Notably, we had the marshal fire here 4 years ago and recently Xcel settled for $680M for their role in the fire. So they're probably pretty keen not to be on the hook again

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simojo 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

I 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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ssl-3 a day ago | parent | next [-]

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.

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scheme271 a day ago | parent [-]

It's probably not worth it to go through your insurance for the loss of food and perishables in the fridge/freezer. It counts as a claim on your home insurance and can result in increased rates or even your insurer dropping coverage at the next renewal.

	▲	ssl-3 21 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Eh. It worked for me after that wind storm. As previously-stated: There was no rate increase that I could discern. I did neglect to mention that there was also no issue with renewal, but perhaps I should be more careful to always use absolute rote specificity and leave nothing to implication. They also sent over some folks with a tall ladder to have a look at the roof of this property that they insured, which was good since we had no means to visually inspect it from the ground. (The roof was fine.) Anecdotally, that phone call to the insurance company had no downside at all. It provided a roof inspection that I did not have ready means to perform on my own, and a relatively small amount of money (a couple of hundred bucks) that became very useful not just because of lost food, but also due to all of the other storm-related issues that we were not insured against.

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bibimsz a day ago | parent | prev [-]

they gave days of advanced warning they would do this. there was time to prepare.

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tpoindex 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

For more background on the Marshal Fire of Dec. 2021: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Fire

tl;dr - the fire destroyed over 1,000 homes, two deaths. The local electrical utility, Xcel, was found as a contributing cause from sparking power lines during a strong wind storm. As a result, electrical utilities now cut power to affected areas during strong winds.