Pepere Posted September 15 Share Posted September 15 I live about 25 miles as the crow flies away from Casco Bay in Maine. Current track guesstimates Lee’s eye will hit the southern Tip of Nova Scotia. I am guessing roughly 200-250 miles from me. current guestimate for local impact is around 48% chance of 1-2 inches of rain, and about 30% of 2-4 inches. Saturday morning windspeed of 15 mph gusting to 25, and building through the day to peak at 44 mph gusting to 53 around 7:00 PM and subsiding back around midnight as same as early morning… Being around 300 feet elevation avove sea level storm surge is no concern and it is estimated to be 3 feet at the coast hitting at dead low tide. Our local tidal fetch isaround 12 feet between low and high… All in all I suspect we will ride it out fine… Chief concern is significant power outage since most of the trees still have their leaves. Of further concern has been our super abundant rainfall all summer softening the soil and consequent root rot from high water table added to drought stress to our trees from last summers drought. Maine is the most forested state in the nation and state laws preclude power utilities from taking down trees outside a very narrow right of way and they can only trim branches within 10 feet of their current carrying conductors. That is enough to prevent branches blowing against the lines in wind tripping the lines, but does nothing to prevent large branches falling onto lines, or blow down trees on the lines. Something like 90% of our power outages are due to blow downs outside the right of way or dropped limbs from above…. i rounded up all of my Ryobi Cordless tool battery packs andam charging them all up. I have 2 150 watt inverters that work on those battery packs and I have about 500 watt hours of battery storage there. I also have 2 1800 watt inverter based generators to keep freezers and fridges cold, hot water tanks filled with hot water and can be used to heat tanks, recharge battery packs as needed. I went to the gas station and filled the car and 30 gallons of gasoline in 5 gallon containers stored in an outdoor shed. I fill the tanks once a year with stabilized gasoline and use them to fill the lawnmowers and snowblowers for the year. If there is leftover near fall I throw it in the cars gas tank and then refill fresh. If a big winter storm is setto hit and a few tanks are depleted I refill them.. In 1998 we suffered through 4 days of freezing rain. We had generators back then, but we only kept a 5 gallon gas can filled. On day 2 of the storm I was shuffling the generator between properties and noticed a 2 mile line in front of a gas station… there were only 3 gas stations in a population of about 50,000 that were open. All the rest of them had no electricity to pump gas…. That experience had a permanent impact on me. Ever since I have kept a significant supply of stabilized gasoline on hand to keep the generators running… I suspect we will make out fine… Certainly we are at ever so much less risk in Maine from hurricanes than our friends in the coastal south. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheSwissAquarist Posted September 15 Share Posted September 15 Good luck 🤞! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PlaneFishGuy Posted September 15 Share Posted September 15 @Pepere How many tanks are you preparing to maintain? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tanked Posted September 15 Share Posted September 15 On 9/14/2023 at 8:54 PM, Pepere said: I also have 2 1800 watt inverter based generators to keep freezers and fridges cold, hot water tanks filled with hot water and can be used to heat tanks, recharge battery packs as needed. When tornados obliterated some of the neighboring communities during my senior year in HS, I had all of the emergency supplies I needed, but neglected to stock fuel, or a battery operated radio. Fast forward to today, and I am curious about your inverter based generator. Are these plugged into your vehicle, or something else? In a long term emergency I can get a generator, but was also looking for something to work short term. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pepere Posted September 15 Author Share Posted September 15 On 9/15/2023 at 9:59 AM, PlaneFishGuy said: How many tanks are you preparing to maintain? I have 2, 29 gallon tanks, a 20 high, a 17 gallon bowl, and 3 10 gallon quarantine tanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pepere Posted September 15 Author Share Posted September 15 On 9/15/2023 at 4:23 PM, Tanked said: Fast forward to today, and I am curious about your inverter based generator. Are these plugged into your vehicle, or something else? In a long term emergency I can get a generator, but was also looking for something to work short term. I have two of these though of a newer model. Gas motor turns an alternator that rectifies to dc current and an inverter turns it in to pure sine wave 120 volt ac. 1800 watt running, 2300 watt start up capacity. Motor will ramp up and down in speed according to load unlike a non inverter based generator that spins at constant speed and increases or decreases throttle as needed to match load demand. inverter based is more fuel efficient at partial load…and it is quieter… has a carbon monoxide detector to shut down if CO levels start exceeding limit and low oil shut off to prevent engine damage. Built in wheels and retractable hadle for moving like a suitcase… newest one also has bluetooth capability for reporting of parameters.. I have not dug in to find out exactly what it can give you for information… $699.00. Bought it at local big box home improvement store. