How-to guides and load shedding survival tips
On January 23, 2026, at about 12:40 p.m., Nigeria’s national grid collapsed. Every one of the country’s 11 distribution companies went dark at once. Four days later, it did it again. These weren’t rare events—they were entries in a ledger that has recorded over 560 total or partial grid collapses since 2000, an average of…
Power outages are the most common disaster in the world—more common than floods, fires, and storms combined, because all of those cause outages too. The good news: unlike most disasters, an outage is almost entirely survivable with preparation you can finish this weekend. This is the complete checklist, organized around the four pillars that apply…
In most of the world, backup power means a “portable power station.” In South Africa, it means an inverter trolley—a wheeled box holding an inverter and one or more batteries, charged from the wall between outages and rolled to wherever it’s needed. Fifteen years of load shedding built this category, and it’s worth understanding even…
You’ve narrowed it to the big three. Good—all three make excellent hardware, all three have moved to long-life LiFePO4 batteries across their lineups, and none of them will leave you stranded. The real question isn’t “which is best”—it’s “which is best for you.” Here’s the honest breakdown, category by category, with a verdict for each…
A “solar generator” is really two things: a portable power station (the bucket) plus solar panels (the faucet). What makes the combo special during an outage is one word: refueling. A battery alone is dead when it’s empty. A battery with panels drinks daylight every day the sun rises—no fuel lines, no generators running at…
A portable power station is the single most useful piece of outage gear most people can own: silent, safe to run indoors, zero fuel, and one purchase covers storms, PSPS shutoffs, camping trips, and the next Texas-style grid failure. But the category has exploded—dozens of brands, capacities from 250 Wh to 5 kWh, and prices…
Load shedding is the word South Africa gave the world—the practice of switching off electricity to selected areas on a rotating schedule because the grid can’t meet demand. For more than fifteen years it defined South African life: dinner by headlamp, work meetings planned around Stage 6 schedules, and a national industry of inverters, gas…
It’s a warm October evening in Northern California. The wind is howling, humidity has crashed into the single digits, and your power just went out—along with two million of your neighbors’. There’s no storm damage. No accident. The utility shut you off on purpose. It’s called a Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS), and if you…
In February 2021, Winter Storm Uri buried Texas in snow and knocked out power to more than 4.5 million homes and businesses—some for four straight days of subfreezing temperatures. The state’s official count: 246 deaths, most from hypothermia. It was the deadliest power-outage disaster in modern American history, and it happened in a state that…
