Public Safety Power Shutoff - #2 and #3

The posts that ran this week were prescheduled, and it's a good thing because we've been without electricity at Casa deRosier. On Saturday 10/26, our second Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS) began. You may recall that our first PSPS was just two weeks earlier. That time, our power was out for 48 hours. This time, it was out for five days. Technically, that was PSPS #2 and PSPS #3 back-to-back... we were among the unfortunate ones who didn't get power restored for the short time between the two shutoffs.

While our routines were interrupted and we missed our daily conveniences, we survived the outage just fine. And most importantly, there were no fire outbreaks in our area. My heart goes out to those communities dealing with horrific fires.

While some of our neighbors used gas-powered generators during the outage, we used solar energy. We weren't sure how well it would work, but we were so happy with our system that I want to recommend it to you all. These are affiliate links, which means that if you make a purchase, I will receive a small commission at no extra cost to you.

Our basic system consisted of these two items:

Goal Zero Yeti 400 Portable Power Station

Goal Zero Boulder 100 Watt Monocrystalline Solar Panel

Both items are portable and easily moved by one person. (This is the newer version of our battery.) We were able to keep devices charged and power lights. The battery held its charge beautifully in the evening with a bunch of stuff plugged into it and recharged quickly during daylight hours. We are looking into expanding our system with other Goal Zero products so that we are completely self-reliant and not affected by any future PSPS events.

One other product that came in very handy during the power outage was our Luci.

Luci Solar Chargeable Lantern

This solar-powered lantern is very lightweight, inflatable (and thus, collapsable) and gives off plenty of light for most tasks. It's very affordable compared to other lanterns, particularly when you factor in not having to pay for propane or battery replacement. This would make a great gift. You can't go wrong by being prepared.