Have you ever lost power while RVing? Until last night, I would have responded to that poll question with a grateful and resounding, “Nope!” However, last night a round of storms blew near our current campground and, by my closest estimate, we lost power around 1:30 a.m.
Light sleeper
I’m a light sleeper. It’s probably a holdover from my early “Mom Days” when at least one of our three children called out in distress during the night—seemingly every night, for decades!
Baby feeding time, sickness, or bad dreams would instantly propel me up and out of bed in a flash. The time of night does not matter, and my circadian rhythm has no predictable beat, so if anything happens at night, I’ll hear it and immediately respond. When I poked DH on his shoulder to ask why his CPAP had stopped working, he was still very much asleep!
Power outage
“The power is out,” I whispered. (Another “Mom Days” leftover habit.) Together we looked at the darkened alarm clock, which confirmed the obvious.
My husband grabbed his pillow and headed out to the RV sofa. “I’ll sleep out here, so my snoring won’t bug you,” he mumbled. By the time his head hit the pillow, he was back to sleep.
Power worries
I couldn’t stop thinking about the ramifications of having no electricity. It was still raining, so the emergency escape windows (flip out and open) were the only ones to open. The RV was already feeling warmer and increasingly muggy.
I tried to reassure myself that Florida Power & Light would restore electricity soon, but even as I finally drifted off to a restless sleep, the power had not returned.
Morning
We did not have power the next morning. An RV neighbor told us that lightning shattered a pole and blew the transformer. It would be a while before the electricity was restored.
Eventually, about eleven hours after the power went out, our lights came on! The air conditioner woke up and began pumping out blessedly cool air! Clocks blinked in celebration!
Never before
We have never before lost power while RVing. We did not have a generator on board. The incident made me wonder: If the power was not restored in a reasonable amount of time, what would we do?
Your turn
Have you ever lost power while RVing? Tell us in the poll below. Then explain your circumstances in the comments that follow.
We typically RV at full hookup sites. A power outage makes me really appreciate my generator.
I’m always with a generator. Don’t leave without it because I need oxygen assistance while sleeping.
Not yet. Mr Onan to the rescue.
A few times. Mostly for short periods of time. For the longer periods I’m glad I have a generator.
You framed the question in terms of plug-in power so I said yes, mostly south of the border where power is often bad and unpredictable. But with sunshine, solar, decent temps, batteries and a generator I am seldom in true need of plug-in power.
Our MH has a generator with auto start. Loosing power would only be a minor inconvenience. With the exception of the slight hum of the generator, we would not be aware of the lost power. Love our back up system.
Twice we have lost power for a week at a time. Hurricane Hanna and the great Texas freeze. We ran the generator during the day to keep the batteries charged and ran off the inverter at night.
We experienced the great Texas freeze too. Three days with no electricity in freezing temps, and the roads were too icy to leave. Thankfully, we are in a DP motorhome and were able to run the generator periodically.
Newbie to a 34’ motorhome parked on a hill in a lightning storm. No surge protector. Lost microwave, Air conditioner and a couple electric outlets. Microwave was an odd size and took over a year to replace. Never travel without a surge protector now! Next time was turning microwave on, AC on while surge protector was counting down. Blew the onboard transfer switch. Several times had bad electric pedestals at campground and now fine with solar and generator.
Yes, heavy thunderstorms were in the area. Our surge protector was hit by lightning and fried. It did its job and protected our electronics.Due to the storm and not having a generator we were without power due to outages in the campground.
We lost shore power but didn’t know it until a neighboring camper knocked on our door to ask if we knew when it would be fixed…he was afraid his dogs would get too hot. We had solar and have never really been heavy users of power while traveling so we weren’t running air, watching tv, or microwaving and simply hadn’t noticed the loss. It had only been off about 4 hours at that time.
Quite often.
So far, we have mainly camped in mountains, in locations where temperatures are moderate. We probably wouldn’t even notice if our shore power went out in the night.
