Saturday night I was into the first set at the local Ramada Inn, when a violent thunderstorm came through. Lightening hit the building and knocked off all power for more than 24 hours.
I always keep a surge protector between my equipment and the a.c., and keep it where I can reach it immediately. Never needed it before, but when I heard the crash, I hit the switch on the surge proctector. The lights in the room flickered a time or two and went out. It was several hours later before I was able to find that I was very fortunate. No loss of information and no damage.
A friend who also does a single, on the nights I'm not there, using a Roland sequencer and a PSR740 had left his equipment on the bandstand also. He lost all memory in the sequencer. The equipment itself seems to be o.k. Fortunately he had backed up his data recently, but it still was necessary to do a restore operation.
Moral: Use a good surge protector and unplug your gear when you're not going to be there. And be certain all info is backed up, with at least one copy of the backup in a different location. I'm sure we all know this, but I know I get lazy sometimes and forget.
Don

I also have very good (I think) protection. Some of the protection devises have up to $50,000 equipment protection guarantees. I wonder if they cover music gear. I use them anyway. Another word of advice .. although there may be nothing out there that will protect from a direct lighting strike, most offer lightning protection .. it is measured in "joules" I think. The more the better.

Has anyone used a back up power system and how long can we get for how much?

I use Power Strips for all my electronic gear. They are those multiple power plug-in things that you put on the floor and then you have to just plug in the Power Strip. They have a switch that you can hit with your foot and turn on all your equipment at once. They have built in surge protection (fuses that can be reset with a button). I think we've all seen these but in case someone didn't I gave this somewhat elaborate description. They have a Joule rating for surges. Yes, many of them come with an equipment replacement guarantee (supposed to cover anything electronic plugged into them).

One little thunderbolt can certainly ruin all your gear. I'm not sure you really need to worry about power back up for a gig. If all the AC goes out do you really want to play to a darkened room? OK, let's say it's a daytime gig I think the best power source you can use will power your synth alone and its internal amp. These are ~$50 and use gel cells. They are usually called "Power Packs" or something like that. They have multiple voltage outlets (don't plug into the wrong one!) like 3,6,9, and 12 volts D.C. Many Yamaha PSRs, for example, draw about 2 Amps. If you got a power pack with a 10 Amp capacity, that would mean you could play off of it for about 5 hours. They can be recharged thru a car cigarette lighter or a wall outlet. They are a much better idea than a car battery as a power source because you're not getting involved with sulphuric acid, they weigh much less, and are much more convenient.

Don with all those tornadoes and lightning you have down there you should move to the San Francisco area. We don't get tornadoes and very rarely get any lightning. O.K., a few earthquakes now and then, but....


BOB

I don't know, Bob. . . Do ya'll have crawfish in San Francisco?
Don

Last time I was in San Francisco, they were testing the emergency broadcast system they said they'd use in an event of an emergency, such as tsunami. I thought that was curious (don't get much of that in the Arizona deserts).