When faced with a planned power outage during the summer in the desert, there are a few options available to deal with the heat. While it is possible to spend the night at a motel or to purchase a gas-powered generator or maybe some kind of high-capacity battery, the least expensive option is to make an ice chest cooler. So, when Southern California Edison notified me that the town in which I live would experience a planned power outage lasting from eight in the evening of September 13th to eight in the morning of September 14th, I weighed my options and decided that the ice chest cooler was worth a try. Was it effective? That's hard to say since we got very lucky and the temperature at the start of the outage was ten degrees lower than at the same time on the previous evening. However, I can unequivocally say that the ice chest cooler did lower the temperature in the room in which I slept by about one full degree on the Fahrenheit scale. If I had a more powerful fan, it would have had a greater impact, but the ice probably would have melted more rapdily. So, I consider the ice chest cooler to be marginally useful, but not exactly a complete success.