Your Power Setup · stories
Short reads about the tech that keeps your day running: at home, on the road and when the power drops out.
19 stories
FeaturedPower and Water’s 19 October 2026 statement says 12 properties remain without electricity in Alice Springs following the Central Australia storm response. All require a Certificate of Compliance before reconnection, and some need extensive repairs. This is a dated operator report, rather than confirmation of the supply position at those properties on 24 October.
Power and Water reports an electricity outage affecting Batchelor and attributes it to a lightning storm. In its 22:00 update, the operator says crews are continuing to remove trees from power lines. The next update is scheduled for 06:00; the restoration time and affected customer total remain unknown.
Power and Water reports that electricity was restored at 10:20 ACST on 19 October 2026 after a network outage affecting customers in Wanguri, Wagaman and Casuarina in Darwin. The operator marks the incident Resolved. Its earlier 11:00 ACST restoration estimate has been superseded by that report; the affected customer count and technical cause remain unknown.
Powercor lists an unplanned power outage affecting 4,059 customers in Mildura and surrounding communities in its map snapshot displayed as 27 October 2026, 11:44 am. The operator identifies Lilley Drive, Mildura, as the fault location and says crews are attending. Its estimated restoration time is 13:00 on 27 October; completion has not been confirmed.
About 810 Essential Energy customers remained without power at 4 pm AEDT on Thursday, 12 November, after storms affected the Mid North Coast and Northern Rivers in New South Wales. The distributor reported about 3,855 customers without power at 6:30 am and more than 9,000 affected at the Wednesday evening peak.
A major power cut affected thousands of homes and businesses across more than 30 London postcode areas on Monday, 5 October 2026. Station displays and lighting were also disrupted. Reports of power being restored followed later that day.
At IFA in September 2026, Jackery showed the Explorer 1000 Plus v2 and European sales started on 14 October 2026. The name sits very close to the existing Explorer 1000 v2, yet the two are built for different needs.
EcoFlow unveiled the RIVER 260 Gen4 and RIVER 520 Gen4 at IFA in Berlin on 4 September 2026, aimed at devices that draw under 100 W. That focus touches a problem many owners of small power stations notice: low loads often run out sooner than the label suggests.
Meshtastic lets small LoRa radios pass short text messages to each other without a mobile network or internet connection. On 21 September 2026 the project published a guide to measuring how much energy a solar-powered node really uses, and the answer starts with watt-hours rather than a single current reading.
Home Assistant 2026.9, released on 2 September 2026, reworked how the smart-home platform talks to devices over Modbus. For owners of some Fronius and Sofar solar inverters, that means more detail with less manual setup.
Anker's MagGo 2 Pro (model A110R) is a 10,000 mAh magnetic power bank with a built-in fan, shown on Anker's sites from September 2026. A fan sounds odd in something pocket-sized, but it targets the main weakness of fast wireless charging: heat.
BLUETTI unveiled the Pioneer 5000 E-Generator at IFA in Berlin on 4 September 2026, aimed at building sites, events and other mobile work. The term battery generator is catchy, but it hides an important difference: this machine stores energy rather than producing it.
No bunker, no shopping spree. Light, a charged phone and a way to stay informed: most of it is already somewhere in your home.
A power station next to the router sounds like the answer to a power outage. It helps, as long as you know which boxes need power and what happens outside your home.
A power bank fits in your jacket, a power station needs a handle. Which one you need depends less on the size of the battery than on the plug at the end of the cable.
The Mini fits in a backpack, which makes it tempting to just take it. Five minutes of power checking at home saves a lot of frustration at the campsite.
Friday afternoon, a field, no power points. How do you keep your laptop, lights and speaker going until Sunday without dragging half your house along?
You unfold the panel, the sun is out, and the display shows less than you hoped. Usually it is not the panel, but where and how it lies.