We live in Colorado and don’t camp any place we have to run the AC at night. In fact, we have had to run the furnace in early August due to near-freezing temps at 10,000′ in the Rockies! And the fridge is 12v, so it doesn’t need shore power to keep running. If the shore power went out during the night, we wouldn’t know it. If it was out for 11 hours, it wouldn’t matter because we boondock for several days at a time using solar. In 3 years, we have run the generator once while camping just because it hadn’t been exercised for quite awhile.
Yes, many times. Sometimes it’s been a few minutes (less than an hour) and sometimes much longer as in last night – 7 hours. You just roll with it. We used to lose power in our sticks and bricks, too. Just saying. We have a generator but will only use it if it’s too hot or too cool inside or the batteries get depleted (that hasn’t happened yet). But never run the Gen during quiet hours.
Yes, when our main power transfer unit began to smoke and I had to unplug.
It was a “loose connection” in the transfer switch. It became the subject of a recall.
Lightning hit a transformer, traveled thru the system, and fried our solar, and 110v system. After a technician did some repairs the next morning, we were able to use 12v to boondock. The repair came to more than $4,000.00.
Power. In the diesel world we de-grade. Last month I lost power in a construction zone, one lane traffic north of Tonopah, NV. Got restarted and limped another 140 miles until the coach would run no more. Time for a costly tow. As far as electrical power, yes. Usually when we are parked for an extended time (months) during various weather events.
Modern diesels love the limp mode.
4 years ago we derated just outside of Tonopah. Got to Hawthorne and then got towed home. DEF pickup sensors from Shaw should have had a full recall but alas, cheaper for Shaw and the builders to keep or implement a ‘fingers crossed that no one gets killed’ policy.
In parks while parked, yes, a few times from lighting storms and some from old park infrastructure and the odd southern California brown out.
OMG, we have “lost” power so often it almost seems normal. Thank goodness for our Onan built in Generator, once only last year in Utah, we had to run the genny for almost 7 hours to keep comfortable before power was restored. Most times it has been for an hour or less.
We have lost power numerous times over our 50+ years of RVing. With the innovations in batteries, inverters, and generators, plus the available of solar, it is a far less issue. On the flipside of this, we’ve also become more and more “power dependent” with our residential refrigerators, cpaps, and electronic devices. We have a genstart now so I don’t worry about losing power.
We lost power on morning when a squirrel shorted across a transformer. I even saw the squirrel fall to the ground. That was a Blast!
We’ve never experienced any RV park power outages over 25+ years – UNTIL HOUSTON. It was almost a regular thing at the RV park we were staying in for over a year. Sometimes the city power – sometimes the aging RV park system. I also never used to haul any of our portable generators along, but I’ve changed my thinking on that one.
I’ve been reading the posts about losing ac power. We lost it once because of a thunderstorm while camping at a state park. Wasn’t a big deal since it was cool and we had battery power. We did have to abort a trip once because we were boondocking and lost battery power. I had rigged up an inverter so I could make coffee and forgot to disconnect the batteries to prevent a charging loop. There was a circuit breaker that was supposed to shut off then reset automatically. There was nothing in the owner’s packet about it being there or where it might be located. The charging loop fried the breaker so we no longer had any power to the trailer. Thus ended our trip.
Shore power is a luxury I have seldom used. Growing up tent camping we didn’t have generators, and the only battery device was a flashlight (used only for nighttime nature calls). Now with 200W of solar and two batteries, even the gas generator rarely gets used.
So my power outages are when the batteries are depleted, and the generator is out of gas.
We lost power last weekend at the house, when a tree in the neighborhood blew down across the powerline. Power was restored within 45 minutes. We live in a very rural area, and are members of our local electric cooperative. Those guys are AWSOME!
Don’t get me started on the big energy conglomerates who are buying up the electric co-ops!
