How to prepare for brutal summer blackouts - and figure out your power needs now

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ZDNET's key takeaways

• Power outages are surprisingly common in summer.
• Figure out your power storage requirements and what you need.
• Solar panels offer independence from the grid and cheaper costs.

While it's true that winter power outages are more disruptive because it's colder, wetter, and darker, and inclement weather can delay repairs, blackouts are more common in summer.

Those issues are due to a combination of higher power demand from heavy air-conditioner use, high temperatures that cause transformers to overheat and power lines to sag, and an aging power grid built in an era when demand was lower and extreme weather events were far more infrequent.

Also: I used a single power station to keep my off-grid cabin running - how it all worked out

And even if the grid doesn't go down with a fault, utility companies can...

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