very frustrating. I'm living it."

State Sen. Michael McLachlan, R-Danbury, called the power company's response "abysmal" in a letter he wrote to the president of Connecticut Light & Power Tuesday.

"As of this morning, I have seen very little service response from Connecticut Light & Power in the towns making up Western Connecticut, especially Danbury, New Fairfield, Sherman and the Stony Hill neighborhood of Bethel," McLachlan wrote. "Such a response, or rather the lack thereof, is completely unacceptable to the people who pay to utilize your services."

New Fairfield First Selectman John Hodge said Tuesday, "The numbers don't add up.

"I want to see a list of the allotment of their crews," Hodge said. "We don't have them here. It's incredibly frustrating."

Hodge said the town of New Fairfield had the same problem with NU in June, when a concentrated, wild storm downed many trees there.

And Marconi said all the towns in the region face the same problems with NU, year after year.

"It's something we complain about," he said. "There are hearings and reports. Nothing ever happens."


fair use from:
http://www.newstimes.com/news/article/Gr...147394.php

[SuperSleeper]

After Irene, candlelight and solitude
Four-plus days without power, and yet the world didn't end

by Dan Rodricks

For a couple of days, between the time Irene roared through and someone on our street decided to fire up a noisy generator, my neighborhood had been as quiet as when our houses were new and occupied by large families of long-gone Baltimoreans who had few electrical amenities.

That's an assumption, of course, but an informed one.

Most of these houses were built early in the 20th century, long before television or computers, before electric dryers, even before the expansion of commercial radio. There were no stereo systems; people might have listened to music from a player piano or hand-cranked Victrola in those days. The occasional automobile or delivery truck — bringing ice to homeowners who could not yet afford a refrigerator — might have rattled and backfired. If an airplane or blimp went overhead, adults and children probably were startled and excited, and they likely ran outside and looked to the skies when something man-made motored through it.

I am not being nostalgic; I am just doing what I've done frequently from time to time over the years: I try to imagine what life sounded like, felt like, looked like or smelled like back in the time of my grandparents and other ancestors. It's a way of mentally squinting to see the past.

I've only had this experience a few times:

•During prolonged power outages, such as the one after Tropical Storm Isabel in 2003.

•After the attacks of Sept. 11, when all nonmilitary flights were grounded for a time, and the skies were empty and quiet.

•In 1984, when I covered the bicentennial of Cornwallis' surrender to Washington at Yorktown, and the night before the ceremony thousands of British and colonial re-enactors camped out in the national park, fires ablaze, not an artificial light or electric sound within miles.

•Nights by a big fire during a fishing trip to Western Maryland.

This week after Irene, living without power for four or five days, I think I've gotten a good sense of what my house and the neighborhood would have been like way back when, and it pleases me.

Other people are moaning and groaning about being without power for so long, and the gripes about our favorite utility company grow louder by the minute. Some people have critical needs, and they deserve empathy. As for the rest — annoyed by life without light, without television, without the Internet — I have little sympathy, expect to say that, in their impatience to have full power restored, they don't know what they're missing.

In this week after Irene, I've become reacquainted with the smell of burning candles, the serenity they instill, and the way they cast shadows across a room. My eyes have adjusted to the darkness. I've read books and newspapers through dusk, then read more by lamplight. I've walked across rooms by relying on memory of where the tables and chairs are, and, aside from a couple of stubbed toes, generally succeeded. I've had conversations that, with the distractions of television and computers, otherwise would not have taken place. I wrote some letters by hand. I caught up on sleep, getting eight hours of night for the first time in a long time.

This is not for everyone, as I've acknowledged. A coworker, for instance, has been mostly awake since Irene knocked down power lines; he has sleep apnea and needs his continuous positive airway pressure machine to achieve deep sleep.

So, of course, electricity and all the machines and gadgets powered by it have made life for humans easier, more comfortable and, in some obvious ways, healthier. And I'm ready to get it back — as soon as possible.

But I've taken a couple of things from the way Irene ripped through our lives, leaving hundreds of thousands of us powerless:

That we should appreciate what we have — electricity at our fingertips — and be all the more vigilant about conserving it, using less, being more conscious of its value.

That we should purposely take quiet time, welcome the night and enjoy candlelight now and then.

That we should turn off the things that make noise and distract our brains from contemplation and from seeing the beauty in simplicity. That kind of solitude, carved out of your day, is precious. Things will get fast and noisy again before you know it.

fair use from:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion...723.column

[SuperSleeper]

Bumping this thread.... in light of the following story:

Some power outages in Northeast may last till midweek

By Oren Dorell and Doyle Rice, USA TODAY

Utility companies say it may be Wednesday before power is restored in some communities hit this weekend by a rare October snowstorm that slammed the Northeast, hampering travel and knocking out power to millions.

The storm packed wet, heavy snow that brought down trees with leaf-laden branches and left many roads impassable for crews trying to restore power, said Scott Surgeoner, spokesman for Pennsylvania utility Metropolitan Edison.

