this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2026
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I'm in California where the grid gets stressed out during the summer. Ocassionally, on high demand days, the power company woud perform rolling blackouts to keep up with demand.
Lived close to a large hospital for a while. Our section of the grid never saw those blackouts.
We had a vent for a bit in our house. Called pg&e and then our block (just 20 houses) got coded the same as the hospital in outages. I can't remember what kind of supporting documents we had to send in. We lost power last in rolling blackouts. They let us keep that for a good... year after dad died? So someone else on the street must have been on a vent too.
Same except it we are right under a cell tower. It must be somewhere very high on the priority list - probably for emergency services. We are always the first to get power back after a storm too.
If you own your home, I know that seems to be shrinkingly rare in this state, a solar setup and battery backup/ grid controller is well worth it. Mine will pay for itself with the power I've sold to SDG&E, not to mention all the power I use, in another year or so. I installed my system in mid 2019, and we don't even know when there's a blackout/brownout until I text the ISP as to why the Internet is out. I should really get a meshnet node....
My primary forms of transportation are my E-bike and the trolley. If I can't get there that way, or need additional cargo capacity, I have a Chevy Bolt, so I'm actually using a fail amount of electricity above and beyond the normal appliances.