At just a hair past 05:00 this morning, I had just gone downstairs to continue getting ready for work, while my wife was still asleep upstairs. Packing breakfast and lunch for work, making coffee, cleaning out the chicken coop and letting the birds out for the day, and hitting the bathroom before heading out the door. Whoops... I am now standing in a pitch dark kitchen because the power just went out. I knew I had a battery operated (and super bright) LED lantern and a large beam flashlight in the cabinet above the stove. I used the screen on my cell phone to locate them and used the lantern to light up the kitchen. I packed up my food and then headed out to the chicken coop. Since my fire pager did not go off for either a car versus pole M.V.A. or a tree with wires down, I thought it was probably an outage out of town, meaning a larger outage than just my neighborhood since I am familiar with the power distribution scheme. At that point, I was hoping the power would come back on and I would not have to set up the generator.
Since the power was out, it was all dark down at the chicken coop, so I wore my old work hardhat with an attached headlamp. When I got back up to the house it was obvious that power was not coming back any time soon, and in order for my wife to be able to get ready for work, the generator was going to have to come out. It lives safe and sound in the garage, so I wheeled it out to its spot. I keep it full of fresh fuel and run it for 15 minutes under load every quarter for preventative maintenance, so it is always ready. First, I went down to the electrical panel and turned off the breakers for unneeded loads, and heavy loads that need to be turned on one at a time. I went outside to connect the 30A power cable and clamped the ground cable to the ground rod. The engine fired right up and came up to RPM with no load. I went back to the basement to throw the whole house transfer switch and load the generator. I then added the heavy stuff like the water pump, boiler, and extra refrigerator and the freezer. As I came up the basement stairs my sleepy eyed wifey was coming down to the kitchen because the engine noise woke her and the dogs up. I finished up by covering the generator sensitive electrical areas with a large plastic can liner because it was heavily drizzling, and went back in to finish getting ready for work and making my coffee. I left and she was able to get ready for work as normal. Before she left, I had her put eyes on the electric meter. If it was lit up and power was back, I'd have her shut down and switch to street power. Nope, still out, so I had her just leave it running. I work so close to the house that I could run home to shut down or refuel if necessary.
The power company's online outage map initially showed 70 outages in town, but around 10:30 that jumped to 314. I only checked because the power went out at the firehouse and the automatic generator kicked on. They apparently had to shut down a larger area to make repairs. Around 11:30, the generator shut down and the firehouse had commercial power again. Right after that, I got the text message from the power company stating power at my house was restored. I was able to run home, shut down the generator and stow it in the garage, and put the transfer switch back to street power and restore all the breakers. I updated the generator log book to reflect the run times for the 6 hours it ran. When I get home after shift, I will drain the remaining fuel from the generator tank, dump it into my pickup truck, and replace it with fresh. Going forward I will be rotating all my stored generator fuel by burning it in our vehicles. I rotate out all my stored fuel in less than a year. It is stored using Sta-Bil 360 which is a gasoline stabilizer and ethanol treatment. I have been doing this for almost 18 years, and never had an issue with skunky gas for any of my power equipment.
