alt Hacker NewsI guess that explains why they had no qualms shutting down half of Boulder's power with a vague time horizon. After losing everything in my fridge, though, they finally turned it back on today.
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bibimsz • yesterday at 11:22 PM
they gave days of advanced warning they would do this. there was time to prepare.
Indeed. Losing the contents of (lots of) fridges is cheaper, as a whole, than incidentally burning the countryside. We all ultimately pay for the result no matter what, so that seems like a reasonably-sensible bet.
On the fridge itself: You may find that the contents are insured against power outages.
As an anecdote, my (completely not-special) homeowner's insurance didn't protest at all about writing a check for the contents of my fridge and freezer when I asked about that, after my house was without power for a couple of weeks following the 2008 derecho. This rather small claim didn't affect my rate in any way that I could perceive.
And to digress a bit: I have a chest freezer. These days I fill up the extra space in the freezer with water -- with "single-use" plastic containers (water bottles, milk jugs) that would normally be landfilled or recycled.
This does a couple of things: On normal days, it increases thermal mass of the freezer, and that improves the cycle times for the compressor in ways that tend to make it happier over time. In the abnormal event of a long power outage, it also provides a source of ice that is chilled to 0F/18C that I can relocate into the fridge (or into a cooler, perhaps for transport), to keep cold stuff cold.
It's not a long-term solution, but it'll help ensure that I've got a fairly normal supply of fresh food to eat for a couple of days if the power dips. And it's pretty low-effort on my part. I've probably spent nearly as much effort writing about this system here just now as I have on implementing it.