I’m usually very happy with my choice of living in an RV but some days it’s even better. A few days ago there was a pretty fierce windstorm up here on the Olympic Peninsula. A lot of trees got blown down and took down numerous power lines. The outage map for the area was covered with so many dots you couldn’t see actual town names. One of the stats posted on the website said that 87% of the people in Clallam county were without power, and the outage lasted about 8 hours for the RV park where I’m at, even longer for some parts of town.

Power outages are nothing new for RVers and most of us can get by just fine on batteries for the duration of the outage. Of course, the park wifi was also out so I had to use my phone as a hotspot to check the outage status. The park uses well water so we lost that when the pump had no electricity. Fortunately, my freshwater tank was full and my 12v water pump supplied adequate pressure. I didn’t have to sit in the dark since I have numerous 12v lights throughout the RV. The water heater and stove would run on propane gas. It wasn’t cold enough that I felt the need to run the propane furnace. My only concern was my refrigerator. It’s a residential model so it runs only on 110v electric. So, after a couple of hours,  I turned on the inverter to power the frig.

I do NOT carry a generator so if the outage had lasted longer, at some point I would need to connect to the truck to recharge the batteries. Overall, it wasn’t a bad experience. Except for no television and having to watch my battery usage, I was much better off than folks in traditional homes.