I woke up a little after midnight today and noticed that the nightlight in the bathroom was out. I also noticed that the clock in the bedroom was dark. I didn’t put those two facts together (I guess I wasn’t really awake) until nearly 3am, when our Amazon Echo woke me up when it started to glow brightly, and I realized that the power had gone out sometime after we went to sleep and had just been restored.
This morning, I looked at my phone and found a number of messages. PG&E had sent three – one just before midnight telling me that our house was one of 12 without power due to equipment failure, one telling me that a crew was on the way, and one telling me that power had been restored. I also got two messages from Enphase, our solar system provider, telling me that we’d gone off-grid at 11:24pm and that power had been restored at 2:53am.
We’d had to choose six circuits to keep powered up in the event of a problem. We’d chosen the circuits powering the computers, the cooktop, the kitchen outlets, and the refrigerator. This was the first test of the battery’s ability to keep the house functioning, and it worked as planned – the refrigerator behaved just as it did the rest of the day, and the network (and computers) all stayed up.
I’d decided not to back up any lighting circuits because it’s easy to get a couple of rechargeable LED lanterns and keep them charged; I guess I really ought to get those lanterns sometime soon!