We have a gas stove and electric oven for this sort of emergency. If our electricity suddenly goes out, this is what we do. We check to see if it has happened in our street and ring a few neighbours first. Then we do the following things; Try to switch it back on. If the switch trips immediately you have a fault in an appliance or in the wiring of your property. * Leave the tripswitch off, unplug all appliances, switch off things like your immersion heater, oven etc * Try the tripswitch again. * If it stays on, one by one begin to switch appliances back on. By this process of elimination, you should find the faulty appliance. Leave that appliance unplugged or switched off and call the service agent. * If the switch still refuses to re-set, double check that all equipment has been switched off. If everything has been unplugged or switched off and the switch will not re-set you may have a fault in the wiring. We do not attempt to trace the fault ourself, we call our electrical contractor. If it happens at night we light candles and boil hot water/ cook on our gas stove.

if it happens now i'd light some candles and look at the stars in the sky! =P

We have the backup units last for 30 minutes, the backup light will turn on and, we manually turn off the computers.