Not 30 minutes ago I was doing some computer labor and the power went out. No biggie down here, FPL is pretty decent and usually they have the power back in a minute or less.
And then two minutes passed. I started to sweat, literally. I checked the temperature in our back porch:
By know, sweat is starting to come out as the humidity creeps inside the house since the AC is out. I have my electronics plugged to UPS Power Supplies so I look up FPLs outage number to report the incoming death from heat and humidity. Not even my trusty little table fan can help me!
Ten minutes or so after the blackout, power comes back and the fan starts to cool me. I still need to get rid of the mid-body humidity collectors and go take a shower. I am thinking very seriously to buy another UPS for the little fan alone. Modern AC units take a long time to start again after a power outage for allegedly make sure the electronics don’t get overloaded. Fans then are a must.
Don’t forget about solar. Those small standalone/portable setups have come a long way. Might be worth it just to keep the fans running during the day.
Now you know why pre-Air Conditioning no sane person wanted to live below the Mason-Dixon Line. /s
Texan here. Many times after a power trip, the power will come back online for 1 or 2 minutes and then trip again due to 1000’s of A/C compressors starting at the same time. The initial peak amp for compressor start is much higher than the running load but under normal conditions the 1000’s of compressors in a given area are randomly cycled and don’t all hit at once. The power company used to send out letters (pre-internet) that asked customers to immediately turn off any A/C devices during a power outage and then wait 5 or 10 minutes to turn it back on once power was restored just to help with this issue.
Of course you probably know this, but many others don’t.
We used to also keep old milk jugs and 2 liter coke bottles filled with water in the freezer. Frozen solid, the ice would last a long time. During longer outages you could move the jugs from the freezer to the fridge to help keep it cool.
It seems odd to rely on manual intervention. That clearly can’t work if a power cycle occurs while people are not at home, so the right answer has to be to design things to handle AC operation and power restoration when unattended. One option would be to require AC units to wait a random time after power restoration before coming back on; another would be to increase the surge current tolerance of the circuit breakers.