Generator is insurance that may never pay off



Thousands of New Hampshire residents have now gone without electricity for 10 days, and some may not get their power back until after Christmas. The majority of those residents live in rural areas, on the Seacoast or in south-central New Hampshire communities hit hardest by the ice storm. But unlike any storm in memory, this one had people in central cities waiting days for the lights to come back on.

Since outages are expected, and in some places even routine, country folk know to be prepared. But urban residents have not been troubled often enough or long enough to take serious precautions - until now.

Utilities restore service first to critical facilities like hospitals and nursing homes. Then crews are deployed to places where they can restore power to the most customers with each repair. The expected level of storm preparedness on the part of customers is not usually a consideration. Thus it was that residents on some urban streets, including one quite near Concord High School, went powerless for more than five days, though the lights were on in homes all around them.

The utilities' priorities make sense, but their policy raises an interesting question. Just how much effort should people who can walk downtown make to prepare for outages? The answer depends, it seems, on two factors: how uncomfortable they are willing be for how long, and the likelihood of lengthy future service interruptions.

The December ice storm had an unusually broad reach. It affected most of the state and the region and cut more than 440,000 customers off from the grid in New Hampshire alone. The last big ice storm, in 1998, caused an equally severe amount of damage, but in a far smaller area.

Utility representatives, emergency management officials, consumer representatives and members of the Public Utilities Commission will meet soon to discuss whether and what changes should be made to mitigate the impact of future storms. Extreme weather, likely fueled by climate change and ocean warming, has been increasing. "We have a new normal," the state's consumer advocate, Meredith Hatfield, told Monitor reporter Karen Langley.

Last week, the drone of portable generators could be heard around the city. Some people owned them, a few lucky souls bought one before supplies were exhausted last Friday, and the rest were begged or borrowed.

Lamps with cords, refrigerators, freezers and other appliances can be run during an emergency with a generator and extension cords rated to carry large loads. But unless homeowners prepare in advance, generators cannot be used to power furnaces, pumps and other devices that are wired directly into a home's electric service box, and improperly used generators threaten the lives of repair workers.

Generators adequate to provide most of a home's power needs start at about $500, depending on their size, construction quality and noise level. Larger, quieter electric-start models can cost three or four times as much. Hiring an electrician to install a transfer switch that, with the pull of a lever, disconnects a home from the grid and connects it to the generator will run perhaps an additional $1,000.

Last week, as they shivered and worried about the enormous damage burst water pipes can cause, plenty of people would have been willing to shell out a couple of thousand bucks to be warm, well-lighted and worry-free. But whether such preparations ever pay off is anybody's guess.





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Generators will never pay off is an astute observation. But living in New Hampshire is precarious at best, when it comes to reliability of utilities.

$4000-$5000 for a generator may seem like a lot of money but imagine if terrorists attacked the national grid in several locations. Last year thunder storms killed the power at least three times in our area of the state and the tornado that ripped through communities did the same.

Generators, if properly covered and maintained will last upwards of 20 years and those wired in to homes provide seamless transition when power is interrupted.

One might make the same argument against solar panels, costing 6 times that of a generator, as they take upwards of 20 years to pay for themselves and then need replacement, starting you over on a cycle of expense. Or a windmill, which provides very limited impact and costs 5 times that of a generator.

It is anyone's guess if you will ever need one but in New Hampshire the odds are in your favor that a generator is going to come in handy at some point and maybe that point will be a time when it could not be more needed.