Power outage preparedness
A power cut can disable more than lights. Electric cooking and heating stop immediately, and many fuel-burning boilers/furnaces also rely on electrical controls or pumps. Home internet will usually fail unless network equipment and upstream infrastructure remain powered.
Turn electricity OFF in the calculator, then add gas, water, shops or communications if you want to model a wider failure.
Run this scenarioWhy this page exists
Generic checklists often hide dependencies. Home Resilience Check is designed to make those dependencies visible and keep the underlying assumptions auditable.
Source-led, not fear-led
Planning guidance is based on recognised public authorities. During a real event, current instructions from emergency services, utilities and local government take priority over this planning page.
What a household power cut can affect
A power cut is a dependency problem, not just a lighting problem. The calculator separates direct electrical loads from systems that may still need electricity even when their fuel source remains available. This is why a gas or fuel boiler can be unavailable during an electricity outage, and why an electric cooking setup can turn otherwise useful stored food into food that cannot be prepared as planned.
Build a realistic power budget
Use the main resilience check to enter your stored battery energy, then add the actual devices you intend to operate. Each extra load is calculated from quantity × watts × hours per day × outage days. Phone charging is shown separately and backup electric heating remains visible as its own high-demand load.
Plan for the weakest dependency
The headline result is expressed as limiting resilience in days. If water and food cover a week but stored power supports the selected essential loads for only two days, the plan highlights the two-day constraint rather than averaging it away.
Questions worth checking before an outage
Which appliances genuinely need to remain powered? Does the boiler need electrical controls or pumps? Can the selected cooking method operate without mains electricity? How much stored food is still useful if cooking fails? Which devices provide official information, lighting and communication?
The live tool turns those questions into one scenario rather than treating them as unrelated checklist items. If you add a device load, it is included in the same stored-energy budget as phone charging and any backup electric heating.
Why limiting resilience is the headline
A weighted score can look reassuring when several categories are strong even though one essential resource fails early. The v1.3 calculator therefore shows the earliest modelled day-based limit first and keeps the 0–100 score secondary.