Preparing for Power Outages

Introduction

Those of us who live in the developed world are now used to reliable electricity supplies and most of us rarely encounter power failures. At the time of writing, September 2022, the United Kingdom government is warning citizens that the power supplies this winter may not be as reliable as before. The notes below are based on presumed 'typical' households in the UK, but are likely to be equally applicable to anyone who is used to reliable power and may need to prepare and adapt.

There's a checklist at the bottom of the page for handy reference.

It's assumed that if outages do occur they will be temporary rather than lasting several days. The UK does have some experience of imposing rolling power outages, but that was half a century ago and times have changed, particularly with much-increased societal reliance on electronic communications. It's known that plans for rolling power outages exist, though the government is currently denying that it's likely. In 1972 rolling power cuts were enforced lasting up to 9 hours at a time for domestic consumers and it is reasonable to assume that a similar pattern would be repeated if necessary in a way not too different to this BBC report on the 1972 blackouts^[1].

Many of the suggestions on this page have been gathered by discussion with people who have some experience of going without power at times. There is also a good survey of what happened in Lancaster in the UK as a result of 'Storm Desmond' which occurred in December 2015 and brought to the fore numerous instances of dependency on electrical power that might otherwise not have been obvious. An excellent source of further reading is the Royal Academy of Engineering report on living without electricity^[2] which looks in some depth at the Lancaster experience.

Basics

Much of what we depend on for comfortable life requires electricity to function. It would be nice not to just survive power outages but to do so without enormous inconvenience so it's worth planning ahead to mitigate the worst effects. As in any situation, in rough order of priorities we need to attend to:

shelter, warmth, food, water, light, security (survival level items)
communication, support, confidence, stability (important comfort level items)
relatively normal function of work and social activities (to thrive, not just survive)

Let's look at these in order of importance

Survival level items

Shelter and security

We can reasonably expect that shelter and security aren't threatened by short term power outages. If you have somewhere to live then presumably you have shelter, and security (as in safety of life) is not likely to be directly threatened if power goes off, although there will almost certainly be some knock-on effects on emergency services which will tend to reduce normal safety levels. Vulnerable people with medical conditions may well want to prepare by registering themselves with the relevant authorities in the hope of getting onto some kind of priority list. If your survival depends on electrical assistance such as breathing support or the need for refrigerated medicines then now is the time to start asking hard questions - it goes beyond the scope of what can be recommended here.

Warmth

Power outages are most likely at the coldest part of the year, when demand is highest and supplies are stretched. Nearly all heating systems depend on electricity to work and it's likely that yours will cease to work if you live in a typical household. Unless you have a solid fuel heating backup you will probably just have to wrap up warm and get through it as best you can. If you are able to exercise, keeping active can help raise the body temperature whereas simply sitting down hoping to stay warm is a fight between you, your insulation and the chill.

Wrap up warm and ideally keep moving to beat the cold. Hot drinks may help, if you can prepare them (see below).

Under NO CIRCUMSTANCES try to use charcoal barbecue burners for heat in an enclosed space. Charcoal produces carbon monoxide which is a notorious killer and charcoal should only be burned outdoors. Many people have died trying: this article from the US product safety commission describes the danger^[3].

Gas and paraffin heaters designed for indoor use may be safe to use, though they have a side effect of often smelling bad and creating a lot of damp - if you have these and plan to use them, pay attention to being well-supplied with fuel before you need it as supply may be challenging to obtain when everyone else wants it too. If you have these, will you reliably be able to light them? Take a look at the discussion of ignition below for some suggestions.

If you have a central heating system which pumps water to radiators and there is a long power cut in very cold weather, your system could potentially freeze up completely. It might be wise to know how to drain it if you suspect this could happen - freezing is likely to be disastrous to the system and come at a time when it's worst for this to happen, alongside hugely increased work for the few heating engineers who can fix it. This is a very bad combination of circumstances. It's only likely to be a problem in very extended power failures.

Overall it seems we will just have to wrap up well, exercise when possible and get through the cold. Undergarments, sweaters, blankets and gloves will be welcome items.

Cold is a known risk factor for older people who may be less capable or aware as the US National Institute on Aging points out ^[4]. If you know of people who are vulnerable in this way, perhaps it is worth offering some assistance to either check up on them or invite them into your own home where you can monitor their situation and provide hot food and drink. This will of course depend on your circumstances.

