Three Days Without Power After the Ice Storm and the Battery That Helped

The ice started late on a Tuesday afternoon in January and by six that evening the power was gone. I know the hour because the clock on the range went dark while I had a pot on it. That is how it goes at the end of a gravel road. One limb across the line and you are on your own. This past January we were on our own for three days, and the thing that kept our phones alive and a lamp burning was a Jackery Explorer 300 I had bought the October before and had never needed.

I am Marlene Tolliver. I carried mail on one rural route for thirty years and retired three years ago. My husband Hollis is sixty-six, retired off the county road crew, and we live in a one-story farmhouse in the hills of middle Tennessee. Two of us, no children at home. I am not a prepper and I am not going to tell you the end is coming. I am telling you what sat on my kitchen counter when the lights went out, because two neighbors asked and it is easier to say it once.

The Jackery is a battery in a box with a handle on top. 292 watt hours, 300 watts of output, about seven and a half pounds. I bought it in October of last year, after a storm the summer before. It lives on the floor at the front of the hall closet and I top it up on the first of March, June, September and December, whether anything has happened or not. When freezing rain was forecast that Tuesday afternoon, I carried it to the kitchen counter. It read 100 percent.

The power went about six. We ate cold food out of the refrigerator, which is an odd thing to do in your own kitchen, and we went to bed early because there was nothing else to do. The Jackery came with us. I set it on the floor beside the bed and plugged in both phones and one small LED lamp. That was the whole of it. Two phones and a lamp, nothing else, and we had light enough to read by and phones that would still work in the morning.

Wednesday the counter is where it lived. The phones charged, the lamp stayed on, and the readout had barely moved. That is the part I did not expect. A battery that size, running two phones and a lamp for a day, does not break a sweat. What it will not do is the refrigerator, the range, the heat pump or a space heater. I never tried any of them and I would not. It is for phones and light, and I knew that when I bought it.

Three days, two phones, one lamp. It went back in the closet at about 30 percent and was never recharged the whole time.

Wednesday evening we moved into the den, because the wood stove is there and the wood stove does not need the utility district. The Jackery came too. It sat on the floor by the couch with both phones on it and the lamp beside it, and the room held about 62 degrees. Hollis slept in his clothes and I did the same. We heated food from one of the kits on the porch stove, outside, where a propane burner belongs.

Thursday the road was still iced and nobody went anywhere. Ray walked down from his house up the road, stood at the porch and said his generator was running fine, then walked back. I was glad of it. His generator sits outside and away from his windows, and mine would too if I had one. A generator is a real answer for a house. I am not going to pretend a battery is the same thing.

Thursday night we were in the den again. Friday about noon the power came back, the kitchen lamp came on with it, and I stood there a minute feeling foolish. The Jackery went back to the floor at the front of the hall closet at about 30 percent. That is 70 percent gone across three days, and nothing had charged it back up the whole time. I plugged it into the wall that afternoon and it took about four hours to fill.

The refrigerator food was lost on the third day. That is the honest accounting. If you are buying one of these thinking it will carry your kitchen, it will not, and no honest person will tell you it will. What it carried was the small thing that turns out to matter. A phone with a charge on it is how you check on your people and how you take a picture of the ice on the line for the utility.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

I would tell you to buy the battery before you need it, and to buy one you can pick up with one hand. The number that matters is not the biggest one on the box. It is whether the thing is charged on the night the line comes down. Mine is charged on the first of March, June, September and December, and if a storm is coming I carry it to the counter. That is the whole system. A battery goes flat sitting in a closet, and a dead battery in a storm is worse than no battery, because you were counting on it.

I would also tell you what the Jackery is not. It is not a generator and it is not a whole house backup. It will not run your heat, your refrigerator or a space heater, and anyone who says otherwise is selling something. It ran two phones and one LED lamp for three days and came out of it with about 30 percent still in it. That is the claim I am making, because that is what happened. And follow what your county tells you. If they say leave, leave. A battery in a closet is not worth a bad decision.