As the saying goes “One is none, two is one, three is two …. and if you are building your preparations with only one back up then you have failed to prepare.”
Disclaimer: I purchased the system with my own funds. I am not being paid by the company for this article.
We live in the Arctic area of Alaska. Our winters here are long and dark, and they can be brutal. For us it starts in mid-August when the sun begins to set earlier and rise later in the day, and the truth be known, it starts June 21st at the point where the sun doesn’t set but just circles around overhead and starts its journey below the horizon from that day on. That is why our home area is called the Land of the Midnight Sun. For those of us living here having electric power can be the difference between life or death if a person wasn’t prepared for an outage, and that can happen on a regular basis any time of the year.
I have had a “prepper” mindset for as far back as I can recall, my grandparents survived the Great Depression of the 1930s, and they instilled in us the need to always be ready for disaster be it weather, or political. Growing up I had the opportunity to work on my grandfather’s farm doing chores as they arose. I remember one chore grandpa gave me to do; he had somehow come into possession of an old barn that had been torn down, and had what was to me, a huge pile of boards full of nails that he wanted me to pull those nails and sort out the boards. It seemed crazy to me at the time but in retrospect I see now the true value of what grandpa saw. I was paid the incredible sum of $2.00 a week for my various chores.
He always gave me a silver certificate bill and told me “Don’t you ever trust that paper. It is no good, you take it to the bank when we go downtown on Saturday, and you get the silver for it.” Then he would add “someday those thieves in Washington are going to take away the silver and that paper will be useless because it will have no value.” I just couldn’t imagine such a thing happening and even more couldn’t understand how the government would ever force us to use money that would be worthless.
If you don’t have it in hand, and you can’t live without it, then you have failed to properly prepare for life in the suck zone. Electricity is a luxury in our lives, that is if you’re not tied to a breathing machine or some such tether necessary for life. If you are not dependent upon it for life support, then it is a luxury you can live without. But you can live much better with it and in many ways, we’ve become so accustomed to it and take it for granted that it will always be there, and when it stops due to whatever event has interrupted it, then we think we’re going to die. And unfortunately, some do.
I have seen temperatures here in the winter fall as far as -64 degrees below zero and have seen them remain at -45 to -50 degrees below zero for weeks on end. This is a serious kind of weather that you are either prepared for, or you will have a short, miserable life. It was -3 degrees below zero this morning as I was driving to work, and its only early winter yet …
We have set ourselves up for this from the first day we moved here, I had my truck winterized to the standards needed in this climate zone. That was a (then) $350 effort that put an AC-powered heating pad on the oil pan, on the transmission, and a trickle charger on the battery as a permanent installation, and changing all the lubricants and coolant appropriate for the area. The coolant is set for -80 degrees below zero. When the temps drop to 20 degrees or lower below freezing, I have the option to use the auto-start and start the engine up for 10 to 15 minutes before driving, and when the temps fall below zero, I can plug my truck or car in and use the heating pads to warm them up. If it gets to -50 below or deeper, then I decide if it is safe to go out.
We have car heater AC power cords at each parking space (“head bolts”) at my work, so we can plug in our vehicles while we are working. Some of the local stores like Fred Meyers and Safeway also have head bolts for shoppers to use while they are doing their shopping. Many other businesses also have them. If you don’t plug in your vehicle or cannot keep it running while you are out doing your business and its -50 then you will not be able to start that vehicle if it gets cooled down to the ambient temperature. That’s just the facts of life up here in Alaska. Imagine what will happen to a house if you lose power in those temperatures.
In our home preparations we have installed a Blaze King catalytic woodstove that not only provides heat, but we can also cook on it as well. That beast has kept our house warm at -64 degrees below zero, and we used it for seven years before I finally had a new fuel oil furnace installed and started using it to heat the house.
I miss the wood stove but not the strain of cutting, splitting, and stacking at least 6 to 8 cords of firewood every summer. I do keep five cords in the woodshed, so if needed, we can go back to just using wood heat on demand as the weather dictates. If the power goes out, oh well, we just fire up the wood stove. The dictates of the green-nazis notwithstanding …. We fire that baby up and I do love that radiant heat. And the smell of my bride coking a moose stew on the top? Oh yes.
We have two Aladdin kerosene lamps, and five other oil lamps that cost substantially less for lighting. We have bought several rechargeable LED lamps that also supply supplemental light when we lose power in the dark winters. I do have a Honda 2000i gasoline-fueled generator for power to run my water pump located under my house in a crawl space deep enough to consider it a “Michigan Basement”.
I replaced the pump a few years ago with one that runs on 120 VAC and ran a power cord up to the upstairs that I can use to power it with the generator if needed. Or we could run the refrigerator, but not both at the same time. I also have my ham radio set up that runs on 12 VDC, but the batteries running them need recharging from time to time.
Recently, I have considered that we only have one source of backup power and it is dependent upon gasoline and oil, which is only one tanker supply away from not being available. The results of my cogitating on this shortcoming in our preparation plans were that we had a hole in our preps and needed to fill it.
I spent a year looking at various battery backup power banks, from the ones found at places like Costco, to those advertised online by a plethora of vendors. I settled on the Dakota Lithium-Ion Phosphate Power Bank with the 180-watt solar array option as it was priced within less than $100 of comparable units and because I had already purchased a 12VDC / 100 Ah Lithium-Ion Phosphate battery from them previously for use on one of my portable HF ham radio sets. I have yet to run that battery down to where the radios wouldn’t work on them as it really does a wonderful, reliable job of providing the 20 amps needed when transmitting. I once had it up at the Arctic Ocean for three days of continuous use — both transmitting and receiving — and I found that did not need to charge it up. I did use a Dakota Lithium solar array to charge it before I left and had it at 100% capacity in about 35 minutes. But of course, the sun was almost straight overhead that time of the year …
Lithium-Ion Phosphate batteries are very lightweight, have a proven history of long-term cycle life, and if properly operated very safe in a home or mobile scenario. This article is my evaluation of this system and how it fills the hole in our preparations for power when our grid power goes out. Golden Valley Electric Association (GVEA)) is our local power company. It is the only power company available here for the civilian community. There are three major military bases in our immediate area that have their own power generators; however, I am not aware if they can or do share power with the civilian community.
(To be concluded tomorrow, in Part 2.)
Read the full article here