Food and Water

These are essential to survival in any circumstances. We can get by perfectly well for short periods without needing to heat these and, if the power outages happen at the coldest time of year, probably don't need to worry too much about refrigeration for freshness either. Try to have a range of things that can be eaten cold even if you do have some form of standby cooking and remember that you may also be cooking in the dark or with restricted light part of the time.

A good stock of tinned food that just needs reheating is well worth having. Beans, soups, stews and so on keep well without needing cold storage, heat up quickly and get you out of a dark kitchen quickly. Bread doesn't have to have butter or a spread on it, dipped in olive oil it is delicious too, so you don't need to struggle spreading something rock-hard on it.

If power cuts are looming, you don't want anything in your freezer (if you have one), so empty it, defrost it and keep it turned off with the door slightly open to stop nasty smells and mould developing inside it. If it's a cold time of year you can possibly dispense with your fridge too if you have a cold room that doesn't freeze. Eggs (in the UK) don't need to be refrigerated anyhow unless they have been washed^[5]. Most cheeses and pickles are specifically intended to keep without refrigeration, as are dried fruit and cured meats.

Cooked food and hot drinks really help to lift the spirits. If you have a gas cooker you can probably cook as normal because gas supply is relatively independent of electricity. If you are all-electric it's well worth thinking about having a gas camping stove as a standby. These things are widely available, running off small disposable tins of gas (you can get get larger gas camping stoves too, which you might want to consider) but be aware that the gas tins have limited endurance and get your stock in early rather than when everyone wants them. As warned don't even think of using charcoal indoors for heat or cooking.

If you intend to cook using gas during power outages make sure you have a source of ignition because many cookers use electric ignition which won't work if the power is off. A simple option is matches but there is a knack to striking matches, so practise this before hand and keep them very dry: matches have an annoying habit of getting damp and unreliable. Better is some kind of gas lighter - either those specifically intended to light gas rings or generic 'Bic' lighters which are extremely widely available and well worth having several of, it's hard to have too many.

If you have a fallback source of cooking and ignition, test it now, before you need it. 'Just in case' systems have a habit of getting forgotten in cupboards and when brought out and the dust blown off, discovered to have faults (like the gas cylinders are empty, or the matches don't light) that you want to fix before you have to use them for real.

If your normal source of hot water is electric you may want to consider pre-boiling water when you have power and then saving it in a thermal flask for later. Boil a bit more than you need, use the surplus to pre-heat the flask then tip it out and put the rest in the warmed flask. Soups and stews can also be stored hot in flasks if you have them and this may be all you need to tide you over the time when the power is off. Powdered soups can usually be reconstituted using flask-hot water, but if you really do need boiling water and are using a camping stove, starting with water that's already hot from a flask saves time and fuel for the stove.

Your water supply may be at risk because electrical pumps are widely used in distribution networks for pressure - the problem is particularly acute in high-rise buildings but can happen anywhere. When the water supply is still good, fill bottles (or get bottled water) in advance. 2l plastic soft drink bottles are ideal for this but your choice of vessel is up to you. People get through a lot of water, 4-5 litres a day per person is a good amount to have on standby. It's surprising how much water we need (on average 142l per person per day in the UK^[6]).

Light

Nobody wants to spend time sitting in the cold and dark. Lots of people think of candles as a standby - but these are problematic in practice. The typical long skinny candle that everyone thinks first of is a terrible choice. CANDLES ARE A REAL FIRE RISK. If you must use candles, get squat fat ones in a jar (or put them in a jar) and then stand them on an fireproof surface like a metal tray or old frying pan and never turn your back on a lit candle. If you use them, have something like a bucket of sand to douse any accidents. They are low-cost, but a high risk choice. To begin with, candle-lit rooms seem charming and romantic but by the third night of sitting in the cold and putting up with barely usable candlelight the romance wears very thin. If you use candles, you will need to be able to light them.

A much better choice is a battery or rechargeable lamp of some kind. Camping supply stores sell these, though you may find that industrial floodlights intended for building work are far brighter and often less costly too. Many of these have built-in batteries that you can recharge during times when the power is available.