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pepere Posted September 15 Author Share Posted September 15 I have two of these as well. 150 watts each and usb port, and a small led area light. You use Ryobi battery packs for cordless tools to power them. Now I would not recommend buying these if you dont already have Ryobi cordless tools and battery packs, but I have 500 watt hours of battery packs so it makes lots of sense for me. A 4 amp hour battery pack will run my Fluval 207 canister filter for 7 hours. $50.00 each. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tanked Posted September 16 Share Posted September 16 (edited) On 9/15/2023 at 7:14 PM, Pepere said: I have two of these as well. 150 watts each and usb port, and a small led area light. You use Ryobi battery packs for cordless tools to power them. Now I would not recommend buying these if you dont already have Ryobi cordless tools and battery packs, but I have 500 watt hours of battery packs so it makes lots of sense for me. A 4 amp hour battery pack will run my Fluval 207 canister filter for 7 hours. $50.00 each. Thanks for the information. I'm not up on the tech. and none of my Ryobi equipment is cordless. When you said inverter, I was thinking about the power inverters that you plug into your car's cigerette lighter. I've been wondering if someone has ever used one of those for an extended period. I hope the stom doesn't give you too many problems; good luck. Edited September 16 by Tanked Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pepere Posted September 16 Author Share Posted September 16 On 9/16/2023 at 8:22 AM, Tanked said: I've been wondering if someone has ever used one of those for an extended period. You could but it would be problematic. Starting batteries have plates with lots of surface area due to mesh construction. This allows them to liberate lots of amps to power a starter motor. They dont hold many amp hours though and the plates are easily damaged if discharged deeply and not promptly recharged. leaving your car running would be incredibly wasteful of gasoline as only a tiny fraction of the gasoline would go to create electricity… You could use a smaller inverter hooked up to a deep cycle battery or more of them to create more capacity, or a lithium iron phosphate battery or bank and recharge them via solar panels or a battery charge when grid power is available… but it is not cheap. 80 amp hour lead acid deep cycle batteries are around 100.00 last I checked. Allowing for a usable capacity ofroughly 400 watt hours. (Ie 400 watts for 1 hour, or 40 watts for 10 hours, or 4 watts for 100 hours..). Inverter about 75.00 decent charger about the same…. 100 amp hour lithium iron phosphate battery costs about 600.00 and gives you usable power of about 1000 watt hours… major advantage of the lithium isit can be nearly depleted completely dail for 20 years and only lose roughly 10% or so of capacity. Deep cycle lead acid can not be depleted more than 50% routinely or capacity suffers quickly…lead acid will only last 4-5 years roughly in practice.. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tanked Posted September 16 Share Posted September 16 On 9/16/2023 at 9:02 AM, Pepere said: Leaving your car running would be incredibly wasteful of gasoline as only a tiny fraction of the gasoline would go to create electricity… That is exactly what I was thinking about. I was really only thinking about enough power to keep the air/heat on in the aquariums. for a few hours or a day. Power outages around me are brief and extremely rare. However, with what I perceive as a change in whether patterns, it might be time to take a look at that Ryobi. Thanks again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pepere Posted September 16 Author Share Posted September 16 On 9/16/2023 at 9:42 AM, Tanked said: Power outages around me are brief and extremely rare. They are fairly rare where I live as well. In my house I seldom lose power for longer than 8 hours…. But in 1998 I lved through an ice storm that lasted for 4 days,.. and at one point there were 3 gas stations in a city area with a population of about 60,000 that had electricity that could pump gas out of their tanks…. There were houses that were without electricity for over 3 weeks in the city…. If a tree took out your drop from the pole, you were a low priority… Now this was figured as a 100 year storm…. Just realize that this in essence means there is a 1 percent chance of having one in any given year. It does not mean you will not see one again for 100 years…. It has been 25 years since that storm…. So in essence there has been a 25% chance of having seen a repeat since then… I would much rather have a generator collecting dust and not need it than need it and not have it. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pepere Posted September 17 Author Share Posted September 17 (edited) Hurricane Lee impacts in Maine were fortunately rather light. Barely any rain and winds were much less than was initially forecast. Checking airport reported wind speeds through the day, winds peaked at 31 mph sustained with gusts of 41 mph… Power flickered on and off at 7:00 AM several times and went out for several minutes and then the automatic circuit breakers reset again and power was restored without further intervention… My Town and one next to us with the majority of population in our area hadless than 5% outage, but a small town next to us had a little over 4,000 customers lose power out of 5600 total customers… All in all, we get Winter storms with much more impact. Southern Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick, though was far more impacted. here are some photos taken from utility crews showing trees taking out power lines… Edited September 17 by Pepere Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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