Yep, bad pedestals, bad connections, poor switches, you name it. Good to have lots of AH in the bank.
Ratty pedestals have caused me to lose power…whoever wired the pedestal must have been in 6th grade. The RV park owner would do nothing about it so I never went back there…and told many to avoid the place.
43rd wedding anniversary. We always head for our favorite shoreside restaurant in a tourist town about 50 miles from home. That year, why not use as a shakedown cruise for the new camper? No sooner got set up in the nearby state park than power went out, park and in town. Restaurant closed, made grilled ham & cheese sandwiches for dinner. Power restored about the time we left the next morning. Fortunately, neither hot nor cold.
We now carry a small 1800watt propane powered generator.
We can’t remember exactly where we were (many years ago), but it was somewhere in SW Montana. There was a huge thunderstorm, heavy rain. At one lightning flash, the park’s power went out. Not a big deal. We started out as backpackers, tent campers, etc. We’ve never been comfortable relying 100% on electricity. We have 3 non-electric backup ways to make our coffee. We like to be able to boondock.
In 14 years of fulltiming over 200K miles, we’ve lost power too many times to count. That’s why we have 736AH of lithium battery, 950 watts of solar, & a 50 amp dc to dc charger, so we don’t have to depend on campgrounds for power. We create & store our own power.
We have an “otta” start system. DW announces “otta” start the generator and I pull out two 2000 watt generators, fire them up and transfer the power cord over. Takes about 10 minutes. We don’t even count the number of times the power has been out anymore.
In the MH, we didn’t even realize electric was off. Everything just continued working as it should and the autostart on generator would have kicked in if needed, but was a different story years ago in the pop-up. Of course we didn’t have a need for electricity in the pop-up…still had remnants of tent camping around but we did miss the campground toilets, showers and water since they were on a well. Cooled off in the river with 100° temps but then realized it was full of leeches when we found them on the dog’s belly and us!
Lost power for 3 days when a transformer blew a $450.00 fuse. 3 days later that same transformer about 6 feet behind us blew again and caught fire. We were out of power for 14 days. Come to find out there was a short in that electrical line to several RV spaces. The RV Park had to replace about 200 feet of underground power cable. Some RV in sites effected were able to move to other sites. 4 of us did not move. 2 of us had generators in our RVs so did not move. We used our generator to charge ours and the 2 without generators to keep their batteries charged.
One time in Pigeon Forge the campground lost power during the night.
We were all awaken at the sound of generators coming on.
I usually know quickly that the power is out because I use a CPAP.
Lost power several times. Worst was when a fire took out the power lines 12 miles away in July. Power out for a couple days. We had a generator but many did not. Our neighbor could not even use her phone until I ran an extension to her. At another park, lost power for a day when a power pole burned.
Thank you, Gail! 🙂 Our situation was far less dramatic than yours. The campground had electricians doing work and they turned off the power to do something. It happened three or four times for about 15 minutes each time over a few hours one morning. The RV switched from shore power to inverting seemlessly. I activated the generator to make coffee and run the air conditioning after a while without shore power. Our generator is built-in and draws fuel from the RV’s fuel tank. I’m glad that you got power back before things got dicey. Safe travels! 🙂
Yes. We were in the FL Keys in bed for the night when a semi truck hit a cement blockade in a construction zone that triggered a fire that took out the transformer and power lines. It was restored by morning. Sadly, we understand that the driver did not make it. We instantly said prayers for his/her family and realized how blessed we were to have only lost power for a few hours.
Last spring we were in North Little Rock, AR and a tornado went thru the park we were in. We lost power and water. It took about 24 hours for the road to be cleared so we could leave. Luckily, we have an on board generator and we had some water in the fresh water tank. Out of 35 campers, only 4 of us left without damage. Luckily, no one was hurt.
We dry camp all the time, have solar, lithium batteries and a generator if needed. The only time our trailer is “plugged in” is when it is in driveway or in storage unit.