Lights get measured in lumens - 200 lumens comes in at 'better than candle but not for reading' level, 1000 lumens is bright and probably more than some rooms would need, but these are personal judgements. The more lumens you get, of course, the more battery you use. Camping lights run in the 50-200 lumen range, industrial lights 1000 or more. At least one rechargeable industrial flood light is a great thing to have if you don't mind buying one, they are handy at parties and outdoor events also.

If you don't use the lights much, or use them at low power levels, you might get away with using disposable batteries but for something as intensively used as room lighting, rechargeable is really the way to go. Rechargeable batteries often don't take kindly to being put away and not used for long times, so the downside of rechargeable room lamps is that when you get them out for the winter their batteries may have deteriorated badly. For that reason it would be ideal if you get one with replaceable rechargeable batteries but those kinds are rare. This is an irritating situation that isn't easily avoided, it's just one of those things, you have to make a practical choice.

For light when moving from room to room, most people first think of hand torches, but those are old fashioned and awkward to use. Almost anyone who regularly needs to use portable lighting nowadays will use a head torch instead, a better solution for moving from lighted rooms to darker parts of the dwelling like for trips to bathrooms or kitchens. Head torches have the huge advantage of shining light wherever you look and leaving both hands free, which is much better for cooking (unless you put a room light in the kitchen). If you aren't using the head torch(es) much, disposable batteries are fine for these. It's good to have more than one unless you live alone.

Comfort level items

Communications

For many people, the ability to keep in touch with friends and family is a big deal, but this may be hard to do if the power is gone. Cellular/mobile phones are ubiquitous now but suffer from the twofold problems of not only needing recharging but also, if the power goes off, there's a strong chance that the phone service itself will cease to work sooner or later. There is not much you can do about the service, but you might find that a 'power bank' (search for these online) will help you to recharge your devices when the power is off so that they are immediately usable when the service returns. A power bank is simply a rechargeable charger that you will replenish on return of the power. People who rely on their phones a lot often carry a charged power bank as an essential accessory when they travel.

As for landline phones: the really old-fashioned phones used to be powered over the phone line and phone systems used to have their own power independent of normal mains electricity so the phones kept working even when nothing else did. However, many people with landlines use smarter, mains-powered phones and these stop working of course when the power goes off. If you have an old handset which can be powered over the phone lines, great, use it, but be aware that old-fashioned phone lines are increasingly being replaced with fibre to provide both telephone and broadband and fibre does not carry its own power. A fibre-only landline makes you more vulnerable.

When the power goes off, so will your internet, tv and any mains-powered radios you may have. This will leave you completely in the dark as to what's happening in the outside world so you have no sources of information whatsoever. When will the power come back on? Are the schools open or shut? What do the authorities want me to do? You will have no answers. In a strongly connected world, this may prove very disorienting.

A battery powered radio is an extremely useful thing to have in these circumstances. If possible, get one and get really familiar with how to select stations on it, don't just rely on your usual local stations as these may go off the air too. In fact, just which stations will remain on the air will be interesting to learn, since to broadcast they will need power at the studios, power for the links to the transmitters and power for the transmitters also. How much of that will continue to work will be discovered by experiment, but if you have a choice of stations to listen to, there's a good chance that some of them at least will continue to function. You are likely to rely on your radio a lot so rechargeable batteries (two sets) and a charger for them are highly recommended. Avoid radios that are designed to run on mains power but 'can' use batteries as these tend to be greedy. Radios that were only ever designed for battery use are likely to be more frugal. Dual digital/analogue radios (the UK has a lot of digital radio) tend to be greedier than old, analogue-only radios built in the 80s and 90s. If you still have one of those older radios or can find one that still works, hang on to it and make sure you have batteries.

As a last resort for a radio, you may have a car with a radio and be able to use that to keep in touch with news broadcasts. Car radios are not a huge power drain but they are not negligible so sparing use is recommended to avoid running down the car battery.

