Power Outages Suck! NB Power Needs To Fix This Now

All these NB Power outages are getting old and extremely annoying!

So yesterday evening I sat down to a nice cold Alexander Keith’s IPA and fired up my PS5 to play Call of Duty: Vanguard and not even 10 minutes in we get the all-familiar and constant power outages that we always have to screw up the evening’s plans, again.

Instant rage sets in! The words, “Not again!” are uttered by both my girlfriend and me at the same time. My girlfriend was also in the middle of a gaming session.

So the power never ended up coming back on until about 3 hours later, just before I started to decide to fire up the old generator to power up a light, TVs, and Playstations. Although the thought of getting naughty in the dark did cross our minds, heh heh. I had a few beers in me by that time so…

This has got to be bad for our devices right?

With all of these constant fails by NB Power and their crappy power grid causing multiple power outages on a semi-weekly schedule it surely can’t be good for your electronics, especially computers and game consoles right?

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Pretty much anything with a hard drive has got to end up getting screwed up from constant power outages with them not being able to shut down properly.

Let’s not forget that if you’re a Minecraft player and the power goes out on you and you don’t have a backup copy of your world, your game save becomes corrupted and deleted. At least with the Bedrock version anyway.

What to do in the meantime?

To help keep my electronics like my computers and game consoles, especially my Minecraft game save safe, we got this, “I wish I had this years ago” piece of equipment called a UPS Power backup. What it does is provides power in the event of a power failure. It automatically kicks in and provides power to any device that you have plugged into it. Surprisingly affordable too and a MUST-HAVE for anyone in a situation like we are here with constant power outages!

Get this APC UPS Battery Backup & Surge Protector with USB Charger, 600VA APC Back-UPS if you cherish your sanity.

But what about extended power outages?

Long drawn-out power outages here on the NB Power network are not an uncommon problem as of late. When you have a fridge and deep freezer full of (now expensive) food, you don’t want it to all spoil.

We have at least a couple thousand dollars worth of food in our Fridge and deep freezer at any given month and having that all spoil over a power outage is not going to happen for us because we invested in a good and reliable gas generator that can supply enough power to keep us happy.

Gas generators are essential here in New Brunswick because of the frequent power failures we have to endure. If you want to power your fridge, freezer, TV, and game consoles then you can easily do that with a mid-range gas generator. If you think you would need to power more appliances then you might want to invest in a higher-end generator. However, the lower-end models can be great to run a TV, game console, or a light, and charging your phones also.

Generators can cost you anywhere between $800, $1,300, $3,000 CAD. And what you need depends on what you plan on providing power to. But I’d recommend that you get something that can provide more than what you expect or you’ll be burning a lot of Gas running your generator at max.

We got the Champion Power Equipment 9375/7500-Watt Portable Generator with Electric Start that will power our Fridge, Flood Light for outside doggy bathroom breaks, two TVs, PS5 and PS4, a lamp inside, and charge our phones easily. We had all that powered for about 5 hours and the gas tank is still pretty much full.

Conclusion…

• Does the power go out too much here in New Brunswick? Yes.
• Are we at the mercy of NB Power? Yes pretty much, but no also.
• Can we make things better during outages? Yes.
• Should we be compensated for their downtime? YES!! HELL YES!

I think we should have our service fees credited for every power outage that we report. We pay $25.51/month (where we live) just for a service charge on top of the 11.61¢/kWh we use in electricity. So I think that the monthly service charge should have deductions every time we report a power outage. Since a service charge is a service they are not providing during an outage.

Do you have frequent power outages? Do you think you should be compensated for power outages? Post your answers in the comments below.