January 17, 2001
Dear Everyone:
Last week I talked about UPS, “Uninterruptible Power Source”, and what a timely subject it has become. When I got home this evening, I discovered that my power had been shut off for about an hour and three-quarters. This is part of the “rolling blackouts” that the power company has been threatening for the past couple of weeks.
A “rolling blackout” means they shut down part of the grid for about “90 minutes, or so”, then shut another part down and bring the first part back up again. This is how they handle the fact that there isn’t enough power for everyone all at the same time.
You may have noticed in the news that the western part of the US is having a bit of an energy crisis. It’s not just California, but it’s more trendy to poke fun at California than, say, Oregon or Nevada. “Sunny California is experiencing blackouts!” Something to do with deregulation and too many power plants shut down for “routine maintenance” at the same time. Funny how all this happens in the dead of winter.
Because of the threat of unexpected blackouts, I had recommended to “Jeannie” that she get a UPS for her home office. That way, even if she’s on her computer when the power suddenly goes out, she will have time to shut it down safely. So, last Saturday, we went in search of a UPS at one of the computer warehouse chains. Found a nice, little one for about $90.
When we got into my car to bring the UPS home, we discovered that my car battery was in the throes of dying. We made one more stop (to get special labels that she needs for her diskettes), leaving “Jeannie” in the car with the motor running while I ran into the store to buy the labels. Then we went straight to Sears to have the battery replaced.
This they did in just about half an hour, while we wandered around the mall. I pointed out to “Jeannie” that my new battery only cost $10 less than her new (UPS) battery. Then we went back to “Jeannie’s” to install the UPS. It works great (as far as I could see at the time) even though it’s not much bigger than a shoe box (it looks much bigger in the picture on the box).
So, when I got home this evening, all of my appliances were flashing various “I lost power” signals at me. The reason I know how long the blackout lasted is because I have some simple timers that turn lamps on and off; and I could see that they were slow by about one hour and 45 minutes.
It didn’t take too very long to reset all the clocks (and if I’d paid attention to the “low battery” signal on the phone machine, I could have skipped that one) and reprogram the televisions, clock radios and VCR’s. But when I turned on the combination TV-VCR in the west bedroom, it still had the correct date and time and even showed the two hours of programming that I had recorded last night.
I was rather impressed with this. Then I realized why this particular TV-VCR was still OK. It’s next to the computer. When I plugged the computer into the UPS, I decided to plug the TV into the extra outlet in the back of the UPS, simply because it was easier than reaching the outlet in the wall.
The UPS supplied enough power to keep the TV going (since it wasn’t turned on, it was drawing very little energy). So there you have it. If you never want to have to reprogram your home appliances again, just get a bunch of those little $90 UPS’s and plug the appliances into them.
And, for the record, I use very little energy at home. Turn out the lights when I’m not in a room. Turn the computer off when I’m not actually using it. Keep the thermostat at 68 degrees and only in the evening. Turn the furnace off at night and use a small space heater to warm up only the bedroom in the morning. This morning, while it was a toasty 68 degrees in the bedroom, it was barely 58 in the living room.
Even for me, that’s cold.
Love, as always,
Pete
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