The storm also cut visibility, causing hours-long delays and forcing airport officials in New York City and Newark, N.J., to divert planes elsewhere. In Hartford, Conn., JetBlue passengers on a flight from Fort Lauderdale to Newark, N.J., were stranded on the tarmac Saturday for seven hours.

story continued at: http://www.usatoday.com/weather/storms/w...51008622/1

[SuperSleeper]

Hi All,

My wife always has a bedside drawer full of batteries ready to go, pity my F&P don't take batteries.

Cheers
John

[SuperSleeper]

Hey everyone. I heard you were talking about backup systems and solar panels so I thought I would chime in with mine. My house is powered by 22 200 watt panels for a total of 4.4 kilowatts. Even though it is winter and days are short we generated 53 percent of our energy yesterday from our solar panels. We also have a battery backup system that powers our whole house through in power outages. Remember, we live in an area that has hurricanes. Just a few years ago we had four hurricanes that passed over our house. So, as you can imagine we have lots of power outages. We installed our system back when the state of Florida has a generous rebate for installing solar panels. We were faced with putting a new roof on a 50 year old house and it was "now or never" for our lifelong dream of a solar powered house.

You can see our system operation live at http://bbbrown.mysolarlog.com/ and read about some of the details at http://www.bbbrown.com/ . Thanks for visiting our website and learning about our solar house. We have a lot more to do to make it more efficient but like everyone else have no $$$$ to spend.

Bob B.

[SuperSleeper]

Bob, you've got a great solar system there! Excellent.

I think you and I would get along great... I'm into solar energy too (albeit in a MUCH smaller, 12-volt scale)...

I'm surprised that you're also in to bicycling (I have a Trek 520 touring bike)... haven't tried the Recumbents yet, but I'd like to! (getting old and need to lean back and relax).

I see you're a pilot also... I soloed in my dad's Cessna 172 back in the early 90s. Still interested in Aviation... trying to get into the radio-controlled arena now (a lot cheaper flying) With the new batteries they have now, it's a lot better than with the old heavy model engines of the past.

Oh, and the Disclaimer on your personal blog was a hoot.

[SuperSleeper]

Thanks for the reminder. I need to check and charge the batteries. NOT going to go through what I did last year!

[SuperSleeper]

Someone mentioned not running sensitive electronics off of a generator. That is true but sometimes you don't have a choice. An S9 will take about 45 watts worst case which is too small of a load for a 400 watt generator when it starts so start with a different load. A small electric heater set on low if its low setting is about 1/2 the capacity of the generator works fine. Once it has started up, then you can turn off heater but you need something and the best things have large iron transformers. The generator will cause surges when it starts sputtering when the fuel runs out as well. The best option is hook the generator to a "full online UPS" which charges a battery and then runs an inverter. Even a cheap UPS is better than nothing. Most generators can charge 12 V batteries and a 12V deep cycle boat battery will last a long time with a full charge running a CPAP machine. They will last about 100 cycles if you run them all the way down but they are only going to last about 5 years. A truck battery may be cheaper and last only 30 cycles and also 5 years. Make sure you can check their fluid level and top it up if needed. If your power supply is "International" and you live in the parts of the world that have 120V power, there is far less risk. The ResMed Aussie supply has to cope with 366V for brief times since that is common Downunder and spikes to 477V are common in its homeland but the power brick is made in China which has cleaner power than rural NSW.

Also don't hook a generator up to your house using a "cheater plug" which looks like an extension cord with two plugs and no socket. While the mains may be off, if your neutral or ground isn't 100% correct (and it won't be), you risk starting a fire, causing a lineman a problem or having your generator attempt to feed the grid for the fraction of a second it takes for the grid to turn it into the largest motor on the block which might must cause bits of it to fly away. Ground loops can also run massive amounts of current through wires which aren't capable of dealing with it but I mentioned the fire risks already but this is another one.

My Resmed s9 auto used .45 kwh in 123 hours according to my meter. That is at 238V/50 Hz with a power factor of .8 down to .2 running the mask leak test. That seems like a wide range so I'll need to take it into work and hook it up in the lab and see what it really does. A power factor of .2 means normal calculations on power consumption will be wrong since you will indirectly see anomalies 5x what the normal numbers are.

[SuperSleeper]

Good points, Tim. Thanks.

Also, I've been told that one should never run down a 12-volt deep cycle battery below 75-80% capacity (usually around 12.4 volts, open terminal voltage) otherwise the life of the battery will be drastically reduced.

But, I've run my S9 AutoSet CPAP on my Wal-Mart Marine Battery for 3 nights in a row and it only got down to around 12.5. Haven't tested beyond that.

[SuperSleeper]

Because the CPAP is basically just a very small electric air pump, the drain on a battery would be very small.

SS, was the humidifier on or off? Wonder how much more power it would draw with it on? Anything that produces heat is a big drain.