Support

Stressful times are usually made easier if you feel part of a community. Even if just one friend (but ideally more) agrees with you that it's worth teaming up to discuss your preparations, you can bolster your emotional and practical support. If you live close enough, think about arranging to jointly cook and share lighted space at times rather than doing it alone or as a single family. Since there's likely to be no tv or other screens to distract you, you might want to consider getting some board games or other ways of spending times as you sit in the gloom keeping warm. The right company and conversation will bring a kind of light and warmth that shivering alone in the dark cannot, and make the times much more bearable. A friend with a solid fuel stove will become very popular at cold times.

Normal life and work

When the power is on, things work as normal. But intermittent power may bring some unexpected issues that are worth considering in advance. It's hard to give advice about work matters since this will vary so much from person to person, but it may be worth discussing with your colleagues and management what plans are in place to manage the situation. That has to be for you and your work to decide.

A similar situation may exist for you when it comes to childcare or schools. Hopefully they will have policies in place prior to power cuts, so you will have to ensure that you know what those are and monitor the situation carefully.

When the power goes off, so will pretty much all communications. This means that anywhere taking card-only payments is stuck (the card machines won't be able to authorise the transactions), so if you need to make emergency purchases the situation will be somewhere between difficult and impossible. Having a stash of actual cash may well be what makes the difference for you. If you think it's worth the effort, get your cash in advance as there's a possibility that cash will be hard to get - ATMs won't work without power and as most retail sales move towards cards, there is much less cash in circulation than a decade ago - so when the power does come back, the ATMs will empty quickly. Think about that and be prepared. We'll only find out if this matters when it happens, but being prepared is better than just letting it happen. A stash of coins and notes can do no harm!

If you rely on fuel for transport, filling stations won't be able to operate or take payment when there is no power. This may mean difficulties if people change their habits and start filling up whenever they can - in the past this has created artificial shortages until everyone's tank is full just due to the unusual level of demand. In 2021 in the UK, rumoured fuel shortages led to actual shortages as everyone rushed to fill up, causing a spike in sales that could not be serviced and so resulting in genuine shortages due purely to the rumours despite normal levels of supply being available. Artificial demand creates artificial shortages. You can get ahead of that by leading the curve and instead of running your tank nearly dry, keeping it well topped-up before the situation turns grim.

As with fuel, so it may go for other essentials you need. Suppliers need communications (phones, internet) to re-order and resupply and it wouldn't be surprising if there are actual shortages or panic-induced shortages caused by rumours and stockpiling. The great toilet paper shortage of 2020 is an example of the stockpiling effect^[7]. Having prudent reserves to get you through times like that is easier than struggling to find something you really need when it can't be found for a few weeks.

When the mobile phone service is down you might be able to keep in touch with family and friends if you all have short-range walkie-talkie radios as long as you don't mind their exceptionally limited range of a few hundred metres/yards at worst, maybe 1km/0.5 mile at best (they will do considerably further in rare ideal circumstances). These won't be suitable for most families/groups but they are just about worth mentioning. Search online for 'PMR radio'^[8] and don't expect too much from them. If you are putting together a resilience group then other solutions exist which reliably give much further distance but those fall outside of non-specialist guidance.

Checklist

Items you may wish to take into account while preparing. Not all items will be relevant

Do you have sufficient warm clothing. Alternative source of heating?
Are you unusually at risk and do you need to inform authorities or get special guidance?
Is your heating system at risk of freezing solid and if so, do you know how to drain it before it does?
If you plan to use gas/paraffin/solid fuel heating as backup, don't wait to get fuel. Check it works.
Are you aware of and can you help anyone who is likely to be especially at risk of cold?
Have you organised a supply of suitable food and drink (including bottles of water if necessary)? Where's the tin opener?
Do you need a backup form of cooking? If so, ensure it works in advance with ample fuel.
Would thermal flasks be useful? If you have some, where are they?
Have you emptied your freezer?
Have you got a solution to room lighting? One or more head torches?
How will you communicate with essential contacts? Do you have a way of keeping phones charged?
Do you have a battery radio to keep in touch with the outside world? Are you sure you know how to use it?
Do you know others who you can form a support group with?
Have you discussed plans with work/colleagues?
Do you need to discuss plans with schools or childcare?
Have you got a cash stash to hand?
Do you need to start ensuring you have lots of fuel for your vehicle(s)?
Do you need and have you got gas lighters or matches and have you checked them?
Do you need batteries (disposable or rechargeable) for essential equipment? Don't delay getting them if you need them.