I tested this backup power station during a real blackout - don't make my mistakes

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I have 11 kWh of battery power sitting in my house -- enough to run a small home for days. It weighs almost 300 pounds. I call it the Tower of Power (a Bluetti Apex 300 and three expansion batteries) . And when a real blackout hit, it still wasn't enough to stop me from wasting power, cooking a battery in the heat, and losing my fridge.

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It turns out I had three issues working against me, along with the fact that I've not finished my build yet.

They just happen. One minute, everything is powered up, the next it isn't.

And it's happening a lot. Just this month, almost 400,000 DTE customers lost power due to storms , with some having to wait five days before the power came back, and PJM, the largest grid operator in the US, was forced to cut electricity consumption because of generator outages, overloads on its transmission lines, and a huge surge in air conditioning use resulting from the heat.

I've tested and planned for this sort of thing a lot, but a real blackout highlighted some weaknesses in my planning.